Tag: #MicrosoftTeams

Posted on

Microsoft has made Teams free for the entire NHS

As part of a huge tech aid programme in response to COVID-19, Microsoft has made Microsoft Team available to the entire 1.5m NHS workers for free which was announced in a tweet by Simon Eccles, Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care.

Teams free for NHS

NHSX is a UK Government body that has responsibility for setting national policy and developing best practice for the National Health Service (NHS) IT and technology services.

This will allow all NHS organisations that use run NHSmail (a customised and hosted Exchange email service run by Accenture) will now have access to Microsoft Teams, (they will need to configure it or work with a partner or Microsoft Fast Track local administration and configuration). NHS Digital have also said that they will support the implementation of Microsoft Teams locally via its NHSmail support site.

Those NHS organisations that don’t run NHSmail will need to contact Microsoft directly to get access to Microsoft Teams but this will be a simple process.

More infornation on this can be found below.

Microsoft Teams to be rolled out across NHS in response to coronavirus

Posted on

My top 5 new things in Microsoft Teams for Feb 2020

1. Cross collaboration with Outlook and Teams

Whilst Teams is one of the most effective and fluid ways for indivials and teams to communicate, not all conversations are suited in teams. This month (though you have to look for it) there is new 2-way integration between Outlook and Teams to make it easier shift conversations from one medium to another. Users can now:

1. Move an email conversation from Outlook (along with attachments) into a Teams chat or channel conversation by clicking on the ‘’Share to Teams’’ in Outlook.

Outlook to Teams

2. Share a conversation from Teams to an Outlook email by clicking on the more options (‘’…’’) icon in a conversation.

2. Updated @tags in Chats and Channels

Microsoft have made it easier toget connected to right people with “targeted communication”. For example, if you need to send a message to say, all of sales or all managers, it’s now possible to quickly message everyone assigned to a specific tag at the same time by simply @mentioning the tag name in a post. By using tags, team “owners” can now organise users based on a common “tag” , relevant to a role, project, or location etc.

Tagging in channels

3. New File Experience.

The Teams file experience is “powered by SharePoint” and as well as looking a little more modern, includes the ability to sync files to your computer, see rich previews across over 320 file types, create views, see document life-cycle signals, review on-hover file cards, pin files to the top, take actions like check in and check out, and loads more.. In fact everything you can do in SharePoint, because, well.. the Teams file store is SharePoint anyway.

New File Experience

I wasn’t a huge fan of this at first as I quite liked the simplistic view in teams but if you work with files and lot (and have a lot in your teams and channels) then after a few days you’ll wonder how you manged without it! That said.. Be nice if you could tune it a bit to suite.

4. New Live Captions in Meetings

This has actually been in preview for a couple of months so if you, like me have been using it, you may not have realised that it’s now in ‘General availability state’.

Basically, you can use live captions to give subtitles to your Microsoft Teams meetings. Let’s think for a minute.. This is really powerful and great for accessibility but also if you are in a meeting where noisy surroundings (coffee shop, loud office, airport etc) where you may struggle to hear all of what is going on..

With live captions you can turn on live subtitles during your Teams meetings so you never miss what somebody is trying to say as you can read what people are saying in real time. English only at this time with more language support coming soon we are told.

Live captions in Teams

5. New Security and Compliance Features

2 new features were added to a team this month too which bring some of the wider Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance features natively into Teams

  1. Legal Hold for Teams Private Channels
  2. Communication Compliance which helps HR and admin detect capture and take remediation actions should inappropriate communications be used in teams that could impact well being or lead to abuse or bullying.

That’s it for now… Look forward to seeing what’s new in March!

Posted on

You can now Share a Teams chat to…..Outlook

What? Sharing from Teams to Outlook?

Yes – you read that correctly.  At Ignite in November 2019, Microsoft announced a new set of features to provide tighter integration between Microsoft Teams and Outlook aimed to:

  1. Help ensure conversations that are meant for Teams can be easily “moved” to Teams and

  2. To ensure that users/groups that aren’t yet using Teams can still be included in conversations by allowing chats/discussions to be “shared” to Outlook.

Teams to Outlook

Part 1 – Teams to Outlook

The first part of this integration is rolling out now (probably already in your Teams experience – go check).  This now gives users the ability to share a Teams conversation to Outlook.
 
To do this, select any message in your private or Team Channel chat, click on the … (the three dot ellipses) menu and choose Share to Outlook.
 
This shares the message and all it’s replies to Outlook.

The Outlook-WebApp window will open up and you can add any comments, customise the email and of course add the recipients to the email message. You can add/do all the other things you’d expect in an email message (it is an email message) and can even apply sensitivity information if configured.

When you are happy with your email, just click send!

What the recipient sees

The recipient (yes I did email myself for this example), sees the email and the Teams conversation thread in their email box. From here, they can click on “Go To Teams” to join and carry on the conversation within Teams or can of course, respond to the email directly in email. 

When and Why should I use this?

I have been asked this three times today since making people aware of this nice (or not feature), but this wouldn’t have been added to Teams unless there is a need and demand for it.

As far as I see it, there will always be a time/situation when you need to share some information that is within Teams to people who are not in your Team site – or of course there will be those users that may well be in the Team but still live their life in email and simple “don’t use teams”

This feature makes this really easy to do without the need to try to copy and past or take screen shots of your Teams Chat.  

Be careful..

Whilst a useful feature, please be careful….as this can lead to chats moving outside your Teams chat and breaking the very heritage of that concept of chat….. 

Another…. since this feature makes it really easy to share information that is within Team to an email thread and therefore potentially to people outside of this Team or chat.

Therefore, IMO it is important to make sure that sensitivity labels and DLP are enabled to help ensure your business can still protect sensitive information and prevent chats meant from Teams from being shared in the right way.

Oddly….

At the time of writing, there seems to be no way of “replying directly into a Team” from the email message other than a link to “Go to Teams“. As Microsoft add more context based replies to Outlook, this might be a feature that lights up.

I also cant see a way to turn this feature off? 

Posted on

Microsoft’s new Teams tv advert showcases how to do “modern meetings”

Microsoft has unveiled its first official TV advert for #MicrosoftTeams which aired this weekend. The slick 30-second ad aired during Sunday’s NFL playoff in the US, and will also be shown here in the UK as well as France, and Germany next month.

Called “The Power of Teams,” the advert opens with old skool boring business meetings, flip charts, aging spider speaker phones, and slidedecks printed on paper. The advert then quickly progresses to show how modern meeting experiences within Teams can transform the workplace.

Microsoft defines Teams as “the hub for Teamwork and #Microsoft365“ and claims to define the way forward for the Modern Workplace and to support the needs of today’s modern and agile workforce which now spans across 5 generations.

Watch the future of modern meetings

Posted on

New Scheduling Experience coming to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft are about to roll out (early Feb 2020) changes that replace the existing scheduling form with a new form that retains all existing scheduling functionality but makes it more aligned to the Outlook experience. The core changes include:

  • Improved view of available time
  • Allows changing event information from the scheduling assistant tab
  • Includes an option for required and optional attendees.
  • Includes search within the location picker field.

New Teams scheduling form can be seen below.

New MicrosoftTeams Scheduling Form




As well as the changes above, there’s a number of additional features including:

  • All day events option – a new toggle like in outlook that converts meetings to an all-day event.Availability status – provides simple people and location search which provides a visual (red) indicator to indicate non-availability on people or resources.
  • Cancellation with message – provides ability to provide and edit a message when cancelling an event if desired (again similar to what Outlook offers today).
  • Tabs in edit/view mode – these tabs provide easy access to things like chat, meeting notes, files, scheduling assistant, and of course the meeting whiteboard.
  • Time zone picker – which now finally allows meeting organisers to select the time zone they wish to use for the meeting.

That’s it… The new update is rolling out in the next few weeks so look out for it.

Posted on

<40p a day gets you Microsoft Teams Voice

Microsoft 365 Business Voice

….is a cloud-based phone system built and priced specifically for small and medium businesses which was announced at Ignite earlier this month and is available now.

Microsoft Business Voice enables users to make, receive, and transfer calls to and from landlines and mobile phones on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) directly into Microsoft Teams and/or on Teams certified desk phones, meeting room technology of course corporate or user owned smartphones (which can be protected and data governed by Microsoft Intune and Conditional Access naturally).

Microsoft Cloud Voice extends the functionality of Microsoft Teams bringing together all your calling, chat, and meetings in a single app across any platform, browser or mobile device removing the need for separate/third party web and audio conferencing services and IP Phone/PBX. 

This is the same service (complete with SLAs) that Microsoft has provided with Teams (and Skype for Business Online before that) in Office 365 Enterprise, but much more attractively priced for organisations up to three hundred users.  (these plans can also be mixed between plans).

This new plan/add-on provides:-

  • Unified calling & voicemail with chat and meetings in Microsoft Teams
  • 1,200 minutes per use and ability to migrate existing numbers
  • Global dial-in conferencing capabilities for up to 250 participants
  • Extend voice services into meeting rooms with Teams Room Systems
  • Full IVR and auto-attendant services
  • Support Teams desk phones or break free with soft-client and mobile

What does it cost?
Licensing for Microsoft 365 Business Voice Is limited to a maximum of 300 users and Is add-on service and Is available for any customers who have Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 E3, A3 and Microsoft 365 Business, and Microsoft F1, E1, A3, & E3.

The Business Voice add-on license is available for just £12 per user per month via web-direct or via your CSP Partner

This is excellent value
When you think this removes the need to use addition phone system (and charges) or 3rd party web / audio conferencing services like Zoom or WebEx (which is ~£25 pupm alone) – you get a hell of lot of bang for your buck (or pound).

Existing organisations already using Microsoft Cloud Voice, can leverage this discounted bundle for up to three hundred users also, so you could save some good money!

 

Posted on

What are organisation-wide Teams in Teams?

Organisation-wide teams provide an automatic way for everyone in a small to medium-sized organisation (up to 5,000 users) to be a part of a single team for collaboration and notifications.

With org-wide teams, an organisation can easily have a (well actually up to 5) public teams that pulls in every user in the organisation and keeps the membership up-to-date with Active Directory as users join and leave the organisation (assuming your AD is well managed of course).

As your organisation’s directory is updated to include new active users, or if users no longer work at your company and their Teams license is disabled, changes are automatically synced and the users are added or removed from the team.

Team members can’t leave an org-wide team.

As a team owner, you can manually add or remove users if needed.

Best practices for organisation-wide teams

To get the most benefit out of using an org-wide team, there’s some best practice Microsoft has published based on its research with customers:

  • Allow only team owners to post to the General channel, to reduce channel “noise.”
  • Turn off @team and @[team name] mentions to prevent overloading the entire organisation.
  • Automatically mark important channels as favorites to ensure that everyone in your organization engages in specific conversations.
  • Set up channel moderation so that moderators can control who can start a new post in a channel as well. As who can reply..You may want it as an annoucment only channel for example.
  • Remove accounts that might not belong. Such as test accounts etc.

I also discovered you can convert an existing Team to a Org-wide team if you want to.. Again this is an admin required task.

Private Channels in org-wide Teams?

There is of course Private Channels also coming very shortly to Teams which can also be used to segregate aspects of your org-wide Team to, well, less than all the organisation… I’d probably suggest not using this function inside these kind of Teams (assuming it’s permitted).

https://robquickenden.blog/private-channels-for-teams-are-almost-here

Thanks for Reading.

Posted on

Private channels for Teams are finally here.

What are Private Channels In Teams?

Updated: 4th Nov 19

Private Channels (which are being released this week) will allow team owners to limit which team members can see the conversation and content within a particular channel within a Team (kind of a private space between a wider Team). This allows team admins to right-size channel participation and exposure without having to create discrete teams to limit visibility. This can help with reducing team sprawl and can help with internal and B2B communications.

Private channels will be indicated by a small lock / padlock icon next to the channel within a Team.

  • Team owners will be able to see all channels and private channels
  • Team members will only be able to see and participate in private channels they have been added to.
  • Any member of a Team can create a private channel and they then become the owner of that private channel even if they aren’t the owner of the Team.
  • Private Channel owners can add and remove members just like with a Team but to be a member of the Private Channel, the user must be (at least) a member of the Team first.
  • External users/guests can be added to a Private Channel just like with a Team but again the the guest must also be a member of the Team first.
  • Related to the above… YOU CANNOT USE A PRIVATE CHANNEL to invite guests and then only share certain information with them and not the rest of the Team.

But it’s not been an easy journey!

  • Private channels have been the most requested feature on User Voice
  • The feature has been in development for over two years now
  • On March 19th this year Microsoft announced that private channels will be coming out later this year
  • This week the upcoming change started apprwaing in customers Office 365 Message Centre
  • They start rolling out this week (Nov 4th)

Why do we need Private Channels in Teams?

Pretty much ever since Teams was released users have been asking (shouting) for Private Channels. The concept sounds straightforward enough; private channels would only be seen and accessible by the creator and whoever he/she invites. In practice, however, the feature has been a major development challenge.

According to the user requests and comments in Teams User Voice, people generally want more options when it comes to creating channels in Microsoft Teams. Specifically, they want channels that are:

  • Public-Open (Visible anywhere including outside the organisation that anyone can join)
  • Public-Invitation (Visible anywhere including outside the organisation; must be invited)
  • Company-Open (Only visible inside the organisation and anyone inside can join; those outside the organisation must be invited)
  • Company-Invitation (Only visible inside the organisation, must be invited)
  • Secret (Invisible to everyone except existing members, must be invited)

The need has raised quite a debate

What might seem a simple request has created lots of friction and almost brexit like opinion polls over the last couple of years

The “Pro” private channels want it becuase:

  • Private channels enable admins to have more granular control over who can and can’t access certain content.
  • Sensitive material can be more easily gated.
  • Having private channels would also make something like a manager/executive-only chat within a Team possible or make a customer focused team have an internal “private” area

The “anti” private channels don’t like the concept of a private channels because:

  • Teams is all about open collaboration. It was designed to make working with others as seamless as possible. Once you’re in a Team you have access to everything in there so the concept of a private channel goes again the grain.
  • By implementing more controls and requiring the team owner to manage permissions for every private team that gets created, it can quickly become counter productive and ‘anti’ to the purpose of the platform.
  • Private channels can be seen as unnecessary. You can arguably create a new separate team if you want privacy.
  • If you want a private chat between two or more managers/execs, you could simply create and use a regular group chat.

These are all workable (though not necessarily as convenient) options.

Why has it taken so long to develop?

Outside of the long and extensive debates above and Microsoft having to try to make sense of it, consult with large enterprise and event run early alpha tests with clients to test and confirm the pro and cons, the design and implementation of this feature has been complex

In simple terms, Channels in Teams simply were not originally designed or created to be “blocked off” or isolated and so because of this, the architecture of channels doesn’t lend itself to being private and has had to be majorly modified to accommodate this feature

There’s more to it than this though…

Every Team that’s created is enabled by other components of Office 365. For example, Teams need Planner for task management and SharePoint (that includes One Drive) for file storage. If a certain channel in a Team became private…

  • SharePoint permissions would be broken.
  • Planning permissions would be broken.
  • Stream permissions would be broken.
  • Tab level permissions would be broken.

The engineering team at Redmond have had to overcome a whole load of technical and process integration obstacles to provide options for organisation who wish to make part of their open collaboration platform. not open!

I already use Teams? What do I need to do?

You don’t have to do anything. Private channels can be used or disabled should IT not want this feature being used…whilst not released yet the options to control it are available now in the Teams policies settings in the Teams Admin Centre.

There isn’t a process to covert a Team into a channel within another team so this is a process you’ll need to consider and think about and there will be use cases for such you’ll want to consider… A personal example for our organisation is where we have Team sites for customer project work which is internal and another customer Team site we use for sharing and collaborating with a customer..

We in effect have duplicate Teams today for this reason. I expect we will look to consolidate these down to one and use private channels within a wider channel that we will use for internal / company confidential communications and docs.

Of course… This also is a great time to look at house cleaning Teams across the estate…Time will tell on that one!

When it is available?

Private Channels is rolling out this week…so now (almost). Like all new features.. They take a few days to roll out depending on your Office 365 release schedule.

Posted on

You can now include system audio in Teams meetings

August 2019:

Up until now (well, yesterday in my experience, it has not been possible to share your “system audio” when sharing or presenting content such as a video or PowerPoint from within a #MicrosoftTeams meeting.  A new update in in Teams which is rolling out “now” (mine “switched on” yesterday” now lets you do just that! 

This feature is easily missed but you can spot it (and enable) it from the share try tab when in a teams Meeting. When sharing content (such a application or your screen, simply tick the “include system audio” and you are good to go. 

A couple of things…

…you need to check to make sure this works though

First, you need to ensure your Windows audio device is the same as your audio device in Teams. So if you hear the audio from other participants in your headphones you have to make sure that your Windows system sound is played to that device too.

If you don’t have the same audio device selected in Teams and in Windows you will likely see the error below.

Secondly – if you have already stared a sharing session and forgot to enable the system audio, you can enable this “mid-sharing” by clicking the icon in the top control bar. To do this, simply move your mouse to the top of the screen and it should appear, select “Include system audio” by clicking on the button.

What about Live Events?

Right now, from my initial testing anyway, sharing system audio does not work with Live Events which is odd. I’ve seen nothing specifically about this in the Teams Road map but i suspect this is something that will be addressed in time. 

Thanks for Reading.

Rob

Posted on

Planning your Teams deployment… Don’t forget the Video

Teams is not just for chat and content sharing.

A recent Nemertes’ “Workplace Collaboration: 2019-20 Research Study” of more than 625 organisations, found that almost two thirds (64%) of participants were using or already planning to use “team collaboration” applications, while another 15% are already evaluating them for future deployment.

The report goes to say that of those using or planning to use team collaboration applications, a third said that they view them as the “hub for all collaboration”. This clearly shows that organisations see the value of converging disparate applications for chat, meetings, and calling into a single unified, contextual work space that integrates (or can be extended) with other line of business applications.

More importantly, Nemertes found that viewing team collaboration as a work hub correlates with success. Almost half of those organised surveys said they recognised measurable value from their team collaboration deployments (in terms of reducing costs, improving and simplifying processes), view team collaboration as a hub, versus less than a quarter who said they didn’t see any measurable business benefit from their deployments.

Looking at the Enterprise Chat Space (by that i means the likes of Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx Teams etc.,) it’s no surprise that Integrated voice and video conferencing is the most widely used feature of enterprise team chat applications.

For Microsoft Teams users, this means the ability to easily launch a meeting from within a chat or a Team channel, enabling participants to quickly join, converse, and share relevant documents from the team space.

Due to the “addictive-ness” and viral adoption of Teams within organisations, we often experience clients who are struggling to contain the spread of teams usage. This is good for Microsoft and good for users (since the application is clearly nice and useful to use), but if Teams isn’t part of the wider Video and Conference experiences then the usefulness of the meeting and video within Teams becomes limited (trapped) by who can access them and who they can reach.

If for example, an organisation has already invested in web or videoconferencing technology and has also deployed them into their meeting rooms, access to Teams Video becomes limited to users working remotely or gathered around laptops/PCs often “plugged” into the companies expensive meeting room screens in an attempt to “hack” some form of Teams Room System together – the experience is far from optimal.

In an ideal world (where cost isn’t an option), the ideal of course (if teams is the future) is to rip out these existing video conferencing / video rooms and replace them with new Teams Rooms Systems. If Teams is the organisation’s future then this is a good idea and can be done in phases as part of refresh.

Maximising Existing Investment in Room / Conferencing Systems

Since Microsoft Teams is still quote new, the goal for those using Microsoft Teams and who want to allow it to “spread it wings”, should look to integrate their existing meeting room and video endpoints into the Teams conferencing experience. 

This integration easily allows users in an existing (non Microsoft Teams Room) meeting room to easily join a Microsoft Teams meeting, share content, and collaborate with those in other locations either using room systems, or joining from desktop, laptop, or mobile devices seamlessly.

Cloud Video Interop (CVI)

Cloud Video Interop (CVI) services are available from Poly, Pexip and BlueJeans and these are the only certified and support (which is important) services that can enable these third-party meeting rooms and personal video devices (VTCs) to natively join Microsoft Teams meetings.

The integration of Microsoft Teams with existing room systems through Video InterOp Services provides 4 main business benefits:

  1. Retains the native Microsoft Teams environment for Teams users
  2. Users can join conference meet using the same tool that’s integrated into their work hub through the same consistent experience
  3. Leverages an organisations’ existing investments in video meeting room/conferencing systems thereby reducing any transition costs
  4. Allowing organisations to enable remote participants to join their Microsoft Teams meetings from any meeting room or device  – even if they are outside of the company.

Teams is the “Hub for Teamwork”

For Microsoft Teams to be successful and used to potential within an organisation, it should be viewed as a hub for team work rather than just an IM platform to replace Skype or Lync. When deployed an used within an organisation to full potential, Teams can enable the integration of other collaboration and business applications into all your team spaces including existing videoconferencing endpoints.

Enabling such integration will enable and empower your Teams collaborators to enjoy and utilise the investment of an organisations existing meeting room and video conferencing technology with minimal new investment, without replacing what is already there and within the context of the Microsoft Teams meeting experience.

 

Thanks for reading. That’s all for now.

 

Credit and References: Stats and data contained within this blog are taken from Nemertes: A global research-based advisory and consulting firm that analyses the business value of emerging technologies. 

Proudly powered by WordPress