When lockdown began last March, Joseph was sent scrambling for an alternative to in-person instruction. He had recently appeared on a Rahman-centered podcast called “I Love ARR,” hosted by an Australian friend named Chander Ramanathan, who uses Microsoft Teams for the production.
“The COVID-19 situation – boom, it hit everyone,” remembers Ramanathan. “I had a call from Alphons saying ‘Think of some options and let’s get together.’ I said there’s nothing to think about, it’s Microsoft Teams.”
The next day, the two met for a tutorial – and in no time, Joseph was confident enough to determine it was the way forward. They trained the faculty of nearly 40 people, created various channels for vocals, piano and more classes, added students as guest users, employed Microsoft Forms for evaluations and implemented it all – over a single weekend.
“Another great feature is Live Event,” says Joseph, unabashedly thrilled by the possibilities such technology has put at his fingertips.
“Recently I tried a Live Event, and more than 1,000 people attended. I was giving a starter session in music theory. Even for my existing students, I’ve been doing it as a combined session where I do Indian music and Western music. I give that free, so the Crossroads students will have an edge in that musical knowledge. For me, this platform gives me a big office in my hands.”
Chander Ramanathan, at left, helped musician and teacher Alphons Joseph, in blue jacket, start using Microsoft Teams.
A newfound confidence All over the world, music teachers are making an impact like never before. Music students are learning to collaborate and hone their skills in ways they never imagined. And music is bringing people together, at a time when that is so very needed.
In October, Joseph launched the school’s online music learning platform, called “Crossroads eSuite,” available to students from all over the world. Using Microsoft Teams, “I’ve become much more confident with online teaching,” he says.
“We are longing to get back together, because that’s what’s really important,” says Gareth Gay. “But the technology is fascinating; it has given us a massive jolt into the future and shown us the possibilities of how it could be useful going forward.”
“At a time of crisis, music brings people together,” adds Cekmeci. “It has so many benefits.”
Rajat Agrawal also contributed to this report.
Top image: Ceyda Cekmeci, choir director for Istanbul’s Music for Peace Foundation, rehearses with students at Tekfur Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by Ozan Şahin.
Addressing customer demands, giving teams a shared view of every customer, and making collaboration and meetings between teams easier is the goal with our collaboration with Salesforce.
We are pleased to announce the availability of the Salesforce in Microsoft Teams pilot. The integration will be offered to Sales and Service Cloud customers with Enterprise or Unlimited edition at no additional cost.
For many teams – including the sales teams present at many organizations – there is no more critical data than customer data, typically stored within a customer relationship management (CRM) application. A close connection between customer information and the conversations around them can improve the productivity for any team that works with customers, which is why we are pleased to see the integration from Salesforce with Microsoft Teams – now you can interweave key customer and case records within your Microsoft Teams.
By connecting Salesforce CRM with Microsoft Teams, our joint customers can now benefit from a close connection of the chat and workspace capabilities of Teams alongside key information and actions from Salesforce – which makes team collaboration more focused and effective.
– Doug Camplejohn, Sales Cloud Executive Vice President and General Manager, Sales Cloud, Salesforce
For sales teams, the integration will help bring sales teams together more easily and help make up for some of the hallway discussions that are now missing from many salespeople’s daily routine in light of the current work-from-home environment. For service teams, the integration will enable better coordination and faster response times to open cases, allowing for more team collaboration both within the service department and outside.
It all starts with the conversations that teams and individuals can have in chat. With a Salesforce message extension integration, now you can integrate key customer details right inline within a conversation, keeping details right in context and alongside your conversations. Relevant details around customer contact information are displayed within the broader chat stream. Administrators can also choose and determine the level of visibility for this information – whether details can be shared within a secured team, or whether they require a Salesforce log-in to display.
Add connected records inline within your conversations
In addition, you can now pin customer information as a Tab in a channel. Within this Tab, you can see and update key vendor information, related contacts, and view updates and activities all in one place. This facilitates a workflow where you use a team or channel per customer to holistically manage all aspects of that relationship. Add the corresponding Salesforce display as a Tab, and you’ll have an integrated workspace that brings together chat files, and more alongside key customer information stored within the Salesforce CRM.
With these capabilities, it is now possible to design customer-focused workspaces within Microsoft Teams, featuring the Salesforce app and integration.
To get started, Salesforce customers will need to contact their customer success representatives or account executives to have them provision integration capabilities for Microsoft Teams. After this, team owners can add the Salesforce application to their team from AppSource or the Microsoft Teams store. We look forward to seeing more integrations that help you build the ultimate workspace for collaborating around customers.
As our world looks to respond, recover and reimagine the way it works, the Firstline Workforce and the IT teams who support them have proven to be the essential force behind business continuity. Firstline Workforces and IT teams keep businesses moving forward during times of crisis and lead the charge to transform the way we work across many industries.
They are the reason grocery stores stay open and transform to accommodate curb-side pick-up; the reason hospitals keep running and evolve in-person health consults into virtual ones; and how manufacturing continues to create essential products like face masks and transform operations.
Three macro challenges emerge when we listen and learn from customers about their new normal.
The need for better communication, transparency and the ability to foster culture from corporate headquarters to Firstline Workers, and within teams on the ground, is changing from a nice-to-have to a must have.
There is an accelerated need to digitally transform processes that were manual or occurred in-person.
Working conditions have become unpredictable; the need for tools that keep Firstline teams and operations agile and everyone informed is essential for fluctuating working conditions like unexpected locations closing.
We see your Firstline workers and IT admins as the heroes of your business, and we would like to talk about how Microsoft Teams enables you to overcome these challenges.
The need for communication and connection with Firstline Workers has long been on customer minds, but the rapid response required to address shutdowns created by COVID-19 has put a spotlight on this gap. Customers also realize the importance of culture for job satisfaction and the need to make employees feel more connected to the organization and to each other.
Within a Firstline team, employees are facing new protocols that make connecting with each other more challenging throughout their everyday work. Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience that enables clear and secure voice communication over the cloud, enables teams to communicate instantly and always stay on the same page. This native built-in app in Teams turns employee or company-owned Android smartphones and tablets like the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro into a walkie-talkie, reducing the number of devices employees must carry and lowering costs for IT.
Customers who currently use analog radio devices no longer need to worry about static, crosstalk, interference from outsiders or traditional radio distance boundaries as Walkie Talkie works over WIFI or cellular data. For Firstline teams not yet enabled with a push-to-talk experience, Walkie Talkie in Teams enables instant team communication with pre-configured channels set to have the right conversation with the right people.
Walkie Talkie is not pre-installed. To enable this feature for users in your organization, you need to add Walkie Talkie to the App Setup Policy assigned to users from the Teams Admin Center. Once enabled, Walkie Talkie will become available on the Android app within 48 hours. This feature will be generally available alongside purpose-built devices from BlueParrott, Klein Electronics, and Galaxy XCover Pro on Sept 22nd , learn more here.
To take the guesswork out of knowing the name of on-shift staff when users need to quickly relay information, Tagging by Shifts allows messages to be targeted to groups based on the shifts they are working on, such as all nurses currently on duty. Users are automatically assigned to tags matching their schedule in the Shifts app in Teams, which allows for integration with major workforce management systems, including AMiON, BlueYonder, and Kronos.
Tagging by Shifts is on by default and enabled by Team Owners by creating shift groups and naming them after an attribute such as a role, which will be the name of the tag. Then assign shifts to team members and share the shift schedule with your team. IT can disable this feature in the IT admin center. Tagging by Shifts will be generally available in November.
The need to engage your Firstline Workers with company-wide announcements that employees can access anywhere is important to create transparency within the company. With Yammer notifications in Teams activity feed, available later this year, teams using the new Yammer Communities app in Teams will be able to receive Yammer notifications in the Teams activity feed and on your mobile lock screen. You can also find Yammer conversations using the Teams search bar so that large scale announcements and updates can reach all employees within Microsoft Teams mobile, desktop, and browser experiences.
Yammer notifications in Teams activity feed will be available this year, to learn more
As the world continues to applaud Firstline Workers for the jobs they are doing, internal steps to engage, recognize and appreciate employees go a long way to improve job satisfaction and promote a positive work culture. Customizable Praise Badges provides the ability to customize Praise badges to express a company’s culture and values in celebration of every success and foster greater comradery during a time of disconnect.
Customizable Praise badges will be GA in September. Learn more here.
The acceleration of digital transformation arose from travel restrictions, capacity limitations and more safety protocols around manual processes across all industries. Whether it is expert assistance in a manufacturing plant, virtual store walks in a retail store or patients being able to visit their doctor – processes are changing from what was normal in the past.
Processes that normally would have been transformed over 2 years have accelerated and are transforming in a few weeks. And this transformation has allowed companies to work in ways never available before, enabling new ways to scale the once in-person work. For example, through an integration between Teams and RealWear head-mounted devices, field workers can get virtual expert assistance while remaining 100% hands-free using a voice-controlled user interface while maintaining situational awareness in loud and hazardous environments.
To enable this feature for users in your organization, you need to add Microsoft Teams to devices via the RealWear Foresight platform. This feature will be generally available in late September.
With more technology in the hands of your shift workers, the need to make sure you comply with labor regulations while also digitally empowering your workers is essential. With off-shift access controls, IT administrators can now configure Teams to alert employees when they are accessing the app on their personal device outside of working hours. The feature prompts employees to accept that they will not be getting paid for time spent on Teams to ensure employees are not involuntarily working while not on shift and helps employers to comply with labor regulations. The feature does not require active usage of the Shifts app, but it does require Shifts being configured and schedule data being inside the app, including workforce management API connectors like Kronos, BlueYonder and more.
This feature is not enabled by default but must be enabled through PowerShell. This feature will be generally available in October.
With manual processes becoming more strained in current conditions, the need to be more efficient and cost-effective around approval processes has become even more important to keep businesses moving forward. Approvals in Teams makes it easy to request, approve or reject various requests. For example, a Firstline worker in manufacturing could request approval to confirm that a repair is completed correctly right from a chat conversation. It brings all your approval flows across the company in one place by seamlessly integrating Teams with over several systems using Power Automate, including ServiceNow, Dynamics, GITHUB, and more. Whether you need written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorization from a diverse group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer, approvals in Teams can be customized for your needs and leverage the capabilities of Adobe Sign and DocuSign to get e-signatures all in one place in our Approvals Hub natively in Teams.
This feature is enabled by default and will be generally available in October. E-signature features will be GA in November. Learn more here
Unpredictable working conditions seemed to hit the whole world overnight. Not only are locations fluctuating between being open or temporarily closed, but shift schedules and employees are as well, which has put a lot of pressure on managers and legacy processes to keep up.
The need for flexible and agile shift scheduling has become essential for keeping up with work fluctuations. With the new Power Automate Shifts connector, users can automate shift processes with triggers and actions, so managers save time and are more efficient with schedule management during times of increased pressure on shifts. With these new triggers and actions, a user can view all their Shifts in the calendar of their choice (such as Outlook), a manager can auto-approve shifts all at once and it also enables users to create Shifts templates of their own to meet the ever-fluctuating needs of their business.
The new triggers and templates will begin rolling out in September and are enabled in the Power Platform directory. Learn more here.
To further save managers time and reduce inaccuracies that can lead to employees not turning up for their shift during heightened pressures of work, Shifts schedule assistance alerts managers when a scheduling conflict occurs while they are creating shift schedules or approving a schedule change request.
This feature is on by default and requires no IT involvement as managers can turn it on or off as wanted. This feature will be generally available in October.
With fluctuations in the workplace, streamlining the onboarding process is important to maintain continuity in the business. With new custom policy packages, IT can now create custom policy packages and assign them to their Firstline workers and managers to get them onboarded quickly with the right policies for them and the business. Policy packages provide IT administrators with pre-defined policies and policy settings tailored for their Firstline workforce to create a simple, centralized, and consistent way to manage your Firstline workforce, no matter how big.
Now with Teams templates, you’re able to create effective teams faster and more easily than ever. Users can choose from common business scenarios, such as Onboarding and/or industry-specific templates, like Retail – manager collaboration and Organize a store. Each template comes with pre-defined channels, tabs, and apps. Administrators can also create custom templates for their organization, helping them standardize team structures, reveal relevant apps, and scale best practices. They can create these from scratch or use an existing template or team structure as a starting point, so Teams are set up for success at the beginning to keep business moving forward.
With Microsoft Teams as your hub for communication and teamwork for your entire organization, we have the tools to help you overcome the new challenges you face today. Tools that keep you agile during fluctuating work conditions, digitally transform processes under pressure, and connect the entire workforce during a time when communication is no longer a nice to have, but now, essential.
AI-powered ambient clinical intelligence accelerates the adoption of telehealth workflow solutions to improve patient experiences and health outcomes while reducing physician burnout
BURLINGTON, Mass., and REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 15, 2020—Nuance Communications Inc. and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced Nuance Dragon® Ambient eXperience™ (DAX™), an ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) solution, is now integrated into Microsoft Teams to broadly scale virtual consults aimed at increasing physician wellness and providing better patient health outcomes. As a Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner and part of a broader partnership between the two companies, the integration enables physicians to activate Nuance DAX from within their Microsoft Teams workflows, so they can focus on the patient while the AI securely captures the details of the virtual visit in context — creating clinical documentation that writes itself™.
Innovated by Nuance and Microsoft, the integration of Nuance DAX and Microsoft Teams for telehealth is part of the ongoing strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of ACI solutions to improve healthcare experiences by reducing administrative workloads that lead to physician burnout. This telehealth workflow solution built on Microsoft Teams:
Synthesizes physician-patient conversations during virtual visits through Microsoft Teams, allowing physicians to remain focused on the patient instead of taking notes on the computer.
Incorporates patient data securely with contextual information from the electronic health record (EHR) to auto-populate a complete and highly accurate clinical note for physicians to review directly within the patient’s medical record. The physician always remains in control.
Research shows that the pandemic has accelerated virtual consults and expanded access to care, while physician burnout remains an important concern facing the healthcare industry today. Healthcare providers are rapidly scaling virtual health consults, with a reported 50- to 175-fold increase in telehealth patient volumes since the onset of the pandemic.1 This rapid step change in technology adoption suggests that now is the time for the healthcare industry to make improvements in information exchange, broadening access and integration of technology for improved access to care for better health outcomes and increased efficiencies in the healthcare system.
“The dramatic growth of telehealth represents a unique opportunity to use Nuance DAX ambient clinical intelligence technology to transform healthcare experiences and define what healthcare providers and consumers should expect from advanced digital health solutions,” said Diana Nole, executive vice president, and general manager of healthcare, Nuance. “Our strategic partnership with Microsoft, which led to this rapid integration of Nuance DAX with Microsoft Teams for telehealth, illustrates the ongoing importance of combining our technologies, domain expertise and market reach to develop advanced cloud-based conversational AI solutions that keep the health of clinicians and patients front and center in healthcare delivery.”
“Telehealth has grown in just a few months from being an infrequently used, specialized solution prior to the pandemic to becoming core to how we deliver care today and in the future. The integrated Nuance-Microsoft Teams solution will be game-changer for our clinicians and patients alike,” said Dr. William Silver, medical director, Triangle Region EmergeOrtho. “This integration brings us the ease of use, reliability and security of the Microsoft Teams platform for healthcare, and the ability to automatically capture and document patient-physician encounters with Nuance DAX to significantly ease the burden of clinical documentation.”
“Through our strategic partnership with Nuance, we are combining the best in Nuance’s conversational AI technology with Microsoft Teams, Azure and Azure AI to accelerate and scale the development and adoption of innovative solutions that emphasize the essential and personal aspect of quality healthcare between a physician and patient,” said Gregory Moore, M.D., Ph.D., corporate vice president, Microsoft Health. “This important milestone and the integration of Microsoft Teams within the Nuance DAX solution will empower front-line care providers to positively transform the patient care experience.”
Nuance DAX leverages and extends the proven power of Nuance Dragon Medical, relied upon by over 550,000 physicians globally, and is already delivering significant outcomes, including a 20% increase in patient throughput, 50 to 75% reduction in clinical documentation time, an 88% increase in provider satisfaction scores for clinical documentation, and patient consent rates of over 90%.
The Nuance DAX solution is built on top of Microsoft Azure, a highly secure HITRUST CSF-certified platform, compliant with the HITECH Act, and has implemented the physical, technical and administrative safeguards required by HIPAA. As part of the strategic collaboration between the two companies, Nuance has migrated the majority of its on-premises internal infrastructure and hosted products to Microsoft Azure and is a Microsoft Office 365 customer for its more than 8,500 employees worldwide, empowering them with the latest in collaboration and communication tools, including Microsoft Teams.
The companies will demonstrate the integrated DAX-Teams telehealth solution available to customers for private preview at the Microsoft Ignite virtual conference Sept. 22-24, 2020. Those interested in learning more about the Nuance DAX and Microsoft Teams integration should visit www.nuance.com/DAXTeams or watch this video.
About Nuance Healthcare
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year, helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.
About Nuance Communications Inc.
Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze, and respond to people – amplifying human intelligence to increase productivity and security. With decades of domain and AI expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations globally across healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, government, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
Over the past 6 months, organizations around the world have adjusted to remote and hybrid work, pioneering new methods of collaboration, and transforming communication systems to stay connected and productive. By working closely with our customers, we’ve identified key requirements that define how you are using meeting and calling solutions and rethinking your costs to achieve long-term resiliency.
As we’ve shared, your organization’s communication needs likely span a spectrum—from the most basic 1:1 meetings and calls to group meetings to large virtual events and conferences. During the pandemic, organizations transformed rapidly moving meetings online and created hybrid workplaces. This environment confirmed the need for multiple ways to join online meetings. For example, participants who do not have reliable internet access to join Microsoft Teams meetings can use Audio Conferencing to join via a dial-in number. Our customers increasingly need to host large scale virtual events ranging from internal town halls to customer events, and Teams can help with these, too. The new Advanced Communications add-on enables large scale events, but also provides structure and admin control to achieve more professional, seamless, and compliant meeting experiences.
To help our customers enable these scenarios and experience the best of what Microsoft Teams can offer in meetings and voice, we’re announcing new promotional offers that deliver these experiences with significant cost savings.
New Microsoft Teams promotional offers:
Get Audio Conferencing for free, available now for Enterprise Agreement customers1 and starting October 1st, 2020 available for customers purchasing via partners and web2.
Get 35% off Advanced Communications3, available now for Enterprise Agreement customers, and will be available before the end of the calendar year for customers purchasing via partners and web.
For Skype for Business customers, we offer FastTrack support along with great pricing offers to help you move to Teams in a cost-effective manner. Contact your account representative for more details.
We are committed to helping organizations everywhere stay connected and productive as you navigate new ways of work. By sharing these promotional offers, we aim to support even more of your meeting needs in a cost-efficient manner.
FAQ:
Q: Can an eligible customer use all three offers at once? A: Yes, if the customer is eligible to all three offers, they can sign up for all three.
Q. Is there a user limit? A: The offers described above do not have a max number of users.
Q: Are the offers available for education (EDU), GCC, DoD, or GCC High customers? A: Audio Conferencing Offer1,2: available for GCC and EDU (A3 only) but is not available for DoD and GCC High customers. Advanced Communication offer3: The offer is not available for EDU customers. Advanced Communications add-on is not yet available to US GOV clouds (DoD, GCC, GCC High).
Q: If I purchase Audio Conferencing via partners or web, how do I enable the offer2? A: IT Admins can enable it for their organization via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. First, activate the free Audio Conferencing offer2 to acquire a license and then assign it to a specific user in your tenant.
1 Get Audio Conferencing for free until the end of your enrollment. Eligible for Microsoft Enterprise Agreements customers with paid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licenses with Microsoft Teams without Audio Conferencing add-on or Microsoft 365 E5. Available now through January 31st, 2021. Available worldwide with the exception in China and India. Talk to your Microsoft sales representative to learn more. The offer is subject to additional terms and conditions. 2 Get Audio Conferencing for free for 12 months. Eligible for CSP and Web Direct customers with paid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licenses with Microsoft Teams without Audio Conferencing add-on or Microsoft 365 E5. Available Starting October 1st, 2020 through March 31st, 2021. Available worldwide with the exception in China and India. The offer is subject to additional terms and conditions. 3 Get 35% off Advanced Communications until the end of your current subscription terms. Eligible for customers with Microsoft Enterprise Agreements, and paid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license with Microsoft Teams. Available now through January 31st, 2021. Available worldwide. Broader availability for customers working with our Microsoft partners and transacting on the web is coming soon. The offer is subject to additional terms and conditions.
Today, we are proud to announce the general availability of the Lists app in Teams for all our commercial and GCC customers. As you might already know, Microsoft Lists, which we announced at Build 2020 is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. Track patients, loans, issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. With ready-made templates, you can quickly create lists from directly within Teams and access them on the Teams mobile app by accessing the Lists tab you added as a channel.
Introducing the Lists app in Teams
The vision of the Lists app in Teams is to bring all the collaboration and communication modalities to lists and list items, so it is easy to get work done.
The new Lists app experience in Microsoft Teams, for mobile on the left and for Web and desktop on the right.
Lists in Teams is supported as a team based tab app built on top of the Microsoft Teams platform and supports the following features:
New list creation from scratch, from templates (8 standard templates and 3 industry specific ones: Patients, Loans, and Incidents), from Excel table data and from an existing list.
Importing existing team lists as new tabs.
All standard list features that you can access in SharePoint web: column types, view formatting, Quick Edit, exporting to Excel, sorting, filtering, etc.
The ability to have a channel conversation about a list item (see below for more details).
All user actions on the list are audited and available in the Security and compliance center audit logging.
How do I get started? To get started, simply go to any channel where you would like to start tracking a list and hit the “+” button to explore the tab gallery and select the Lists app. Once the tab is added you can either create a new list or bring in an existing list (from another team or an older SharePoint site, but not a personal list from Lists home) into the channel as a new tab.
Create a new list inside Teams with conversations side-by-side. The above shows using the Asset manager template.
The Lists app in Teams includes 3 new industry-specific templates – Patients, Loans and Incidents. Team members start managing and tracking these key entities. Here are some examples of how these templates can be leveraged.
Create a new list from within Microsoft Teams and choose from numerous ready-made templates, including the new industry-specific ones.
Healthcare organizations can use the Lists app in Teams to support patient rounding, multi-discplinary huddles and discharge planning. The Patients template is an easy way for all health teams to track patient progress and keep in touch with their peers. If you have questions about storage of PHI in Teams, Lists, or Office 365, please see more documentation here.
Government agencies can use the Lists app in Teams to track incidents and coordinated incident response. The Incidents template helps people quickly setup a list and get started.
Loan officers at a morgtage broker or bank can use the Lists app to track a set of loans and informally collaborate on advancing a them to approval. The Loans template helps them get started with plenty of scope for further customization.
How do I start a conversation alongside a list item?
Once you have configured the tab and have a list with list items, you can start a conversation about an individual list item. Go to the details view (or form) for the list item by clicking into the title field and then click on conversation to start a conversation about the list item on the channel. With this feature, you can collaborate with your team about the list item (your key business entities) and get work done, faster.
Since the conversation is a channel message in Teams, all the messaging features like @mentions, rich text, giphies, stickers, emojis, mentions, tagging, and attachments are available for use! The conversation shows up in the right rail for the list item and also on the channel for those who might not have viewed the list as yet.
You can chat side-by-side individual list items within Teams.
See more about getting started with the Lists app in Teams “Create a list in Microsoft Teams” click-thru demo. And do not forget to try the Lists app experience in the Teams mobile app to track your lists within Teams on the go. Just go to your Teams android or iOS mobile apps and go to the channel where you have added the Lists app and click on more and tap on the tab name to open up the list.
Learn more about the Lists app in Teams
If you are unable to see the Lists app in your channel, please contact your Teams Admin because applications in the Teams app store can be disabled or enabled by app permission policies. For more information, see the Manage the Lists app in Teams article. If you are looking for more resources and guidance, please review the help article here. For general help content and resources on Microsoft Lists, check out the Microsoft Lists resource center.
Note: Users of the existing SharePoint tab app in Teams that have pinned a list will see their experience inside the tab get upgraded to the latest Lists in Teams experience. This change will be rolling out today as well.
Millions of people use SharePoint lists and libraries every month in Microsoft 365 to track issues, manage inventory, report status, onboard new hires, build out event agendas, manage FAQs, and more. With flexible columns, forms, and views, you can build your own solution to meet your specific needs without knowing how to code. All these great capabilities now come to you inside the Lists app in Teams.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read about Lists in Teams! We’d love to hear any feedback or ideas you might have. Do submit suggestions on user voice. We are listening!
The show’s seven-member crew works for Gavi, a Geneva-based organization focused on providing vaccines for children in the world’s poorest countries. As the organization’s approximately 280 employees turned to working remotely when the coronavirus pandemic struck, Mends, Gavi’s director of operations, worried some might become isolated. He pulled together other members of Gavi’s social club, which he runs, to think about ways to help their colleagues connect.
“One of the things that really resonated with me when we were having that conversation was the power of music and the familiarity of hearing people talking,” Mends says. “So I came up with the zany idea that we do a radio station.”
It was also Mends’ idea to use Teams, Microsoft’s collaboration and chat platform, to power the show. He looked at various technologies for connecting audio to create the effect of the crew being together in a studio but found them overly complex and unstable. Instead, he uses a professional microphone that picks up audio from the hosts and guests that is streamed out of a laptop via Teams. A second laptop runs a web radio app used to mix in music and jingles.
“What a simple Teams meeting gave us was that ability to sound like we’re all in the same studio,” Mends says.
For Milena Lawrence-Samuel, Gavi’s communications and change manager, the breakfast show is a way to connect with colleagues she no longer sees around the office.
“Gavi is a really interactive and somewhat informal environment, and I love being able to walk around and have a quick chat with a friend or someone I’ve never interacted with professionally,” says Lawrence-Samuel, who does a tech tip of the day and runs a quiz question on the show.
“Those people have fallen off my radar. This is a way of getting that back. It’s a touchpoint to our colleagues that we don’t get to see every day anymore.”
Gavi helps vaccinate almost half the world’s children. Here, nurses attend a training program on vaccine and health procedures at a clinic in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Mithra Weerakone)
Jab FM (“jab” is Brit slang for an injection, a nod to Gavi’s mission) launched with its first breakfast show in late April and has so far attracted almost 5,000 listeners on every continent except South America, according to Mends. The station plays music around the clock, but the breakfast show is its only live broadcast.
The show airs Tuesday and Friday mornings and is heavily music-focused, with themes often reflecting Gavi’s diverse workforce. One episode focused on African music, with Gavi employees from African nations coming on to request songs and talk about their significance. Another episode was French-themed. Others have celebrated disco, Bollywood music and movie tunes.
The show aims not just to attract Gavi listeners, but actively engage them as guests.
“People feel when they ring in that they’re participating in something,” Mends says. “It’s that sense of community that has motivated people. But the primary purpose was really to give a bit of a lifeline and a bit of normality to those people who were feeling isolated in the beginning (of the lockdown).”
Mends even had jingles created for the show and each crew member to surprise the team. “Although it’s not a professional station, I just thought we wanted to wow people and make them feel it was a real thing,” he says.
The show is an international effort — Mends broadcasts from his basement in Perroy, a town about 15 miles from Geneva, while co-host Ardiff works from his home across the border in Ornex, France. The other crew members are scattered around the Geneva area.
A high point for the show was its live broadcast during Gavi’s Global Vaccine Summit in early June. Held every five years, the event is Gavi’s main fundraising effort, and the stakes this year were especially high.
Parents bring their children to a health center in Dedza, Malawi to be immunized against two deadly diseases, measles and rubella. (Photo by Jacques Schmitz)
The summit, attended by 52 countries, was originally to be held in London and was instead going online for the first time. Staffers wondered if vaccine funding would be a high enough priority during the global pandemic to meet Gavi’s target of $7.4 billion. Funding was needed for Gavi’s routine vaccination programs, and the organization was also launching a program to distribute an eventual COVID-19 vaccine to impoverished countries.
Nerves were running high as Mends and other Gavi employees gathered in a room at the Global Health Campus in Geneva, at desks spaced apart, to track donations and monitor the event. As Jab FM listeners tuned in, Mends interviewed colleagues to get their read on how things were going, holding a microphone attached to a length of bamboo to maintain a safe distance.
The tension was palpable as the crew waited to hear British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announce the fundraising total. As Johnson began speaking, a cheer went up and Mends jubilantly relayed the amount — a record $8.8 billion in funding for 2021 to 2025.
“$8.8 billion, Barry!” Mends tells his co-host. “$8.8?” Ardiff says incredulously. “$8.8!” Mends repeats. “That is extraordinary,” Ardiff says. “I think Andy sounds like he’s going to cry.” “No I’m not. I’m fine,” Mends says, laughing. “That is absolutely amazing,” Ardiff says. “Brilliant.”
Though anyone could tune in to the virtual event, Mends thinks the radio show gave listeners a unique perspective.
“It portrayed a real, inside view on the emotion and tension that’s the same for a virtual event behind the scenes as it is for a physical event,” he says. “It captured the essence of why we did it, which was to bring people together so that they felt joined up even though we were all very apart.”
Children at a school in Myanmar show off their certificates after receiving a vaccination for Japanese encephalitis. (Photo by Jacques Schmitz)
Though Jab FM represents Gavi’s most innovative use of Teams, the platform has become a go-to tool for the organization in other ways. Gavi’s “demand hub,” which promotes vaccine demand and provides guidance to countries, adopted Teams so employees could work on documents together in one place and avoid endless email threads.
With Gavi partners working across different time zones and regions and on many different workstreams, online collaboration was important. When the pandemic hit, the ability to quickly share information became even more critical.
Tala Ghalayini, a digital innovation consultant for Gavi, researched various platforms and settled on Teams because it allows users to have video meetings, chat, upload documents and collaborate in one place. She used Teams to create a channel where partners in various countries can add links and updates on their regions. While some employees were initially reluctant to adopt a new application, she says, the pandemic changed that.
“Because COVID is so fast-moving and every day there’s so much happening so quickly in so many different places, it’s hard to keep up,” says Ghalayini.
“And this is where Teams comes in, because it’s easy to quickly share a guidance note or an in-country survey that could be useful to somebody. I think this is where Teams really did catalyze the movement to using it more rigorously. I’m shocked by how quickly it’s taken off.”
Gavi’s office culture might be informal, but its work is a somber business. Since launching in 2000, the organization and its partners have helped vaccinate more than 760 million children from infectious diseases, preventing an estimated 13 million-plus deaths.
Polio vaccinators in India, where the disease has been eradicated, immunize children wherever they are — in cities, remote regions and transit stations. (Photo by Manpreet Romana)
Before the pandemic, Gavi employees were expected to report to the office. A formal work-from-home culture didn’t exist. Suddenly, employees had to figure out a way to work remotely without slowing down the organization’s critical work. Gavi had access to Teams but hadn’t rolled it out officially or trained employees to use it. Yet during the first week of remote work, Gavi employees held more than 830 meetings and more than half were on Teams.
“People figured out really quickly that it was a great way to meet online,” says Cagen, the former Seattleite who is the senior manager of Gavi’s monitoring and evaluation team. “It’s suddenly had this boom of activity.”
The informal nature of remote work and video meetings — kids popping up in backgrounds, pets making random appearances — has brought a newfound levity to Gavi, employees say. Cagen’s group launched a “fun channel” on Teams where they’ve posted photos of their dogs, traded tips on traveling in Switzerland and held a happy hour during which they walked around with their phones and laptops, showing each other their apartments.
“Until lockdown, you didn’t see everyone’s inner workings,” Cagen says. “Now I know that Milena has the really cool kitchen.”
Ghalayini recalls an early Teams meeting when her manager set her background to one with bouncing balls, to her amusement.
“We do serious business and it’s hard to inject some fun, especially amidst the crisis, but it was very humorous,” she says. “Even just seeing that, it felt like a cultural shift. Other people were uploading sunsets in the background, and beaches, and it was really funny.”
As for the Barry and Andy show, Mends hopes it will go on even after Switzerland continues to move out of lockdown.
“It has opened up another channel of communication with staff and an opportunity for us to connect in a different way,” he says. “It’s quite a unique thing to the organization. I think it would be sad to see it go completely.”
Top photo: The Jab FM crew is all smiles during a recent episode of Barry and Andy’s breakfast show. Clockwise from top left: Shelby Lyon, Milena Lawrence-Samuel, Jane Mulder, Maria Isabella Paez, Andy Mends, Barry Ardiff. Bottom row: Rod Abson. (Photo courtesy of Gavi). Audio segment produced by Sara Lerner.
The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. Host, Stephen Rose is back! He’ll be talking with members of the Microsoft engineering staff, community experts and real-world professionals about best practices for piloting, planning, managing, securing, and deploying Teams. He’ll be joined by surprise guests, unbox cool new hardware and share resources to help you make the most of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
Our host, Stephen Rose is a Senior Product Manager on the Modern Workplace and Teams, Stephen has been working with and helping IT professionals with a variety of Microsoft products since 2009 including Windows, Surface, Office and OneDrive, and holds over 20 technical certifications. Stephen was an MVP for 3 years and still is a community guy at heart. You can follow him, @stephenlrose on Twitter.
(Left to right) Host Stephen Rose. Previous Episodes with Joe Lurie on Windows Servicing, Chris Jackson on security best practices, Dan Holme on Microsoft Teams Live Events platform and Sandhya Rao demoing the new Bose Teams headphones.
Take a look at the upcoming episodes below – and add them to your calendar*. You’ll definitely want to tune in live to get the solutions and insights you need now.
Episode 1: Real work experts/real world stories August 11, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
Join us as we sit down with members of our IT pro community to discuss their Teams customer stories. You’ll hear about what worked and what didn’t work so you can avoid the same pitfalls with your own rollouts.
Episode 2: Back to school and user adoption with Microsoft Teams August 25, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
Learn about the latest features and functionalities to help educators make the most of Microsoft Teams and how IT pros can secure these features in a variety of environments.
Episode 3: Microsoft Teams security September 8, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
Let’s talk security. The top challenge IT pros are facing right now is securing data. Join our product expert for a deep dive discussion on identity and authentication.
Episode 4: Microsoft Ignite 2020: Pre-show September 15, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
In this special episode, you’ll get a preview of what’s coming up at Microsoft Ignite. Hear about upcoming sessions you don’t want to miss, as well as new resources that will help you make the most of your experience.
Episode 5: Microsoft Ignite 2020: Wrap-up part 1 September 23, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
Join us for a wrap-up of day 1 at Microsoft Ignite. You’ll hear all the highlights and we’ll talk about what’s coming up on day 2.
Episode 6: Microsoft Ignite 2020: Wrap-up part 2 September 25, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR Join us for a complete wrap-up of day 1 and 2 at Microsoft Ignite. You’ll hear all the highlights and talk with product experts.
Episode 7: The new world of virtual events October 8, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
The events industry transformed overnight, and Microsoft Teams played a big part in this transition. We’ll sit down with members of the Microsoft Teams product group and learn how they are building the future of high-scale communication with Microsoft Teams.
Episode 8: New resources for Microsoft Teams admins October 22, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
Learn about new Teams deep dive help videos for administrators as well as other resources to get your support teams and help desk up to speed.
Episode 9: Manage guest access in Microsoft Teams November 5, 2020 | 9:00 AM PDT | ADD TO CALENDAR
One of the most requested episodes. We’ll feature tips, tricks and gotchas on managing guest access in Microsoft Teams.
Have a great idea for an episode? Want us to deep dive into a specific feature? Contact Stephen Rose.
*Please note that episode guests, topics and dates are subject to possible change
This post was written by Nicole Herskowitz, Teams General Manager
In recent months, the shift to remote and hybrid work has catalyzed organizations of all sizes, and across every industry, to rethink how their people and teams communicate and collaborate. Many of our customers are now navigating a new COVID-19 response phase, moving on from “remote everything” to a more sustainable, hybrid workplace, blending remote work and physical offices. They are investing in long-term resilience and strengthening their organizational agility, while proactively managing cost and risk of current economic uncertainty.
When it comes to communications, there is a broad spectrum of needs that are required to connect employees from the worksite to the main office to the home office – across locations and time zones. The spectrum starts with the most basic 1:1 meetings and calls with colleagues, to larger group meetings, all the way to large events and conferences. During the crisis response to the pandemic, many organizations transformed rapidly in group meetings first, as evidenced by Microsoft Teams reaching 200 million participants in a single day. Organizations looking to create more sustained transformation are seeing that Teams serves communications needs well beyond group meetings, taking communications to the next level with broad scale company-wide events. At the other end of the spectrum, Teams modernizes 1:1 calling with a cloud-based phone system in the same Teams app that keeps you in the communications flow.
Today we’re excited to announce new offerings and capabilities across all ends of the communications spectrum.
Scale with professionalism and control with Advanced Communications
Communication systems across the world are evolving to support customers’ changing needs. As our customers are mastering using Teams for group meetings, they want to increase their reach, and use the same familiar tool to deliver online meetings and events at a much broader scale. Naturally, this scale requires both structure and admin control, to achieve a more professional, seamless, compliant experience. Today, we are excited to announce a new Advanced Communications set of capabilities to support these needs:
Scale your Teams meeting up to 20,000 participants. Reach larger audiences to stay connected with your employees, customers, and partners. When building this capability, we were focused on your meeting experience, making sure that even as the meeting scales it is still easy to manage and listen to the speakers. Therefore, we limited the size of interactive meetings to 1,000 participants, with a seamless shift to a ‘view only’ mode after the limit is met.
Enhanced admin control. Use new capabilities and insert more structure to meetings, by adding your company’s branding to meetings for a professional look and feel. Start out with branded meeting lobby, launching in the coming months, and extend your branding to the core meeting experience coming later. Connect with business applications to manage at scale and automate workflows. Work with Teams certified solution partners and help your organization address business needs by setting up compliance recording policy or bringing in collaboration to your customer engagement workflows.
Custom branded background.
Each of these new capabilities will be enabled with the new Advanced Communications plan, which can be added to any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 paid subscription, and is available this week. Get Advanced Communications 60-day free trial via Teams Admin Center now or via Microsoft Teams website in mid-August
Give employees 1:1 connections with Teams Calling
Connecting 1:1 with colleagues, customers and partners is important, especially when meeting face-to-face can be challenging. Employees in your organization can easily call each other from Teams without a phone number. For your employees who use phone numbers to make and receive calls with customers, partners, and vendors, those numbers need to be with them, wherever they are. With Teams Calling, a cloud-based phone system, employees can continue to do this whether they are in the office, working from home, or some combination of the two.
When using Teams, you are getting best-in-class calling capabilities—validated by Team’s leader position in both the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave reports. With all your communication tools in one place, Teams Calling makes it easy to call anyone, anywhere with any device. And, you can also move seamlessly between chat, calling, and meetings based on your needs. This saves IT time, reduces costs associated with multiple point solutions, and diminishes the need for employee training. Teams Calling is a secure, robust solution that is being used by both large call centers and individuals alike. It can be deployed quickly using your existing calling plan or a Microsoft calling plan in select markets.
As communication is being reimagined, so are the tools that we use to communicate. Instead of a desk phone and other peripherals, we’re taking a fresh perspective on what a phone could be with our newest device innovation, Microsoft Teams displays. This is a dedicated Teams device featuring an ambient touch screen, high-quality calling and video, and a hands-free experience powered by Cortana.
With Cortana built-in, the Lenovo ThinkSmart View and Yealink will be delivering the first Microsoft Teams displays in the U. S. later this year.
We also realize that being able to use existing hardware can provide important cost savings when moving to a new phone system. Today, we are announcing extended support for Skype for Business (3PIP) phones beyond 2023, so you can continue to use your existing Skype for Business phones as you move to Teams. Additionally, we will be supporting core calling features on SIP phones from Cisco, Yealink, Polycom, and others with Teams. Support for SIP phones will be available in the first half of 2021.
For customers looking to modernize their phones, we are bringing a new line of Microsoft Teams phones with physical buttons, high-quality audio, and core calling features at an affordable price. These phones are designed for common areas and basic information worker scenarios, with options available from AudioCodes, Poly, Yealink starting early 2021. We are also expanding our portfolio to deliver new USB peripherals that have dial pads and a modern Teams user interface for heavy call users. These USB phones work out of the box, featuring a Teams button, and will connect to both a PC and Mac to bring a high-quality Teams audio experience. These will be available in late 2020 and the first of which will be shipped with Yealink.
How Microsoft Teams is transforming calling for CenturyLink
CenturyLink, a Telecommunication and technology company, had to rapidly respond to COVID-19 to support customers. The calling services in Teams means that sales reps can take calls from their customers whether they are on their phone with the Teams mobile app or working on their laptop with the Teams client open. Over one weekend, CenturyLink deployed Teams to 8,000 employees in the North American sales force. By the end of three weeks, employees in North America were working from home, with the full global workforce of 40,000 quickly following—all using Teams. “With the rapid move home during COVID-19, we were able to ensure that anyone had a telephony solution regardless of what devices they were using or where they were using them,” says Scott Poulter, Director of Systems Application and Transformation, Network Operations Center at CenturyLink. “It eliminated the need for a hard phone sitting on a desk and allowed people to continue to use the technology to connect with the people they needed to—customers or colleagues.”
As your organization navigates a new normal of hybrid of work and learning, Microsoft wants to help you with a communication solution that addresses the spectrum of your needs- with the right tools for any meeting size. We understand that every customer is in a different stage of your digital transformation journey, and with this new set of communications tools, we are here to make the adoption of the tools your organization needs as simple as possible. We have several ways for you to get started with Teams easily:
Get guidance and resources through the FastTrack program.
We are rolling out promotional offers for Advanced Communications, Audio Conferencing, and Teams Calling to support your communication journey, and experience new capabilities. Reach out to your Sales Representative for more details, or learn more on Microsoft Teams website.
“This is the greatest show!” the pair sang loudly in celebration. Singing songs from The Greatest Showman, along with creating their own TV shows and doing impressions, had helped lighten the mood and focus their minds throughout the race.
They docked in Antigua a day and a half ahead of “the Northern lads”, and registered an overall time of 43 days, 15 hours and 22 minutes. That was enough to earn them 18th place in the overall standings. The winners, a British team of four men, completed the crossing in 32 days.
Now back in the UK, Cameron said everyone asks him the same question: why did you do it?
“At first I would say that I like adventure,” he said. “This is the ultimate challenge, it’s the Everest of rowing. It’s physical, it’s mental, it’s very technical. But I think the real reason is I wanted to understand why no other brother and sister had ever attempted this before. I now realise there is absolute strength in diverse teams. We brought out the strengths in each other, we found common ground and we created a fast boat.”
Their mother, Susan, couldn’t be prouder. “People would ask me how I could let both of my children go out into this great big ocean,” she said. “But how could I not let them go?
