Microsoft Teams is giving us a lot of new features this April 2022, making the real-time collaboration and communication experience more comfortable for all users. Here are the latest details you might notice in the different sections of your organization’s ultimate messaging app:
Meetings
- Leveraging the “Allow anonymous users to join meetings” settings, users can now anonymously join meetings in other clouds from the Teams desktop app.
- There is a new notification drawer at the top of the screen for the in-meeting system messages in iOS.
- The desktop or window being shared during a Teams meeting now includes audio. It is perfect when showing a video clip or a voiceover.
- Presenters can now choose to be on the left or right side of the content as we as resize their video feed. The content size will be automatically adjusted accordingly.
- Users of the Firefox browser will now receive support for full audio and desktop and window screen sharing in Teams meetings.
- Teams has a new ML-based music detector to give the user a choice to suppress background music or not. Only available for EDU customers as of now.
- Live captions now arrive in Teams on virtual desktop infrastructure for Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix.
Calling
- The Outlook contacts are now available to select for calling accessible through the contact drop-down selection.
- Teams is introducing a customizable disclaimer banner for emergency calling. It appears in the Calls app.
- Administrators can configure end-user call forwarding settings on behalf of users in their tenant via the Teams Admin Center or the Teams PowerShell Module.
Devices
- The “Present” button is now named “Share” and returns to the Teams Rooms console home screen.
Chat & Collaboration
- Editor Text Predictions in Teams mobile now has text prediction and suggests word or phrase inline.
- The new Power Automate tab with different Power Automate flow templates is now included in select team templates.
- Microsoft Fluent emoji style will be arriving in Teams emojis and reactions to give users more than 1800 emojis to use.
- Teams chat’s suggested replies on desktop now utilize assistive AI to provide three short responses relevant to the context of the previous message.
- When you upload files in the Power Automate portal, they will appear in the view details window of an Approval request within Teams.
- The chat app has a new chat filter function to find messages and conversations easily.
Power Platform and custom development
- The message extension-based entry point lets users search and view applicable workflows and trigger pre-configured workflows from the message extension menu.
- The Teams app store is given a new “Automation” category, offering ample new Power Automate templates.
Management
- Admins can control the messaging extensions’ pin order in the compose experience.
- A Teams device store in the Teams admin center is now available in the US and Canada. It will be offered to other international markets later this year.
- The “follow Office preview” policy is now available to Mac users in the Office Current Channel (Preview).
- Microsoft introduces “User request” flows for blocked apps.
Teams for Education
- Notifications will be sent to students and educators when a new Class Notebook page is distributed.
- Teachers using Forms polls in a Teams meeting class will receive a summary report of votes.
Frontline Workers
- Organizations are now allowed to collect and review responses from customers for virtual appointments, thanks to the new integration of Microsoft Forms into the Microsoft Bookings app in Teams.
- Frontliners can now experience the Walkie Talkie app in Teams featuring a push-to-talk button on Kyocera’s DuraForce Ultra 5G and DuraSport 5G.
- The new” Team owners and members” in the tag management settings lets all team members create, edit and adjust tags.
Government
- The brand-new Attendance Dashboard allows measuring of meeting and webinar registration and attendance data.
- Teams webinars can handle up to 1,000 attendees and support registration page creation, email confirmation for registrants, host management for attendee video and audio, attendee reporting, polls, chat, and reactions.
- Incoming meeting nudges or invites with their video on will now be answered automatically for iOS devices.
- “Invite-only meeting” is a new Teams meeting option that directs users not originally invited to the lobby. The host can decide whether to admit them or not.
- Desktop or window shared during a Teams meeting can now include audio.
- Web and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure users can change the Teams meeting layout to Together mode and Large Gallery.
- The Voice Enabled Channels are now in GCC H and DoD.
- Admins are given the new ability to set a bandwidth control policy.
- The Dynamic Caller ID for Voice Enabled Channels is now available for GCC High and DoD.
- Customers in DoD are now allowed to start a team with up to 25,000 participants.
- There is new default for Teams notification style for DoD.