New Features in Teams
On this page, we list key new features that have been added to Teams recently, and some which are coming soon to Teams.
New Features Recently Added to Teams
Sometimes it is difficult to navigate the important entries from less important entries in your activity feed. To help with this users can now control the type of notifications that appear in their activity feed.
For information on how to do this - see. our entry under "Notification FAQs" on our "Teams FAQs" page.
Users who prefer to use the Safari browser can now initiate a 1:1 call with another Teams user while using Teams on Safari.
Users can now view real-time captions coming from a CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) provider within the Microsoft Teams meeting window. Meeting organisers and participants will be able to ask their CART captioning providers to stream captions to Microsoft Teams.
For some Teams Live Events, you may want to restart the event after it has already started, or after you have ended it.
Until now, this capability was not available. However, soon you will be able to restart a Teams Live Event if it is accidently ended it or if there is a connection issue during the event.
You can now record your 1:1 calls in Teams.
Notifications can be distracting while in a Teams meeting. You can now easily mute notifications while in a meetings by clicking "More actions" then "Mute notifications".
Microsoft have added a new feature which allows you to press and hold to unmute. This feature is mainly for when users need to stay muted for most of the meeting but need to temporarily unmute to speak.
To use this feature:
- You must be muted to use the feature
- Press and hold Ctrl +Space (Windows) and Option + Space (macOS) to temporarily unmute
- Let the buttons go and you will be muted again
New Features Coming Soon to Teams
Rolling out now
Emojis are being updated in Teams making them more 3D and animated.
Microsoft are adding a feature which will allow you to customise the number of chat messages you see on the screen.
Use the compact setting to fit 50 percent more messages on the screen. Comfortable setting keeps the chat display as it is in Teams today.
Soon you will be able to mirror your video.
This feature will be particularly useful where users are writing something on a whiteboard in their video.
Users who want to use the Safari web browser with Teams will now be able to screen-share at the same time as their video.
Teams users in Outlook for Windows will be prompted to set meeting options when organising Teams meetings for 40 or more participants or 10 or more distribution lists.
Call Health Panel will provide Teams users with functionality to help identify issues during a Teams meeting or a VOIP call. This will give users the diagnostics to investigate audio, video, content sharing or network related issues.
Option for a user to examine audio/video/content sharing and network related issues through a call health panel presenting a list of parameters. The following information will be available to users:
- Audio: Outbound and inbound audio statistics
- Video: Outbound video statistics
- Content Sharing: Outbound and Inbound content sharing statistics
- Network: Insights into the network health and connectivity
The real-time metrics are updated every 15 seconds and provide end user the ability to trace issues as they occur with the audio/video/content sharing/network quality.
This feature can be accessed when in a meeting. To access this feature, when the feature is launched, go to More actions (…) and click on Call Health.
Seeing your own video feed in a Teams meeting can be distracting and may contribute to meeting fatigue for some. Microsoft have introduced a feature which allows you to hide your own video from yourself, but keep it visible to everyone else.
Users will be able to pin a specific message in a chat as a header, providing chat members with quick access to an important message, link or file.
February - March 2022
Microsoft have announced that they will be updating the live transcription feature to make it available across all meeting and call types. Currently only private scheduled meetings have access to the live transcription feature. Microsoft will add live transcription to channel, and meet now meetings, as well as to calls soon.
Note that Microsoft may delay the roll out of one or all of these features, and this FAQ will be updated if this happens.
Before joining a meeting, you can use filters to adjust lighting levels for your video feed in a Teams meeting. This may be particularly useful if you are in a dark room for your meeting.
A new search experience in Teams will make finding messages, people, answers, and files faster and more intuitive. A redesigned search results page provides better context and faster results, with AI-powered relevance based on the people and content you engage with most in Teams and other Microsoft 365 services.
This feature is expected by September 2021.
Paging is currently available in large gallery mode in Teams meetings. By September this feature will also be made available in normal gallery view (participant video feeds in a 3x3 formation) in Teams meetings. This will allow you to move through different pages of participant video feeds.
This feature is expected by September 2021.
A new search results experience in Teams for Desktop clients will be launched to make finding messages, people, answers and files faster and easier.
The redesigned search results page features faster results and improved filtering capabilities.
Microsoft are adding the ability to add a background effect to your video feed during Teams meetings joined on Teams browser.
This will include default background images, customised background images and background blur.
This update provides the option for the user to transmit high fidelity music. Teams will automatically adjust the audio bit rate based on the available bandwidth.
Users can turn on / off components such as echo cancellation, noise suppression, and gain control if needed
In music mode, Teams will support up to 32 kHz sampling rate mono audio at 128 kbps and optimize our internal audio processing settings for reproducing music with high fidelity.
Note - To benefit from this improved fidelity, professional microphones and headphones or high-quality external loudspeakers are ideal (no Bluetooth headsets). This feature is best used to transmit music or non-speech content. For regular conference calls with speech content, to conserve bandwidth, we suggest not enabling music. When using the music mode feature, we suggest using a wired connection rather than wireless.
To enable this feature, when launched, please go to Teams Settings, Device Settings and turn on high fidelity music mode.
- You can choose to turn off echo cancellation when using high quality, closed back headphones.
- If you use a professional microphone which includes external gain adjustment, you can disable the auto-adjust mic sensitivity setting.
- Please make these adjustments prior to starting the meeting.
You will be able to page through different participant's video feeds in the normal Teams meeting view. This will allow you to see more participant videos than previously.
Teams meeting organisers will soon be able to assign the co-organiser meeting role to up to 10 people.
Co-organisers will be granted many of the capabilities of the organiser in the meeting, including being able to:
- Access and modify the meeting options for the meeting
- Admit users from the lobby
- Lock the meeting
Co-organisers will not be able to do the following:
- Create and manage breakout rooms (if you want another user to be able to do this, you need to set them as a breakout room manager following the steps given on our Breakout Rooms page)
- View and download attendance reports
- Manage the meeting recording
- Edit the meeting invitation
April - May 2022
This update will expand available reactions by allowing users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat messages.
Users will be able to pick from 800 Teams emojis.