Tag: Microsoft Teams

For NBA fans, basketball is about more than a sport—it’s about belonging to a community with a collective passion for the game, and the thrill of coming together to cheer on favorite players and teams. Players and teams, meanwhile, fuel their game with that explosive fan energy from the stands.

This year, however, the 2019-2020 season was set to restart on July 30th in Orlando—without any fans in attendance. Realizing it needed to reimagine a way to connect fans and players virtually, the NBA turned to Microsoft Teams.

This isn’t a net-new relationship. The NBA has long been an industry pioneer in embracing technology to augment and enrich its offerings. In fact, this past April, the NBA, and Microsoft established a multi-year alliance with the goal of creating next-gen experiences for basketball fans—starting with a new fan engagement platform offering personalized, live, and on-demand game broadcasts; historical video archives; and unique insights and analysis for NBA fans, coaches, and broadcasters.

And today, in partnership with the NBA, we are excited to announce a reimagined fan experience powered by a new feature in Microsoft Teams called Together mode. Together mode uses AI segmentation technology to bring people together into a shared background like a conference room, coffee shop, or arena. Using scientific principles of cognition and social perception, Together mode is more than a virtual background—it makes being together virtually actually feel like being together in-person. It’s easy to maintain natural eye contact, for instance, or register fellow participants’ emotions as they react to what’s happening—whether it’s a meeting announcement, a class presentation, or the sight of a favorite NBA player about to score a three-pointer.

Starting July 30, the NBA will outfit each game court with 17-foot-tall LED screens that wrap three sides of the arena. These “stands” will be populated with more than 300 cheering fans who will join the game using Together mode in Teams. Alongside a view of their fellow fans, participants can watch a live feed of the game right within Teams.

 “We are excited to partner with Microsoft to virtually incorporate NBA fans into our season restart,” said Sara Zuckert, Head of Next Gen Telecast, NBA. “This unique live game experience will allow fans to maintain a sense of community as they watch their favorite teams and players“

This new experience—the first to go live as a result of the NBA/Microsoft partnership—gives participating fans the feeling of sitting next to one another at a live game without leaving the comfort and safety of their homes. Players, meanwhile, will experience their energy and support as they dribble down the court and see fans’ real-time reaction. And viewers tuning in to the game from home will feel the crowd’s energy as well as they see the virtual stands filled with fans.

At Microsoft, we admire the shared passion that connects NBA fans to players, teams, coaches, and broadcasters. And we are honored that Teams and Together mode can help this community continue to come together even when they need to stay physically apart. We are also so inspired by the NBA’s innovative spirit as they lead the way to create a professional sports season unlike any the world has seen. We look forward to supporting them with this new fan experience and beyond. 

In addition to the virtual fan boards powered by Microsoft Teams, the NBA also announced a slew of in-venue and broadcast and digital enhancements that will help create a more immersive and communal viewing experience for fans during the 2019-20 NBA Restart. Learn more.

When the global pandemic hit and everyone turned to video calls for work, school and happy hour, Jeremy Bailenson thought he was prepared.

Video conferencing had been around for years, after all, and the Stanford University professor had spent two decades studying and writing about digital communication and behavior. But video calls had always been more of an option than the rule, and Bailenson – along with the rest of the world – quickly found himself shocked by the impact of a complete shift to remote communication.

“After a week of shelter-in-place, I was just flabbergasted by how intense and exhausting it was,” says Bailenson, who lives in California, the first U.S. state that required residents to stay home to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. “Most video conference studies are about how to improve productivity and collaboration, but the notion of it being draining hasn’t been studied.”

While Bailenson began re-reading “everything there was to read about video conferencing,” his friend at Microsoft, Jaron Lanier, was pondering a different angle to the problem. A late-night talk-show host in New York whose band Lanier occasionally played in was struggling to perform his monologue to a camera in his living room, without a live audience to react to his jokes. Lanier cast a net into Microsoft’s sea of researchers, psychologists and programmers, and within weeks he had pulled together what he calls a “magical” new feature to help the TV host and his viewers feel connected. His idea evolved into a Teams feature, Together mode, that potentially could reduce the fatigue of video calls for everyone.

“It was a fortuitous coincidence of needs” that led to a dramatic leap in improving remote meetings, says Lanier, a computer scientist, musician, artist and author who coined the term “virtual reality” and is considered a pioneer in the field.

Together mode, now rolling out in Microsoft Teams, combines decades of research and product development to place all the participants on a video call together in a virtual space, such as an auditorium, meeting room or coffee bar, so they look like they’re in the same place together. The new feature ditches the traditional grid of boxes, creating an environment that users say has a profound impact on the feel of the video conference and provides more cohesion to the group.

Together mode is built to give people the impression that everyone is looking at the entire group in a big virtual mirror, which Lanier says was the unique yet simple solution that changes the whole experience. People’s brains are used to being aware of others based on their locations, and the mirror effect makes it harder for the brain to notice eye contact irregularities. Those are some of the qualities that make it easier for everyone to tell how they are responding to each other.

“We’re social creatures, and the social and spatial awareness systems in the brain can finally function more naturally” within Together mode, Lanier says.

Scientists began studying problems with eye contact – or gaze misalignment – in earnest in the 1960s, and Lanier has been working to improve that element of video conferencing since the analog days of the 1970s. Yet while the technology has grown more robust and stable over the decades, there had been no real improvements to the human experience that were viable for widespread use.  Together mode uses cloud computing instead of the specialized cameras and screens that used to be needed to make video calls better.

To understand video-call fatigue, Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, combed through decades of studies on communication and found a few key causes.

For example, he says, if someone’s face looms large in your visual sphere in real life, it generally means you’re either about to fight or mate. So you’re alert and hyper-aware – reactions that are automatic and subconscious – and your heart rate goes up. And in video calls, there’s often a grid with multiple people’s faces filling the boxes. It’s a lot for your body’s nervous system to handle, he says.

In addition, people are constantly interpreting others’ eye movements, posture, how their heads are tilted and more, and attributing meaning to those non-verbal cues. Researchers in the 1960s watched videotapes of groups frame by frame, Bailenson says, and discovered a complex, intricate dance: One person would turn their head and the other would lean back a little, for example.

We’ve reached an inflection point. As the global response to COVID-19 evolves, communities around the world have moved from an era of “remote everything” into a more hybrid model of work, learning, and life. And as we all scramble to keep up, the future of work and education is being shaped before our eyes. At Microsoft, we’ve spent the last few months learning from our customers and studying how they use our tools. We’ve also worked with experts across virtual reality, AI, and productivity research to help understand the future of work. These findings, which are published here, guide us as we design technology to help our customers today and in the future.

Today we’re announcing a set of new features in Microsoft Teams that make virtual interactions more natural, more engaging, and ultimately, more human. These features offer three key benefits for people at work and in education. First, they help you feel more connected with your team and reduce meeting fatigue. Second, they make meetings more inclusive and engaging. And third, they help streamline your work and save time. It’s all about enabling people everywhere to collaborate, to stay connected, and to discover new ways to be productive from anywhere. Let’s dig into the details.

Feel more connected and reduce meeting fatigue

Together mode—At a time when people are conducting more virtual meetings than ever, our research has shown that many of us feel less connected since moving to remote work, and experience more fatigue during video meetings than during in-person collaboration. Together mode is a new meeting experience in Teams that uses AI segmentation technology to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else in the meeting or class. Together mode makes meetings more engaging by helping you focus on other people’s faces and body language and making it easier to pick up on the non-verbal cues that are so important to human interaction. It’s great for meetings in which multiple people will speak, such as brainstorms or roundtable discussions, because it makes it easier for participants to understand who is talking. Together mode with auditorium view is rolling out now and will be generally available in August. And we’ll bring more views to Together mode in the future.

Dynamic view—While Together mode offers an extraordinary new meeting experience, it’s not intended for every meeting. We believe that traditional video meetings people use every day can also be more engaging and dynamic. A set of enhancements we call dynamic view gives you more control over how you see shared content and other participants in a meeting. Using AI, meetings dynamically optimize shared content and video participants. New controls—including the ability to show shared content and specific participants side-by-side—let you personalize the view to suit your preferences and needs. Dynamic view builds on the meetings enhancements we announced last month, which include large gallery view (rolling out in August), where you can see video of up to 49 people in a meeting simultaneously, and virtual breakout rooms, which allow meeting organizers to split meeting participants into smaller groups for things like brainstorming sessions or workgroup discussions.

Dynamic viewLarge gallery view

Video filters—We’ve all become familiar with video filters used in photography and social media apps, and now we’re bringing them to Teams. Before joining a meeting, you can use the filters to subtly adjust lighting levels and soften the focus of the camera to customize your appearance.

Reflect messaging extension—Our research shows that employee well-being is more important to productivity than ever. Creating an emotionally supportive environment is key to keeping people healthy, happy, and focused. The new Reflect messaging extension gives managers, leaders and teachers an easy way to check in with how their team or students are feeling — either in general, or about a specific topic like work-life balance, the status of a project, current events, or a change within the organization. IT administrators will be able to install the Reflect extension from GitHub, and then make it available to employees in their organization in the message extension menu. Once installed, the extension provides suggested check-in questions and the ability to add custom questions that team members can respond to in a poll-like experience. Managers or teachers can also choose to make poll results anonymous. The Reflect messaging extension will be available in the coming weeks.

Make meetings more inclusive, engaging, and effective 

Live reactions—Non-verbal cues like smiles and head nods can be difficult to notice in online meetings, making it challenging for presenters to gauge audience reactions and for participants in large meetings to share a sentiment without interrupting the meeting flow. Soon, you will be able to react during a meeting using emojis that will appear to all participants. Live reactions is a shared feature with PowerPoint Live Presentations, which allows audience members to provide instant feedback to the presenter. We are also bringing PowerPoint Live Presentations to Teams in the future, further enabling audience engagement right from Teams.

Chat bubbles—During meetings, chat has become a lively space for conversation and idea-sharing, and offers an option for people to participate in the discussion without having to jump in verbally. But it can be challenging to pay attention to video feeds, presentations, and chats all at the same time. Currently, Teams users need to manually open a chat window to view the chat screen. Soon, however, chats sent during a Teams meeting will surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation. 

Speaker attribution for live captions and transcripts—While Teams already provides live captions as a way to follow along with what is being said in a meeting, soon we will add speaker attribution to captions so that everyone knows who is speaking. Live transcripts, coming later this year, provide another way to follow along with what has been said and who said it. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in a tab as a part of the meeting.

Note: Remarks made by participants joining from a conference room device will be attributed to the room rather than to the individuals in the room.

Live Captions with speaker attribution

Live transcription with speaker attribution

Interactive meetings for 1,000 participants and overflow—There are times when it’s important to bring large groups together for meetings or classes. For more interactive meetings—where attendees can chat, unmute to talk, and turn on their videos for real-time collaboration—Teams meetings are growing to support up to 1,000 participants. When you want to bring more people together to watch a presentation or discussion, Teams can support a view-only meeting experience for up to 20,000 participants.

Microsoft Whiteboard updates—Visual collaboration tools can make meetings and teaching environments more effective and inclusive. Whiteboard in Teams will soon be updated with new features including faster load times, sticky notes, text, and drag and drop capabilities. These features enable team members who don’t have access to a touchscreen or Surface Hub to participate in whiteboarding sessions during Teams meetings.

Streamline your work and save time 

Tasks app–The Tasks app in Teams, rolling out this month, provides a new unified view of tasks from across Microsoft To Do, Planner, and Outlook. Smart lists like “Assigned to me” bring tasks together across different shared plans, whether you’re on desktop, web, or mobile. Add Tasks as a tab in a channel and get your familiar Planner tab experience with the new list view.

Suggested replies—Get your message across with just one tap! Suggested replies in Teams chat uses assistive AI to create short responses based on the context of the previous message. So the next time someone asks you “Do you have time to meet today?” you can respond “I sure do!” without even pulling up your keyboard. This feature will be rolling out this month.

Cortana in Teams—Coming soon to the Teams mobile app, Cortana uses AI and the Microsoft Graph to provide voice assistance in Teams. To stay connected to your team even when you have your hands full, you can ask Cortana to make a call, join a meeting, send chat messages, share files, and more. These voice assistance experiences are delivered using Cortana enterprise-grade services that meet Microsoft 365 privacy, security, and compliance commitments. Cortana will be available in the Teams mobile app on iOS and Android in the coming weeks for Microsoft 365 Enterprise users in the U.S. in English.

Microsoft Teams displays—Organizations need to enable their employees to set up more effective home office spaces while also preparing some to return to the office. To help, we’re introducing new Microsoft Teams display, a new category of all-in-one dedicated Teams devices that feature an ambient touchscreen and a hands-free experience powered by Cortana. With natural language, users can ask Cortana to join and present in meetings, dictate replies to a Teams chat, and more. These devices seamlessly integrate with your PC, providing easy access to Teams chat, meetings, calling, calendar, and files. And with a camera shutter and microphone mute switch, your conversations stay private. The Lenovo ThinkSmart View will be the first Microsoft Teams display to market, and Yealink will deliver one of the first devices in this category too. Microsoft Teams displays with Cortana will be available in the U.S. starting later this year.

Touchless meeting experiences—As some people begin to return to their worksites, touchless meeting experiences in shared spaces are more relevant than ever. Today, Teams enables people to join meetings and share content to meeting room devices from their own mobile device or PC. Later this year, we’ll enable these capabilities on Surface Hub as well. We’re building on these capabilities with a new room remote in the Teams mobile app, which will provide additional meeting controls such as the ability to leave the meeting, mute and unmute the room, adjust audio volume, and turn cameras on and off. Beginning later this year, voice assistance will be enabled for Microsoft Teams Room devices, allowing in-room participants to ask Cortana to join and leave a meeting, add a participant from the address book to a meeting using their name or phone number, and more. We’re also introducing the ability to wirelessly cast to any Teams Room, collaboration bar, or Surface Hub device, enabling seamless ad-hoc in-person collaboration for people in a shared space.

Note: Voice commands will launch first for Microsoft 365 Enterprise users in the U.S., in English. Not all Teams Room audio devices will support Cortana voice assistance.

Room remote for Microsoft Teams devices

Unless otherwise specified, all of these features will roll out later this year.

And they all reflect our vision for the future of work: where everyone is able to contribute and do their best work; where they can move fluidly between experiences, apps, and devices; where AI lends a helping hand to streamline tasks, provide short cuts, and save you time; and where technology contributes to wellbeing and doesn’t detract from it.

From the kickoff call to the project’s launch—and all points in-between—Teams is the place where people come together to get work done. Working alongside our customers, we’ll continue reimagining the future of work and delivering technologies that put people at the center of every experience.

I work in tech. I am a mother. I am a manager. I am a wife. I am a colleague. I am a sister. I am a friend. I am an ally.

Like you, I am many things. The reality of today is that we ALL are many things at once. Since Covid-19, my daily journey of managing, parenting, working, chauffeuring, cooking, and planning has become even more chaotic. I have even taken on a few new roles, such as teacher, mentor, and activist.

In all this chaos, what I have learned is how important it is, now more than ever, to stay connected with those who matter most. This need to connect, collaborate, and jointly organize our lives is why we expanded Microsoft Teams beyond work groups. In March, we announced new features in Teams on mobile (iOS and Android apps) designed to bring you closer to your friends and family. The new features start to roll out in preview to the Teams mobile app today and will be fully rolled out in the coming weeks.

At work, every day more people love what Teams does for them because it is the hub for teamwork that lets you chat, meet, call, and collaborate all in one place. While Teams is great for work, we believe it can help everyone better manage their responsibilities across both work and life.

Today, people use multiple apps and disconnected  tools – both online and offline – such as calendars, email, messaging, photo apps, to-do lists, and documents to manage it all. I personally have to swap through at least three different apps to coordinate, communicate, and set up my family virtual get-togethers and can’t keep track of which of my groups use what video calling app. I have our family grocery list in a different place than my to-do list, and in a different place than our family chore list. It’s maddening to keep it all organized. And don’t even get me started on the various calendars I have to stay on top of, from kid’s clubs, soccer games and karate practices to my virtual happy hours and birthday parties.

With the new features, we hope to extend the power of Teams beyond work scenarios to your personal life. Whether you’re a busy parent managing daily family life or just trying to stay connected and in sync with those who matter most, the new features are designed to alleviate the need for disparate tools and instead offer one central hub for individuals, groups, and families to collaborate and stay connected and organized.

You can get started with these new preview features in two ways.

• If you currently use the Teams mobile app at work, simply click into settings, and select Add an account. You can then sign in with your personal Microsoft account, or create a new one with your phone number. Through settings, you will then be able to toggle between your personal and work accounts.
• If you don’t use Teams yet, visit the app store on your iOS or Android to download the mobile app and sign up with a personal Microsoft account, or create a new one with your phone number.

Once you’re signed up, start inviting friends and family and creating your groups!

Here’s a look at some of my favorite features you should try in the preview:

Stay connected with text, chat, and video calling

Just like you do with Teams at work, you can stay connected with friends and loved ones through messaging and video calling. Create groups to chat and call, so you can stay connected with your family, your book club, your virtual Friday happy hour group, or whoever your group may be. You can also chat or call one-on-one. Our goal is that Teams will become the messaging hub for all your personal chats and video and voice calls, with fun features like sharing GIFs, photos, videos, documents, and even location already integrated.

Keep everyone on the same page and pick up where you left off

Teams is more than just a chat and calling app. Once you create your groups or one-on-one chats, you will be able to stay organized by sharing lists, documents, and calendars all within the group dashboard. You can share the reading list and schedule the next virtual meet-up with your book club group or stay on top of grocery lists and assign chores in your family group. (My wife and kids love assigning tasks to me!) You can then easily go back and see the chats, tasks, pictures, videos, and group calendars you have shared within your dashboard. It is a great way to pick up conversations or projects where they left off.

Collaborate and share important documents efficiently and securely

Teams integrates with your other Microsoft 365 apps so you can easily share from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint right from within the Teams app, whether you’re planning your family budget, or like me, trying to prepare your kids’ summer schedules (if we get a summer). And because they’re stored in OneDrive, you can access these documents across other devices if you’re away from your phone.

Easily share location and information

Location sharing* is available as part of these new personal features as well. You can let your loved ones know you’re running late, or that you’re still at the grocery store and can get extra milk, with easy location sharing. While it might be a while before we’re getting together in person, Teams location sharing will make it easy to share your location and find your friends for that park picnic—or in the crowd at a concert.

Teams also comes with a Safe, which lets you securely store and share important information, like passwords, rewards numbers, or login information. You can easily share right from the Teams app so your whole family has easy access to the home Wi-Fi password or your streaming service login, all backed by the security of two-factor authentication and end-to-end encryption.

The team is excited to take this next step with Teams and extend the value of Teams at work to your whole life. We want your input on this journey, so we’re releasing these features in mobile preview to get feedback on how you want to connect and organize across your life. As we roll out the preview over the coming weeks, we look forward to collecting your feedback to help us evolve and improve the experience over time. General availability of the new features, as well as expanding features to the desktop and web versions of Teams, is expected later this year.

*Location permissions must be enabled and active.

You may only think of the Salvation Army during the winter holidays, when you see and hear the familiar bells and donation buckets outside of stores. But the services the organization handles are year-round: distributing food, and providing medical help and housing to those in need, all over the world.

IHQ’s team quickly pivoted to using Teams to keep providing critical emergency services when the global pandemic forced them to work remotely. Financially independent territories provide their own resources and do local fundraising, but the majority of the Salvation Army territories rely on grants to supplement their operating budgets so they can provide essential services and run schools, hospital clinics and children’s homes.

In some places, such as India, the U.K. and the U.S., the Salvation Army’s food pantries have become a lifeline for those cut off from their main sources of income.

IHQ’s staff has also been using Teams to approve proposals and process payments and grants. Heatwole estimates up to 60,000 Salvation Army staff members around the world are using Teams – approximately half of the organization’s total employees, who operate in more than 14,500 locations.

In France and Belgium, the Salvation Army works closely with local governments in running its social care centers, which serve people experiencing homelessness, older people, people with disabilities, women with children and people with substance use disorders, through food pantries, housing services, job training and other grassroots services.

Teams has become their go-to for file-sharing, validating invoices and instant communication, says Micha Karapetian, the chief information officer based in France. They got a head start on using it in October due to transportation strikes throughout the country.

“It was a big test for our services,” Karapetian says. “We didn’t have time to train everybody, but we gave everyone Teams. People were happy we helped provide the tools to continue their activities, so they could work from home, or from anywhere.”

But it wasn’t until mid-March that they really picked up steam, going from 47 active users to 900 – almost everyone who used to work in offices before the pandemic.

“They forgot about email,” says Karapetian, who adds that staff seems to appreciate the instant factor of Teams and use it for video and audio calls, as well as sending pictures using the mobile app when they’re out providing services.

“As a user I was surprised by its stability and resilience. I was afraid it was going to crash when the entire country was forced to lock down. Which it did once, but then the team reached the Microsoft Help desk, and it took an hour to fix. We were really happy.”

He’s also impressed with how quickly Teams starts and runs.

“One of the biggest surprises is how you can get started right away, especially if you’re familiar with social networks,” he says.

As they keep using Teams, Karapetian sees even more potential for it: plugging in other apps, using it to create and share spreadsheets, automation tools and streamlining workflows. He’s also a fan of using the @-sign to tag people and of custom notifications.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the U.S., Ron Shoults, the IT director for the Salvation Army’s USA Central Territory, also shares a similar experience with how their staff has adopted Teams.

“We did the rollout very, very rapidly, without really doing any training other than pointing to online resources, but people have picked it up and run with it,” he says.

It’s available to all 6,000 users in their network, which stretches over 11 Midwestern states, from Michigan to the Dakotas. Over the last seven weeks, Shoults has tracked Teams use: 5,700 meetings, 9,600 calls and more than 600,000 chat messages. In one week, 922 meetings took place.

He’s also using the collaboration tools in Teams to host an annual IT seminar, historically a three-day in-person meeting that has now moved online. His team plans to stream videos and presentations, and fully utilize file-sharing capabilities.

The 250 people who work in the territorial headquarters are using Teams to participate in a weekly chapel service, as well as daily meetings. Shoults says the success of the online meetings may mean a permanent transition from some meetings that have traditionally been done only in person.

“It’s helped to keep us connected with each other,” he says. “To have this one place to get the bulk of what we need to do done is a real plus.”

Top photo: Gwinnett County food distribution and food delivery drive-thru at the Lawrenceville Corps (Georgia) during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by the Salvation Army)

Video capabilities, once a nice to have, have become a critical component of collaborative work.

In fact, when the world moved to remote work earlier this year, Microsoft Teams customers turned on video in Teams meetings two times more than they did before many of us began working from home full-time. We also saw total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March. These trends, along with daily conversations with customers navigating remote collaboration, inspired us to accelerate new features to customize your video experiences and make meetings more productive, comfortable, and fun.

Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams, along with new features in the free version of Teams. It’s all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyone’s well-being in mind. Let’s get into the details.

Microsoft Teams custom background effects are now available!

When joining a Teams meeting, you want the focus on you—not that messy bookcase behind you. Last year, we introduced background blur to help everyone preserve privacy and keep their attention on their teammates. Our design team also created a collection of preset images that range from professional (a modern office) to pretty silly (a cartoonish beach scene). Today, we’re expanding these options so you can customize your background by uploading your own images or choosing one of the collections of backgrounds now available online.

No need for a green screen, or even a blank wall. Teams uses a highly trained model that differentiates the subject from their background and can impose a custom background over everything else, making it easy and fast to start expressing yourself in all your meetings.

Background collections to check out

With the whole world turning to video, companies are getting creative with collections of backgrounds you can easily download and then upload to Teams. Here are some options.

From a booth at Bob’s Burgers to a mountain of LEGO building blocks, there’s something for everyone in this collection from FOX.

If you want to be the coolest coworker when your colleagues’ kids wander on camera, our Xbox collection has you covered.

Celebrate 30 years of Microsoft Solitaire, one of the most played games on the planet every day, and show your love for the game with either the blue or green Microsoft Solitaire background.

Look out for great event-specific collections too! Our Microsoft designers created 20 virtual backgrounds for you to show your pride and support for the LGBTQI+ community. Download their colorful creations at microsoft.com/pride.

New features now available in the free version of Microsoft Teams

With so many people moving suddenly to remote work, the free version of Teams has become an important way for teams to meet and collaborate online. We want to help them continue to connect effectively, so we’re bringing several new features to this version of Teams.

Schedule your meetings in advance

Free version users are now able to schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance. This capability builds upon the existing ability to “Meet Now.” Meeting schedulers have the option of either copying the meeting link to send directly to other participants or sending an invite via Outlook or Google calendar. This much-requested capability is being rolled out to current users, while users who are just signing up now will be able to experience it soon. And right now, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teams—so collaborate away!

Here is how you schedule and start meetings in the free version of Teams.

Use live captions

Teams free users can now turn on live captions during their calls and meetings. This feature makes meetings more inclusive, giving participants another way to follow along with the conversation and address the needs of participants with different hearing abilities or language proficiencies. It’s currently available as a preview in U.S. English.

Note: If you are already a user of the free version of Teams, this update will automatically happen, and you will be able to schedule meetings, as well.

The free version of Teams also provides all types of organizations up to 500,000 users with:

• Unlimited chat and search
• Audio and video calling
• Scheduled meetings
• 10 GB team file storage and 2 GB personal file storage per person
• Ability to use the Office web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote)
• Unlimited app integration
• And much more!

And it’s all backed by Microsoft’s secure, global infrastructure—so all of our users can enjoy the confidence of a secure and reliable service. You can learn more and sign up for this free version today with just your email address here.

There’s no doubt that video is now a huge part of our daily work lives. With Teams, we want to provide video experiences that feel personal and comfortable to every customer, from students and teachers adjusting to remote work to globe-spanning corporate teams aligning around a tight deadline. Custom background effects help you design the video experience that works best for you—whether you need to hide a mess of toys or just want a funny background photo to give your team a laugh. Meanwhile, new features in the free version of Teams bring important meeting-scheduling capabilities to every Teams user. It’s all part of our effort to provide the best collaboration tool for every individual, team, and organization on the planet. I hope you enjoy these new features, and I can’t wait to bring you more exciting feature news in the days to come.

This month, we have new meetings, calling, devices, chat, collaboration, platform, and industry features we will not want you to miss. Read on to stay up-to-date. If you are interested in our recent Microsoft Build news, check out our Teams Build blog!

What’s New: Meetings, Calling, and Devices
Improved meeting join launcher experience
When launching a Teams meeting from a link, you will be provided with clearer options for how to join the meeting. You will be prompted with an option to join on the web, download the Teams client, or join with the native Teams client. We are gradually rolling this out over the coming weeks, and in the interim, you may continue to see this and the former experience.

Easily access meeting options during a Teams meeting
We are making it easier for meeting organizers to quickly and easily change their presenter and lobby settings once a meeting has started by providing a link directly in the participants pane. This new functionality is available for both scheduled and “Meet Now” meetings.

Download a participant report in a Teams meeting
Meeting organizers, especially teachers, often need to know who joined their Teams meetings. You can download a participant report, found in the roster view that includes join and leave times for participants. Available in the roster view, meeting organizers can download the report that includes those users who joined while the organizer was present. This feature is only available within the meeting while the meeting is active. Available on desktop (Windows and Mac) and the web.

Set tenant-wide default selection for “Who Can Present” in meetings
Tenant admins can now update their Teams meeting policies to allow for a new default selection when choosing who can present in new Teams meetings (everyone, people in my organization, specific people, or only me). Today, the default selection is “everyone” unless the meeting organizer selects otherwise through the meetings option configuration. To start, organizations can set this policy via a PowerShell cmdlet, and soon after we will have this policy configurable in the Admin portal.

Set background effects policy at a user-level
Tenant admins can soon assign a user-level policy to control how users engage with background effects in Teams meetings. Options include: offer no filters; background blur only; use background blur and default provided images; and all, which includes the ability for users to upload their own custom images.

Better policy controls over screen sharing from chats
Screen share from chat allows you to immediately start sharing your screen in a 1-1 chat or group chat. This entry point was previously governed by the AllowPrivateCalling policy. If this policy is disabled, users are not able to screen share from chat. The option to start a screen share from chat will now be governed by the ScreenSharingMode policy. Further, the ability to “add audio” to a screen share from chat session (if you want to talk to someone while screen sharing) will be governed by a user’s AllowPrivateCalling setting. This ensures that users who have AllowPrivateCalling disabled cannot start audio calls via screen share from chat.

Teams and Skype Interoperability
Teams and Skype interoperability will enable collaboration with more partners, customers, and suppliers who rely upon Skype for Consumer (SFC) as their communication app. On either platform, customers will be able to discover users via email search, then chat or call using audio/video. Clients supported include Desktop, Web and Mobile (iOS/Android). Admins will be able to control user access to this feature from The Teams Admin Center.

Reverse Number Lookup (RNL) Enhancements
In the past, the caller name sometimes did not show when they called you. Back in October 2019 we released the feature to make it easier to identify the caller. With the latest enhancements to RNL, the Telco display name will now also show up in your Activity Feed, Call History, and Voicemail as well.

Microsoft Teams Rooms, app version 4.4.41.0 now available
While physical meeting rooms may not be a focal point for many right now, there are still organizations and industries whose essential workers continue to rely on these spaces during this time. We also recognize the vital role Microsoft Teams Rooms will play when organizations return to work. The latest update, app version 4.4.41.0, is now available on the Windows store and is coming to every Teams room over the next few weeks. New features include: Modern authentication support, New application splash screen, Ability to project content to a single display when using a HDMI cable in a dual display configuration, Support for dynamic emergency calling, and more. To learn more about these new features, read the Microsoft Teams Rooms May Update blog.

Poly announces new solution for Microsoft Teams Rooms
Poly Room Solution for Microsoft Teams not only delivers the premium Poly audio and video for Teams, but also provides a clutter-free experience from start to finish, with simple installation and maintenance in any size room. To learn more about the Poly solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms, coming later this year, click here.

Jabra PanaCast now certified for Microsoft Teams
The Jabra PanaCast is a plug-and-play device, certified for Microsoft Teams. The Jabra PanaCast is designed to improve meetings by using three 13-megapixel cameras and real-time video stitching to give a full 180° view. Enjoy a natural, inclusive human perspective, with no blind spots ensuring quick, easy collaboration with hassle-free video and audio. To learn more about the Jabra PanaCast, click here.

Yealink, EPOS, and Jabra announce new Teams peripherals
With increased demand for remote work and virtual communication, having the right set of personal devices provides painless interaction and increases time for meaningful connection. With Teams certified devices, you can join professional meetings anywhere with high audio fidelity that removes distracting background noise and ensures that your voice is heard clearly.

Here are some new releases this month:

• EPOS ADAPT 360, 460T, 560, and 660 headsets range from in ear and over the ear options that optimize concentration and productivity any environment with Active Noise Cancellation, Bluetooth connectivity, and a dedicated Teams button. Availability varies by product: ADAPT 360 (July 3), ADAPT 460T (June 29), ADAPT 560 (June 26), ADAPT 660 (June 22). You can learn more here.

• Yealink UH36 Dual/Mono is a simple and lightweight USB headset with a dedicated Teams button for long conference calls. Availability starting on May 15. You can learn more here.

• Jabra Speak 650 is a speaker phone with a dedicated Teams button helps users hold natural conversations with USB and Bluetooth. Availability starting on June 1. You can learn more here.

Limited time partner offers available for Teams Devices
Crestron
Crestron is offering a program for customers looking to upgrade existing systems to those certified for Microsoft Teams. Special offers are available for a Crestron Smart Soundbar, Flex C-Series Integrator Kit and Mercury system. Offers end June 30, 2020 and are available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and EMEA. Purchase orders must be placed through an authorized Crestron dealer.

Poly
For customers using Trio Visual+ in Skype for Business who would like to move to a Microsoft Teams environment, Poly is offering a Trio Visual+ to Poly Studio X30 Trade In program. With this promotion, Poly Microsoft customers can replace Trio with Poly Studio X30 and TC8 controller, or pair Trio with the Poly Studio X30, for Teams video meetings in huddle and small room spaces. Between April 15, 2020 and December 31, 2020, customers can trade in Trio Visual+ and save up to $200 when they upgrade to a Poly Studio X30 or up to $300 when they upgrade to a Poly Studio X30 with TC8 controller. This program is globally available.

Yealink
For a limited time, Yealink is offering a devices bundle trial program for remote workers, giving customers 50% off MSRP on any two WFH devices (limit one per device model). This offer is valid through July 31, 2020 and is globally available. Additionally, Yealink is offering a coupon code for the VC210 Teams edition collaboration bar on the Microsoft Teams devices showcase. Use the coupon code: Yealink4Teams at checkout to access the discounted price. This offer is available in the US and Canada only and is valid through July 31, 2020.

What’s New: Chat & Collaboration
Templates in Teams
Create a new team even faster with a variety of templates for common team types. Options will include event management, crisis response, hospital ward and bank branch, just to name a few. Templates comes with pre-defined channels, apps, and guidance on how to utilize and customize it. IT professionals can standardize team structures by creating new custom templates for their organization. Templates in Teams will roll out in the next few months and appear automatically. Check out the deep dive blog to learn more.

Microsoft Lists in Teams
Microsoft Lists helps you track information and organize work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. To learn more, visit the new Microsoft Lists resource center and get first looks at the Microsoft Lists product demo video.

Create a new list directly inside Teams or bring in one that already exists in Microsoft 365.

You can create, share, and track list all from within Microsoft Teams.

Bring more people together in group chats and teams
Whether you need to collaborate with others to deliver a big project or work with a large group of people to complete an ad-hoc task, Microsoft Teams now allows you to bring more people together. Group chats will now be able to accommodate up to 250 users and teams can now have up to 10,000 members.

Pop out chats into separate windows
Users can now streamline their workflow and pop out chats into separate windows. This allows people to move more easily between ongoing conversations. This is now generally available.

What’s New: Onboarding your organization to Teams
New Skype for Business to Teams Upgrade Advisor
Our newest Advisor for Teams, the Skype for Business Upgrade plan, has launched within the Microsoft Teams Admin Center. Whether you’re just getting started with Microsoft Teams, already using Teams alongside Skype for Business, or ready to upgrade, this provides everything you need for a successful transition. Designed for Skype for Business customers with online or on-premises environments, the Skype for Business Upgrade plan shares a proven success framework for implementing change and step-by-step process to enable your organization’s technical and end-user readiness. We’ll connect you with valuable upgrade resources including planning guidance and best practices, free workbooks, schedules and communication templates and live 1:many planning workshops. Learn more here about using Advisor for Teams to help you roll out Teams and upgrade from Skype for Business.

What’s New: Developer, Platform, and App management
Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code Extension for Teams
Developers can use the new Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code Teams extension to quickly build project scaffolding, configure features, create app package manifest and setup hosting, validate app package manifest, and start the app publishing process (for yourself, to your organization’s catalog, or to the Teams app store). Visual Studio Code extension is available in public preview today. Visual Studio extension coming soon!

Bringing low-code bots to Teams, with Power Virtual Agents
We are working with the newest component of the Power Platform – Power Virtual Agents, which is a low-code chatbot platform. New features will make it easier to create and manage low-code chatbots from within Teams and more streamlined for end users to use Power Virtual Agents bots in Teams. These new features are:

• Bot Template: FAQ bot template available in GitHub
• Single sign-on: Power Virtual Agents bots will be available, removing the need for users to sign in again when using a Power Virtual Agents bot in Teams

Simplified Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents “Add to Teams”
Coming soon, Power Apps makers will be able to click a single “Add to Teams” button in Power Apps, which will push the app to the Teams app store. Similarly, the process of adding low-code bots from Power Virtual Agents will be simplified, so developers can spend more time building and less time deploying.

Enhanced workflow automation with Power Automate + Teams
There are several new Power Automate triggers and actions built specifically for Teams to unlock custom message extensions, allow for automated @mentioning, and provide a customized bot experience. To make the process of building automation even easier, we are also rolling out new business process scenario templates built for Teams. When users create a new flow, they will see these templates when they select the “Create from Template option.”

Improved Power BI sharing to Teams
We have made it even easier to share Power BI reports to Teams – simply select the report to share and click the new “Share to Teams” button in Power BI. You’ll be prompted to select the user or channel to send the report to, which will automatically be posted to the conversation.

Users can now also copy individual charts in a Power BI report, and when they are pasted to a Teams conversation, the chat will include a rich thumbnail preview of the chart, as well as an adaptive card allowing users to take actions on that chart.

If you want to read more about all our new developer capabilities, check out our Teams Developer blog post: What’s New in the Microsoft Teams Platform | Build 2020.

What’s New: Education
Change in meeting join experience for our education customers
Today, we allow anyone within an organization to start a Teams meeting, regardless if they are the meeting organizer or not. Moving forward, we will restrict the ability to start a meeting to only those users who have been assigned a policy to create a meeting within their organization. Meeting attendees without the ability to create a meeting will see a pre-join screen indicating that the meeting hasn’t started. These individuals will be automatically admitted into the meeting once a user with permissions joins and starts the meeting. For example, where teachers are assigned a policy that enables them to create meetings, but students are not: if a student clicks on a Teams meeting not yet started by a teacher, they will be admitted into the meeting once a teacher has started a meeting.

Keeping distance learning engaging and secure
With many school and universities closed for the foreseeable future, Teams supports faculty, educators, and students to connect, engage, and learn. Here is the latest guidance on how to maximize learning at a distance and keep students safe:

• Manage student, faculty, and staff engagement in meetings, live events, chat, and more. Learn more about these settings and how to manage them here.
• Get started in Teams with student and educator quick start guides and create, run, and attend safe Teams meetings with this guidance.
• Customize your school’s distance learning toolkit with these LMS integrations in Teams.

What’s New: US Government
In-line message translation in GCC and GCC High
In-line message translation will ensure that every worker in the team has a voice and facilitate global collaboration. With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat. This is now generally available.

To see many of these new capabilities in action with demonstrations, check out today’s Microsoft Mechanics video: Microsoft Teams updates | May 2020 and beyond.