In what could be good news for Business and VC/Collab partners alike, organisations will soon be able to choose between running Cisco Webex or Microsoft Teams natively on their Cisco Meeting devices and cameras starting in 2023.
This was annouced by Cisco and Microsoft at Ignite today (Microsoft’s annual tech conference).
Both Cisco Cisco Room and Cisco Desk Devices, will be certified for Microsoft Teams, a move annouced a few years ago and then back tracked by Cisco but now clearly front and centre.
“Interoperability has always been at the forefront of our hybrid work strategy, understanding that customers want collaboration to happen on their terms — regardless of device or meeting platform. Our partnership with Microsoft brings together two collaboration leaders to completely reimagine the hybrid work experience.”
Jeetu Patel |EVP and GM |Collaboration |Cisco
What might Cisco bring to the Teams Eco System
Cisco becoming a partner in the Certified for Microsoft Teams program for the first time is a big move for Cisco. The Teams Room eco system is already quite crowded with vendors including Yealink, Poly, Logitech, Neat to name a few.
The quality of Cisco kit often dwafs that of the other vendors out there, ever since their aquisition of Tanburg back in 2010.
Under the terms of the partnership, Microsoft Teams will run natively on Cisco Room and Desk devices starting from the first half of 2023, giving users the option of staying within the Teams experience while taking advantage of Cisco’s video and camera technology, complete with noise removal and built-in intelligence.
“Our vision to make Teams the best collaboration experience for physical spaces is brought to life by our incredible ecosystem of hardware partners. By welcoming Cisco as our newest partner building devices Certified for Microsoft Teams, we are excited to bring leading collaboration hardware and software to market together for our joint customers.”
Jeff Teper |President |Collaborative apps and platforms | Microsoft
What devices will be supported?
In the blog, Microsoft and Cisco say that “Initially, six of Cisco’s most popular meeting devices and three peripherals will be certified for Teams, with more to come.
The first wave of devices, expected to be certified by early 2023, will include the Cisco Room Bar, the Cisco Board Pro 55-inch and 75-inch, and the Cisco Room Kit Pro for small, medium and large meeting room spaces, respectively. Cisco Desk Pro and Cisco Room Navigator will follow.
This is great for customers who want to shift eco systems without having to replace their vast array of meeting room technology where this meets the requirements of course to become Teams Native.
Is the end of Webex?
According to Cisco,Absolutely not..
This is all about choice and recognition of the growth and impact of Teams. Cisco customers will have the option to make Microsoft Teams Rooms the default experiences, and the devices will continue to support joining Webex meetings with all the features and functionality customers enjoy today via interop capabilites.
This move also helps customers and partners better meet their sustainability goals and budgets meaning that they can retain the value, quality and brand of Cisco they like in a Teams Native experience without compromise.
What do you think of this news? Share you comments in below.
Microsoft has just launched Microsoft Teams Pro which is, in their words, “designed to provide an integrated experience and bridge the gap between physical and digital workspaces“. In short, the Teams Room Pro license combines the previous Microsoft Teams Standard and Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium licenses. There is also a new free license, Teams Room Basic – which provides limited Teams Room functionality.
As of Sept 1st, 2022, organisations can no longer purchase new Teams Room Standard or Teams Room Premium licenses – they need to buy Pro or use the “free” basic license.
Teams Room Pro vs Basic – What is the difference?
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Basic license is really designed for small businesses (there’s a limit of twenty-five meeting rooms) and is £0 / FREE. It supports single screen and provides foundational Teams meeting experiences like scheduling and joining meetings as well as wireless content sharing but lacks many of the things that were included in Teams Room Standard. Teams Rooms Basic is included with the purchase of any certified Teams Rooms device at no additional cost, purchased on or after September 1, 2022. Customers can apply up to 25 Basic licenses to their tenant.
For small customers or those that just need basic book and join meetings, this provides a potential cost saving of ~£180 a year per room.
Teams Room Pro
For most organisations (and any that have over twenty-five rooms), Teams Pro is what organisations will want and need. With Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro, users will get to access all the existing Teams Rooms features they have been used to with Teams Room Standard, but they also get new innovations, and the Teams Rooms Managed Service platform. This costs $40 per room per month – about £30 and organisations can use this license (or purchase) with their Teams Room partner to provide a comprehensive Managed Meeting Room experience with the additional value-added service being provided by expert Teams Rooms Partners which includes Cisilion and several others.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro provides all the enhanced in-room meeting experiences such as intelligent audio and video, content capture, front row and large galleries, and multi-screen support as well as support for Teams Phone. The Teams Rooms Pro licenses also provides advanced management features like remote device management, auto-updates and patching, conditional access policies, and detailed device analytics, problem diagnosis and vendor hardware updates which is not included on Teams Room Basic. Teams Room Pro also allows IT to connect the Teams Room environment into their IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms like Service Now and Science Logic for example.
Microsoft would like to point customers to their partner pages for any organisation who is seeking additional help managing and supporting their meeting rooms, via partners like Cisilion who have strong technical expertise and deep customer success focus.
License and Feature Comparisons
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Max no. Licenses
25
Unlimited
Cost
Free
$40 (~£30)
Microsoft Teams Licence
✔️
✔️
Audio Conferencing
✔️
✔️
Whiteboard
✔️
✔️
Teams Phone
❌
✔️
Microsoft Intune
❌
✔️
Azure AD Premium P1
❌
✔️
Availability
Worldwide
Worldwide
Procurement
Web Direct or NCE via Partner
Web Direct, NCE (via Partner), EA, EAS, CSP,
Feature Comparison – Meeting Join
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Join meetings with 1-touch, proximity, meeting ID
✔️
✔️
Start ad-hoc meetings from Teams Room
✔️
✔️
Direct Guest Join (Zoom & Webex)
✔️
✔️
Room check-in via Teams Panel
❌
✔️
Join meetings across Teams Cloud
❌
✔️
Feature Comparison – Engagement and Collaboration
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Share and view all Teams content types
✔️
✔️
Front Row
❌
✔️
Together Mode
❌
✔️
Large Gallery Support (up to 50 videos)
❌
✔️
Split Gallery (Dual Screen)
❌
✔️
Feature Comparison – Calling
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Make and receive peer to peer and group calls
✔️
✔️
Microsoft 365 Phone System (PSTN Calling)
❌
✔️
Feature Comparison – Intelligent audio and video
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Support for intelligent speakers with live transcription and speaker identification
❌
✔️
Multi-Camera Support
❌
✔️
Panoramic Room View
❌
✔️
AI noise suppression
❌
✔️
People counting / occupancy
❌
✔️
Feature Comparison – Device Management
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Teams Admin Centre enrollment & inventory
✔️
✔️
Automatic software updates
✔️
✔️
Detailed system and configuration info
❌
✔️
Peripheral health management
❌
✔️
Remote configuration
❌
✔️
Device history and activity
❌
✔️
ITSM integration
❌
✔️
Custom health alerts
❌
✔️
Device and usage analytics
❌
✔️
Feature Comparison – Security & Compliance
Teams Room Basic
Teams Room Pro
Secure Operating System
✔️
✔️
System Level Security
✔️
✔️
Azure AD conditional access policies
❌
✔️
I’ve already got licenses – what does this mean to me?
For most organisations, they will need to make the shift to Teams Room Pro at the end of their license term or reduce the license to Teams Room Basic if they feel they do not need any of the advanced features.
For customers who don’t have an enterprise agreement (usually a 3-year term), and that buy Web Direct (on a credit card) or via a CSP partner, you will no longer be able to buy new Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard or Premium licences; for all new rooms, you will have to use either Teams Room Basic or Pro licences. Once your existing licence term expires for your existing licences, you must make the shift to Teams Pro (or down grade to basic).
Whilst the cost increase will frustrate many users that buy Teams Room Standard today, the price for Teams Room Pro is still very much in line with how much, and the way in which the other providers like Zoom and Cisco also charge for their Room licenses. Microsoft have added a plethora of new features to Teams and Teams Room over the past few years and these price increases are there to support these and future enhancements.
Mix and match – it is also possible, if you wany/need to mix Pro and Basic licenses but bear in mind that the functionality will be different for the different rooms which users will find confusing especially if they use any of the advanced meeting features listed above. might be confusing. More importantly, the management and admin experience will also be different for the Rooms. Remember this is a tenant level limit of 25 Basic Rooms/devices.
Support from Partners: Microsoft would like to point customers to their partner pages for any organisation who is seeking additional help managing and supporting their meeting rooms, via partners like Cisilion who have strong technical expertise and deep customer success focus.
For users / owners of Surface Headphones 2+ (for Business), Microsoft are rolling out a new firmware update which enables the devices to be Microsoft Teams® certified using native Bluetooth® without a dongle.
Image (c) Microsoft
This means users of Surface Headphones 2+ will be able to depend on reliable connections during calls and interact with intuitive touch control with the convenience of not having to worry about the dongle – something which will improve productivity and ease of use for employees that (like me) often navigate different workspaces and devices for hybrid work and everyday life.
This is made possible by Microsoft leveraging the improvement in Bluetooth connectivity directly via the Surface companion app for Windows and Mac desktop clients.
Specific other vendor devices will, in the future, also get firmware updates to support native Bluetooth stack certification support.
Surface Headphones
For more information about Surface Headphones, you can check out the Microsoft product pages here.
Following on from a packed January of new features, the slew of updates and enhancements to Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex isn’t slowing down. Here’s my pick of the new features for Feb 2022 across the two big collaboration, meetings and calling platforms.
Microsoft Teams
Like most of the platforms, focus in Feb would adding some love to existing features and enhancing others. Main ones include enhancing the hybrid meeting experience, big updates to Teams Room devices on Android and bringing intelligence and convenience settings to physical meetings with the new “knock knock features”.
General Updates and New Features
Mute Notifications in Meetings
Subtle but vital, it’s now possible to mute notifications during meetings, so you can better focus. In addition to this, you can also now see the user’s “local time” allowing you to be more considerate of your colleague’s/customers/partners availability. Finally, the last general feature to hit the general release is the ability to pin chat messages,change chat density, and also respond to group approvals requests within Teams Approvals.
Meeting Experiences
New mobile meeting experiences on iOS
In line with what was already supported on Android, it’s now also possible to join a Teams meeting with a single tap on both your Apple iOS device and Microsoft Teams Rooms using the companion feature. With this feature on, audio on your device will be automatically turned off to ensure echo does not happen. The “landing” experience on your iOS device will be optimised for engagement activities to make it easier to raise a hand or react, chat, see all participants, and access Microsoft Whiteboard. In addition to simply joining a meeting, Microsoft have also made it easy to access meeting and device controls, which includes the ability to cast a PowerPoint, control room cameras and more.
Microsoft have also made it possible to pin to the meeting stage or hide your own video in meetings. This allows you to see your own video in the increased size on your screen or to hide your own video (for you) during a meetings. This is designed to reduce distractions during calls and meetings while still having your video available for other participants to see. This is done by clicking on the ellipsis (…) in your video feed and selecting Pin for me or Hide for me.
Word Cloud Poll – adds support for open-text question polls in Teams meetings. When using polls in meetings, this new option is great for more open engagement with attendees, since it allows you to collect attendees’ open-ended responses before, during, or after a meeting, with the results being automatically aggregated and displayed as a word cloud.
“Word Cloud” Poll
Teams Walkie Talkie on Phones
Microsoft added the addition of Walkie Talkie function already available on mobile, to Teams phones devices which allows users to use instant push to talk to speak to colleagues or other departments. Walkie Talkie on Teams phone devices can only be used to communicate with colleagues that are part of the same Teams channel so think of it like a silo’d communications group. Walkie Talkie can be added to the App Set up Policy and assigned to Teams Phones devices from the Teams admin center.
New to Teams Devices
Teams Rooms, can now be configure to automatically release reserved conference rooms that are not being used. In addition there is also a new featured known as a “check-in knock-knock” notification on the Teams Room front room display, which will alert over-running meeting dwellers that their meeting is over and people are waiting to come into the room.
Microsoft also more added support for content sharing on Teams Rooms for Android, as well as increasing the number of video feeds displayed. HDMI ingest sharing, also makes it way to more Android Room devices as does far-end camera control for remote meeting attendees. Android Teams Room devices also now support adaptive dual screen display whereby the videos of remote participants span both screens (in meeting rooms with dual screens) when content is not being shared.
Teams Rooms on AndroidHDMI Ingest on Android Rooms
Cisco Webex
Updated to Webex are also coming thick and fast and Feb 2022 is all focussed on innovations that make hybrid work even better. In Feb’s updates, these including voice optimisations for all voices, a new Webex App integration within HubSpot (which joins app integrations from Zoom and Teams), new Socio capabilities that aim to unify the physical and virtual event experiences. There’s also welcomed changes to Cisco’s flagship Room Panorama devices.
New “All voices” audio optimisation
Aimed to “give all meeting attendees an equal voice”, Webex has added “optimise for all voices” to their intelligent audio capability. This enhancement will allow users to be able to hear anyone in the meeting, no matter where they are in the room at the same volume level. For example, if there are a few people sitting away from the microphone, their voices will still be heard loud and clear by all remote meeting participants.
Realtime translation and transcription expanded with 13 new languages
Webex now makes it easier to create a more inclusive, collaborative and accessible experience in meetings and webinars with attendees from around the world, as well as those with hearing disabilities, with real-time translation. This month Webex have added 13 new spoken languages taking the total to over 100 caption languages in the Webex app.
Webex Live Captions and Translation
Redesigned Sildo “poll” experience
Cisco released a redesigned Slido experience in meetings to make it easier to create engaging real-time polls, quizzes, and also to host Q&As. Silo was integrated into Webex last year following an acquisition and provides a simple to use, adaptive and extensive experience.
Cisco Slido Polls in Webex
Webex Room Panorama
Aimed to bridge the gap between hyrid meeting experiences, Cisco Webex can now bring a full immersive experience with panoramic view to cloud registered Webex Room Panorama devices. Webex now supports up to 9 point-to-point calls with exceptional live video feed of far end participants, including control of remote meeting rooms, on the two 82” screens which make up the Panorama. Shared content is displayed on the 65” top screen.
Cisco Webex Room Panorama
Room Panorama features directional, stereo audio, intelligent table microphone array, HD content sharing to provide even more flexibility, better replicate in-person experiences, and to bring the full panoramic experience to boardrooms and executive meetings rooms.
Microsoft has rolled out an update for Microsoft Teams that brings the first set of “fluid” Loop Components. This has the ability to further innovate and disrupt the way people collaborate with their colleagues and perform daily tasks.
The update now introduces functionality from Microsoft Loop, a new set of fluid controls designed to further streamline the way people collaborate and cooperate on tasks in real-time. Loop brings about “portable components” that synchronise across the various aspects of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
As per this new blog post, “Loop components have now arrived for Microsoft Teams, unlocking a variety of opportunities to streamline workflows, as well as minimizing the number of apps workers are required to juggle“.
With Loop components, rather than share an entire document for co-authoring and collaboration through Office 365, users can instead post a specific paragraph, data table or list of actions into a Teams channel, where all members are able to view, edit and manipulate the content and see any changes and interaction in real-time. With Loop components, this content remains up-to-date wherever else the components have been deployed – which may be within a Loop page, Word document or PowerPoint presentation.
Microsoft Loop Components within Microsoft Teams
What is Loop?
Loop was first unveiled at Microsoft’s annual Ignite conference in November, and is made up of three elements: components, pages and workspaces.
Loop workspaces are shared spaces that contain everything relevant to a specific project. Loop pages, meanwhile, are described as “flexible canvases” where users can organise their various loop components and draw in files, links or data.
At the announcement, Microsoft said that “For years, the established patterns of work were clear. Communication took place via email and content creation was mostly documents, spreadsheets and presentations,”
“In the last 18 months, the world has changed, and we have adapted to a new working environment where people had to complement traditional communication tools and in-person collaboration with alternative solutions. But we need to go further. That is why we are reimagining Office, adding new apps to respond to new opportunities, and making Office a universal, interactive canvas.”
Loop components have the potential to change the way remote and hybrid workers collaborate with their teams, and colleagues in a significant way. Microsoft say that additional components are expected to be announced at Microsoft Build next year by both Microsoft and third party application providers which will provide more seamless and collaborative ways to collaborate across the apps and services.
I wrote a blog on the Loop announcement previously, which you can read here.
Microsoft’s SIP gateway service was officially released as of today today. This means organisations can now repurpose a wide range of ‘old’ SIP phones and use them with #MicrosoftTeams helping to reduce TCO of Teams Voice Migrations and drive value out of legacy hardware.
The new SIP Gateway Service (which has been in private preview for a few months) is a solution that enables core Teams calling functionality on compatible SIP phones including many from Cisco, Poly, Yealink and AudioCodes.
Microsoft SIP gateway
Breathing life into legacy handsets
The SIP Gateway supports the following core Teams calling functionality:
Inbound and outbound calls
Call transfer
Meeting dial-in and dial-out
Device level based “do not disturb”
Voicemail with message waiting
The SIP Gateway Service is FREE
Microsoft are making the SIP Gateway service for free, and any user can use the SIP Gateway so long as they meet the following requirements.
Licensed for Teams Phone via Office 365 E5, Microsoft 365 E5 or a standalone license.
Enabled for PSTN, which means a phone number in Teams assigned via Calling Plan, a Direct Routing or Carrier Connect (calling via third party apps not supported)
Common Area devices licensed via Common Area Phone license.
For the best experiece Teams Phones are recommended
In the official Microsoft Teams blog, Microsoft reminds us that while their SIP Gateway and Skype for Business 3PIP Gateway services provide valuable flexibility for organisations wishing to sweat their legacy SIP phone investments, Teams phone devices provide the most complete Teams experience.
What devices are supported
These are the currently supported phones (at time of writing).
Microsoft has updated the SLAs for Teams Calling Plans, Phone System, and PSTN Audio Conferencing to four nines / 99.99%.
This reflects the continuous work Microsoft are doing in the background to provide the very best quality, reliability, availability and calling experiences. Microsoft say in their blog that “while it’s natural to do a simple comparison of SLAs throughout the industry, there’s richer story about the new SLAs for Teams Phone that goes beyond the nines”.
SLA goes beyond just phone systen
The Microsoft Teams SLA is actually made up of multiple Microsoft Teams components which are defined separately in the SLA;
Microsoft Teams (the core service) that includes chat, calling, meetings etc.
Calling Plans, Phone System, auto attendant service and PSTN Audio Conferencing
Voice Quality (if impacted by Microsoft network and not your own LAN/WiFi)
In this update, Calling Plans, Phone System, and Audio Conferencing have risen from the previous 99.9% to 99.99%. Voice quality SLA remains at 99.9% (which is about 44 minutes a year) and in line with the core Microsoft 365 SLA.
Financially Backed
When any of these metrics fall below 99.99% in a given month, Microsoft calculates the total downtime and pay-out service credit based on length of incident (in minutes) multiplied by the number of users potentially impacted by the incident or outage and provide monthly service credit back at up to 100%.
Here’s how Microsoft calculates SLA’s for Teams Voice:
Note; This SLA does not cover outages caused by a failure of third-party software, equipment, or services not controlled by Microsoft, or Microsoft software not being run by Microsoft as part of the service (e.g. third-party PBX solutions integrated into Teams). This also excludes Carrier Connect services so its important to check the SLAs with your provider (if you have one).
At Enterprise Connect today, Nicole Herskowitz made a handful of announcements about further enhancements and improvements to a Teams including the announcement that Microsoft Teams Calling Plans is being expanding into 5 new markets
Croatia
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Slobenia
Native calling plans now in 33 countries
Native Microsoft Teams Calling now in 33 countries
Enabling calling in Teams
As well as buying and enabling calling plans direct from Microsoft (where Microsoft essentially becomes your PSTN provider), there are two other ways to get a phone number and PSTN connectivity direct from within Microsoft Teams.
Direct Routing – which is essentially “bring your own SBC or Carrier) which allows you to keep your existing SIP provider and connect to it via a certified SBC
Carrier Connect – which went into General Availability today, allows organisations to enable PSTN in Teams direct via participating operators which connect direct into Teams via Azure.
Covered in detail here, carrier connect provides potential benefits to larger/global organisations (over Microsoft Calling plans) including:
Keeping preferred operator contracts, while enabling modern calling experience in Teams.
Rapid deployment of calling in Teams by connecting directly via Teams to your existing operator and assigning phone numbers to users.
Reduced hardware and management costs since PSTN services and SBCs are managed by the operator
Enhanced, global support since Carrier Connect operators are responsible for shared service level agreements.
Read more
Read more on the official annoucements from Enterprise Connect here.
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.
Image courtesy Microsoft
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…
Image from Microsoft
NativeSupport 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.
The next big update to #MicrosoftTeams (dubbed Teams 2.0) will be faster, allow multiple accounts, provide seemless integration into #Windows11 and will look and behave much more like a native Windows app.. Yay.
Teams 2.0 on Windows 11 (image:Microsoft)
Inline with the release of Windows 11 later this year (though will likely be in preview way before then), Microsoft is finalising the work on a totally resigned version of Microsoft Teams. Designed specifically for Windows 11 but will also be realised and will work on Windows 10.
What’s different?
The main difference between the existing Teams client and Microsoft Teams 2.0 is that the new version is based on Edge WebView2 rather than Electron. Leveraging Edge WebView2 allows for embedded Web technology such embedded as HTML, CSS and JavaScript along with the full power of the Chromium rendering engine. Microsoft will also move away from Angular and will instead now use the open source front-end JavaScript library React.js.
Introducing Microsoft Teams 2.0
The new Teams client is built around Microsoft Teams for the web though it won’t actually look much different from the existing Teams. The main changes come in the form of performance, application size, integration and extensibility.
A version that leaked on the Internet last week (with missing features) confirms the claims Microsoft have already made around significantperformance increase whilst also runs better on lower-end devices due to reduction in both app size and memory usage. According to Microsoft..
“Teams 2.0 will consume half the memory of the current Teams 1.0 client”.
Teams and Windows 11
Teams 2.0 will launch instantly and users will no longer “get stuck” on the loading screen on older devices or when teams is loaded when lots of other apps are already open.
Unlike the old client, the Teams 2.0 app window can now be resized and the interface scales alongside it automatically. It will also support the new snap view and snap assist features in Windows 11. With Teams 2.0, Microsoft has also added integrations with native notifications and other features within both Windows 10 and of course Windows 11.
Teams 2.0 will also finally properly support multiple accounts without having to switch/log in and out of different Tennants.
Coming “soon”
Microsoft Teams 2.0 should be a welcome upgrade whe it arrives. I’ll update this one it enters an official public preview state or hear more official word from the Microsoft Teams Team!
Day one of Ignite yesterday (Sept 22 2020), was full of many new announcements across Microsoft 365, Azure and Power Platform but day 1 was certainly dominated by a new stack of updates coming now or very soon to Microsoft Teams, with the list including well-being tools for employees, calling enhancements, new webinar features and breakout rooms and a whole lot more.
Here’s my review of the key new features. There’s also a quick video I recorded from the main Teams session…
Virtual Commute
With the virtual commute feature, Teams users will be able to schedule a virtual commute to structure their day so they can have a productive start in the morning and mindfully disconnect in the evening.
As part of Virtual Commute, Microsoft has partnered with Headspace to bring a curated set of mindfulness experiences and science-backed meditations into Teams based on the user’s day, and how busy their day appears from their activity across Teams and Office 365. This is designed to help make it easier for employees to find time to relax and recover and therefore better focus.
“There’s a lot of activity happening in Teams, we can see that. We also hear people telling us that there are adverse effects and that leads us to product strategy and what you’re seeing at Ignite,” said Microsoft executive Jared Spataro.
“The sudden transition to working from home during the pandemic has completely upended the lives of workers around the world.”
While many employees used to use their morning commute as a chance to relax or reflect on the day ahead of them, the switch to remote working has taken this personal time from them. To make matters worse, many organisations now expect their workers to begin their jobs right at the start of the day since they no longer need to travel to and from the office.
According to a study from Microsoft Research, commutes can serve as meaningful transitions at the beginning and end of the workday and in fact, the reflection done during this time can increase productivity by 12 to 15 percent.
New Well-being tools
New Insights in Teams powered by MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics
With rollout starting in October and with new enhancements coming over the new few months, is a new set of well-being features and productivity insights for Microsoft Teams.
This will be powered by a combination of MyAnalytics and a new Workplace Analytics experience designed for Teams, Microsoft said that this aims to will gives individuals, managers, and business leaders powerful insights which are personalised about their roles and their teams within work and to ensure employees and employers can focus more effort and energy into their people (the heart of their business) helping everyone to focus on their work, and be their best.
Teams users will see recommended actions to help them make changing their work habits and improving their productivity and well-being easier. Examples include suggested tasks for the day, reminders to have breaks and taking time away from the screen which will be delivered to your Outlook inbox.
In addition, a new stay connected experience will also help individuals strengthen relationships with their colleagues by making it easy to praise top collaborators for key achievements and to schedule one-on-ones to catch up.
Finally, there will be new insights tab in Teams that allow leaders to ask natural questions like, “Are employees at risk for burnout? Are people maintaining strong internal connections? Are relationships with customers being maintained?”
Webinar Registration and reporting
For more structured meetings and events such as customer webinars, meeting and event organisers will soon be able to use powerful event registration with automated emails to make it easier to manage attendance. Ater the meeting, you’ll be able view a detailed reporting dashboard that will help understand attendee engagement. These new features are expected to begin to roll out by end of 2020 – and i suspect the Advanced Communications license will be needed to use these features (just a hunch).
News Teams Webinar Experience – Coming Q4 2020
Teams Templates
Teams templates, which are now in the rollout phase, are designed to help teams get started faster and be more effective. Teams owners can now choose from common business scenarios, such as event management or crisis response, and industry-specific templates, like a hospital ward or bank branch. Each template comes with pre-defined channels, apps, and guidance and admins can create their own for your organisation.
New Teams Templates – Rolling out now
New backgrounds for Together mode
New Backgrounds to Together Mode coming Q4 2020
Promised between now and the end of 2020, Together Mode feature will see some improvements with new Together mode scenes which will include conference rooms and a coffee shop and later, the ability to add your own such as meetings rooms from your own office. Microsoft hopes these features can help people feel connected and engaged from anywhere and reduce fatigue caused by regular grid view meetings.
With these improvements, like custom backgrounds in video chats, presenters will soon be able to select a scene from the gallery as the default scene for all together mode meeting attendees. Microsoft said they will also be enhancing the feature further to automatically scale and center participants in their virtual seats, regardless of how close or far they are from their camera.
Additionally, custom layouts in Teams meeting (not just Together mode) will allow presenters to customise how meeting content is displayed for participants during the meeting.
Similar to a weather forecast or the news, participants will be able to see the presenter’s video feed transposed onto the foreground of the content being presented on screen making for a more professional presentation.
Breakout Rooms
New Breakout Rooms – Coming October 2020
Already in preview for education, Teams meetings is getting a much-anticipated breakout room feature.
This highly requested feature will allow meeting organisers to split participants into smaller groups (manually or automatically) so they can have their own discussions. It’s ideal for brainstorming and workgroup discussions or for running event with multiple streams or optional sessions for example.
This means presenters will then be able to hop between different breakout rooms and make announcements to all breakout rooms, and close the rooms to return everyone to the main meeting room. Participants will still be able to access the notes, chat, files and whiteboards from the breakout session after the breakout rooms close.
Collaborative Calling
Starting rollout from the end of this month, is a new set of calling improvements for Teams.
One of these is Collaborative Calling, which enables users better collaborate and share information from within the channel while taking calls from employees or their customers in the queue.
Also included are a host of improvements to transcription, live captions, recording, and the ability to transfer between Teams mobile and desktop apps when doing one-on-one calls seemlessly.
Microsoft also said that their new live captions with speaker attribution is now generally available (though I don’t see it yet). This provides a live and recap service for the meeting which includes the recording, an online transcript, chat, shared files, and more.
New Microsoft Teams panels
As employees begin to return to the office, part time, occasionally or permanently, meeting rooms will provide a welcome change to their work from home setups and will likely be at a premium.
To make it easier for workers to know when a meeting room is occupied, Microsoft has unveiled a new category of devices called Microsoft Teams panels that can be mounted outside of a meeting space.
These devices are essentially small tablets that can also use information from other connected certified Teams devices such as cameras to show room capacity information and help workers follow their organisation’s social distancing guidelines.
OK.. There is more…
In addition to these main announcements yesterday, Microsoft also announced several new smaller enhancements to Teams which include:
New Search Experience
Ability to create tasks directly from a team’s chat or channel
New Cortana powered hands-free meeting controls in Teams Rooms
Great news for any organisations using Skype for Business and moving to Teams, was announced yesterday.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they were extending support for their 3PIP gateway service (which was originally supported until 2023). Skype for Business Online is end of life from July 2021 and the 3PIP service provides support for any legacy Skype for Business Phone. By extending the support for the 3PIP gateway service, organisations will be able to leverage their existing Skype for Business phones for longer – saving money and giving them longer to invest in #MicrosoftTeams certified phones.
“We realise that being able to use existing hardware can provide important cost savings when moving to a new phone system.” Microsoft said in a blog post yesterday. “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”.
Support for Standard SIP Phones
Microsoft also confirmed that they will be supporting core calling features on standard SIP-based phones from Cisco, Yealink, Polycom, and others with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft said this support will be available in the first half of 2021.
More Teams phones with “Buttons”
Microsoft also said yesterday that, due to customer demand, the leading Teams phone vendors including Yealink and Audiocodes will be launching new Teams certified phones with physical buttons.
Three months after if was officially announced, Microsoft has started rolling out the new Tasks app in Microsoft Teams.
Image courtesy of Microsoft
This new experience is powered by both Planner and Microsoft To Do and is fundamentally a rebrand (with some) of the existing Planner app which was already available within Microsoft Teams, creating one central hub for all things teamwork and tasks..
As we have become accustomed too with roll outs of features within Microsoft Teams, the new Tasks apps rollout will also be a gradual one which starts today and will complete by September.
It’s worth noting that Tasks for Teams mobile, is not expextes to be available until the desktop rollout has completed.
What about its name?
For now… Presumably to minimise confusion, the name of the Planner app inside Microsoft Teams will not change.
Microsoft has said that as they continue the roll out the new Planner experience, the app name will remain Planner, but will then change to Tasks by Planner and To Do, and then change to simply Tasks. Mobile users, meanwhile, will always only see the app as Tasks.
What is new?
The new features in the new Tasks app include
New list view,
The ability to edit multiple tasks at once.
Traditional board, charts, and schedule view from Planner, with the option for Lists aswell
New bulk editing capability, where you can edit multiple tasks simultaneously, for changing progress, priority, due dates etc.
You’ve got the Power
If you are fan and user of Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) can also now add and configure integrations in the new Task app, to bring out tasks created in other applications into Tasks in Teams.
When will I get it?
To check if Tasks is available, you can click the ellipses in the Teams sidebar and choose Planner.
This all part of a new initiate by Microsoft dubbed as “Tasks in Microsoft 365.” This is the first stage of a project within Microsoft to bring together, streamline and consolidate the principles of tasks across all of Microsoft 365.
We heard a couple months back that big changes are coming to both SurfaceHub 1 and 2S as the SurfaceHub and Microsoft Teams product groups work to continuously improve the meeting and collaboration experiences on Surface Hub.
Starting last week, updates are rolling out to the Microsoft Teams app on Surface Hub which will brings fixes and quality improvements based on the customer feedback. The most important bits are still to come though with this update preparing the hub for new features that will start rolling out later next quarter.
The update will be delivered seemlessly via Windows Update (assuming its enabled) taking the Microsoft Teams app to version 0.2020.84.4301.
The update also sees the SurfaceHub receive a new driver update to complement the Microsoft Teams experience with an improved Microsoft Teams meeting join experience after the update is completed.
Like I said most of the visual updates which we expect to include things like proximity join, improved management, allowing SurfaceHub to join a Teams meeting as a secondary or companion decide etc are coming later this year.
