Here’s my summary of the top new capabilities and changes that were released in Microsoft Teams over the summer break.
As usual the official teams blog details all the changes in detail as usual. Here’s the high level summary however.
Meetings and webinars
Here’s the new and updated for meetings and webinars in August:
- Reporter and Side-by-Side options in Presenter Mode when sharing / presenting content.
- New assignment experience in separate window for Teams Breakout Rooms.
- Live Captions and Live Transcript in 27 additional languages.
- Ability to start recording and live transcript simultaneously.
- Ability to set meetings to start recording automatically.
The new presentation modes, namely, reporter mode and side by side mode are the main new standout features for meetings and webinars this month. In this presentation mode, Teams places the presention / screen behind or next to the presenter and places content next to them in a similar way to how a presenter looks on TV.
Teams Room Devices
A fair number of new features and enhancements was released for Teams Room devices this month including the following…
- Native Support for screen sharing with HDMI ingest
- Auto answer for Meet Now meetings
- New remote provisioning and sign-in experience for admins
- 1080p resolution for outgoing video
- Teams panels released and shipping
- Ability to better customise the Teams panels experience with Teams Extensibility/LoB app support
- Ability to hide / omit meeting names for sensitive spaces or meeting topics
- New bunch of Teams Certified Devices
Teams Education updates
Teams for Education got a chunk of updates over the summer holiday, the biggest new feature being the Reading Progress feature, which lets students practice their reading. Teaching staff can review the recorded practice of students within the Assignments section of Teams.
Here’s key features and changes that rolled out for Teams for Education in August 2021:
- Ability to create, edit, and join Microsoft Teams meetings in Canvas.
- Ability to communicate and collaborate with class teams from Blackboard.
- Reading Progress feature addition.
- Updated and simplified navigation across class teams.
The full verbose version
The full list of features and enhancements can be found in the official Teams Blog here.