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
With this update, Assignments, Grades, Class Notebook and Insights (coming soon) will move to the main class team navigation menu and can be easily accessed no matter what channel or tab you might have focus on within the class team at the time.
You can now share PowerPoint presentations directly to your Teams meeting from PowerPoint on the browser.
While in a Teams meeting, you can present your presentations by clicling the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for the web to your audience in your Teams meeting. You can either access this button in the top right corner of PowerPoint on the browser or under the Slide Show tab.
Pre-requisites:
- Install Teams Desktop app
- Files must be stored on SharePoint or OneDrive for Business
- Presenter must join a meeting or a call before clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint
Presenters will be able to select standout mode when presenting content in a Teams meeting. This mode will overlay their video feed over their shared content, allowing for more interaction with the slides, like an in-person meeting would offer.
An image of what standout mode will look like is available across.
Dynamic view automatically optimizes shared content and video participants in Teams meetings. New controls let you personalize the view to suit your preferences and needs, such as the ability to show shared content and specific participants side-by-side.
- Video and audio participants shown separately
- Shared content to appear larger
- Users to pin or spotlight particular people in the meeting and make them appear larger than other participants
- View Together Mode alongside content
- Users to dock the participant gallery to the top of their screen
After joining a Teams call on one device, you will be able to join the same call on a second device.
For example, going from desktop to a mobile device or even to another desktop.
Additionally, they will be able to transfer a call from one device to a second device, in the same call, if there is a need to share content from the second device.
Previously, in order to turn on live transcription (and to have a transcription and captions generated at the end of a meeting) both start recording and start transcription would need to be selected in a meeting. Microsoft have recently updated this. Now, when start recording is selected in a meeting, live transcription is automatically turned on.
The assignment experience in breakout rooms is changing.
Participant assignment will move from the Breakout Rooms’ right panel to a separate window that pops up when selecting Assign Participants. The enhanced interface allows you to sort by participants or rooms. You can also select multiple participants and assign them to rooms by using the check boxes next to the participants' names. This helps you quickly find your participant or room and speeds up the assignment process.
Large gallery mode in Teams mobile will be updated and optimised for mobile devices.
Users attending meetings through the Teams mobile app, will be able to swipe through all participants in a meeting, with 10 participants appearing on each page.
New Features Coming Soon to Teams
Rolling out now
The long awaited feature allowing you to reply to specific chat messages in a chat is rolling out now.
The original message will be quoted in the reply text box, helping everyone in the chat to more easily understand the message’s context. Quoted replies will be available in 1:1, Group and Meeting chats.
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.
The participant list in Teams meetings is changing. The new list will show 20 attendees initially, with the option to "See more" and show up to 260 of the most active attendees in alphabetical order.
A maximum of 20 participants for each of the sections will be displayed in the initial view, with an option to drill in and view more participants within that section. For the lobby, you can review the full list before you admit all into the meeting. The roster will display details of most active participants in the meeting arranged in alphabetical order. There are no changes to the participants action menu.
Teams users in Outlook for Windows will be prompted to set meeting options when organizing Teams meetings for 40 or more participants or 10 or more distribution lists.
The new file share experience in Teams will change how users create shareable links and set permissions for their files stored in Teams.
When users share a file from within Teams, they will have the option to create sharing links for that file. As well as instantly set permissions for that link to provide access to: anyone, people with existing access, people within your organisation or specific people.
Speed Dial is coming to iOS and Android and users can now get into a call with their preferred contacts with greater efficiency than before.
Speed dial contacts that users have added on desktop or desk phone devices will now show up on iPhones/iPads and Android devices as well. Users can also add and remove speed dial contacts, directly from the mobile Calls app.
This feature is rolling out now.
September 2021
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.
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.
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.
With this new feature you will be able to send a chat message containing a live component that can be edited in real time, by everyone in the chat.
Fluid components in Teams chat will allow you to send a message with a table, action items, or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone.
Microsoft are adding a new feature called spam call notifications. Users will receive a notification when calls in the Teams are likely to be spam. The notification will appear as a spam label beside calls which are likely spam.
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.
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.
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.
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 feature is expected by September 2021.
Microsoft are adding the ability for the meeting organiser to extend the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters.
This feature will enable meeting organisers to add and remove presenters as Breakout Room managers. By taking control from Breakout rooms management panel, appointed presenters will be allowed to perform Breakout room operations, as well as joining Rooms as a Breakout Room manager.
How the feature will work
- Meeting organisers will set up breakout room managers via the toggle in breakout room settings
- When Breakout rooms managers join the meeting, they will see the Breakout rooms icon in toolbar
- Breakout rooms managers will have to take control to manage rooms. (Only one manager can manage rooms at the same time).
- Once in control, Breakout rooms managers can perform operations to manage Breakout rooms, such as:
- Assign users to rooms add/delete rooms open/close rooms
- Re-assign users to rooms
- Send announcements
- Recreate rooms
- Set timer
- Adjust other Breakout rooms settings
- Presenter support Take control button
- When rooms are started, all Breakout room managers (also those not in control) can join opened Breakout Rooms by clicking on the menu next to each room and selecting Join room.
Limitations
Note there are some limitations to this feature:
- Will only be available on Teams desktop
- Only university of edinburgh users can be breakout room managers
We expect this feature is roll out in September.
The Safari browser will soon be able to display up to four participant videos (2x2) during a Teams meeting.
We expect this feature is roll out in September.
November 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.
We expect this feature to roll out in November.