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You can now pause and catch up with town halls in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams gets new features each month. With so many versions of Teams available across different operating systems and types of devices, it can be difficult to keep track of everything that's new. Luckily, Microsoft breaks down all the changes in a monthly roundup. Some of the features listed below were available to select users starting in March but were not generally available. The list also includes brand-new features, such as enhanced OneDrive navigation within Teams. Arguably the headline feature from the latest wave of updates is enhanced OneDrive navigation. Now, when you open OneDrive within Teams, the app will jump to the exact spot you left off the last time you used OneDrive. Here's a rundown of everything new Microsoft listed in its recent Tech Community post: Chat and Collaboration Enhanced OneDrive navigation in Teams Custom file download location for Mac Improved Microsoft Lists links in Teams messages Forward messages with app cards Tag Mentions filter in Activity Increased drop zone for chats when uploading files Meetings, Webinars, and Town Halls IT administrators can upload multiple themes for branded meetings [Premium] Admins can disable ability to send messages in meeting chat before and after the meeting Information barriers moderated meetings Edit display name in meetings Notification that intelligent recap is ready for calls from chat and ‘Meet now’ meetings Set chat notification preference via meeting RSVP Bi-directional calendar syncing between Google Workspace and Teams DVR support in Town hall Post and reply to questions as an organizer Teams Phone Teams Phone extensibility for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center Queues app: barge/whisper/monitor/takeover More seamless migration from on-premises Direct Routing phone numbers to online phone numbers Direct Routing Call Troubleshooting via SIP Ladder Workplace: Places and Teams Rooms Book an individual desk by plugging into a peripheral Live transcription and controls on Teams Rooms on Windows Live captions translation in Teams Rooms on Windows Updates to gallery view in Teams Rooms on Windows Occupancy status on Teams panels Fundamentals and Security Admins can choose automatic or manual adjustment of meeting sensitivity based on the sensitivity level of shared files in Teams meetings [Premium] Brand impersonation phishing protection for GCC, GCC-H and DoD Background blur, virtual and user uploaded backgrounds the new VDI solution AVD Screen Capture Protection and Microsoft Teams compatibility Cross cloud support for the new optimizations for VDI Manage location sharing in Teams Monitor Teams client updates in Teams admin center Teams client health dashboards in Teams admin center Remote contact management for Teams Phone devices in Teams admin center Frontline Worker Solutions Wired headset support to Walkie Talkie on iOS Storyline in Teams Engage in Teams mobile Flexible membership for deploying Teams at scale DVR in Microsoft Teams town halls While enhanced OneDrive navigation is the first feature mentioned by Microsoft's Pete Daderko, my favorite addition is Digital Video Recording (DVR) support for town halls. If you view a town hall on Teams for the web or the desktop app, you can now pause content and then move forward or back to catch up. Since town halls are often attended live, the ability to pause and skip around is a nice improvement. While this functionality isn’t exclusive to Teams, it’s a welcome upgrade. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Microsoft Teams has been around for a while now, and the service appears to be at the top of the priority queue. Following various new features and enhancements, Microsoft Teams is making it easier to connect with users outside of your organization who are not using Teams, thanks to the long-awaited addition of SMS messaging. Back in June 2024, Microsoft announced its plans to furnish the ability to send and receive SMS messages directly from the Teams app on desktop or mobile. Now, Microsoft Teams users may finally send and receive SMS text messages within Teams Chat. As per a Microsoft Learn blog post, this SMS functionality comes with Teams Calling Plans, which is available for users in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada. In case of sending an SMS outside these regions, Teams may block these messages and display failure notification or no delivery confirmation. It is important to note that all SMS messaging to and from Microsoft Teams is considered as: Business messaging Non-consumer messaging Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging. This references mean that SMS in Teams is not categorized as consumer SMS messaging. This clarification that Teams messaging is A2P is essential for regulatory compliance. Regulatory bodies and the Carrier service providers often have strict policy rules for businesses to use SMS communication with customers. As for using SMS messaging on Teams, the organization and its users have to register to use 10DLC (10 Digit Long Code) network. Such registrations reduce the chance of flagging messages as spam. The company intending to use the SMS messaging feature is required to facilitate a registration with The Campaign Registry (TCR) before Microsoft Teams Calling Plan can be enabled for SMS. This registration involves two parts: Brand (identification of company) and Campaign (purpose of SMS operation). Teams Calling Plan Supports SMS capability Included SMS (threshold before paying overage) PAYG (Pay-as-you-go) Yes 0 Domestic 120 Yes 100 Domestic Yes 200 Domestic + International Yes 200 Teams Phone + Calling Plan Bundle Yes Phone + Domestic = 200 (if purchased as Calling Plan bundle) / Phone + PAYG = 0 (if purchased as PAYG bundle) With Microsoft phasing out Skype starting in May, the inclusion of SMS functionality in Teams seems like a strategic move to encourage Skype users to transition to Teams. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of January): 487 RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

A new chat and channels experience for Teams will enter testing next month. What you need to know Microsoft Teams will see a major revamp in the near future that changes how chats, channels, and teams are organized within the app. Teams will no longer have a dedication teams section, instead shifting all text-based communication to the chats section of the app. The new experience will enter public preview this November and be available on the iOS, Android, and desktop versions of Teams. Microsoft Teams has a massive change on the way that alters chatting within the app. The new chat and channels experience removes the dedicated "teams" section of the app and brings chats, teams, and channels under one header. Now, all of your text-based communication will live within the "chats" section of Teams. Before you get too worried, Microsoft is not removing the concept of teams within Teams, even though the tech giant will remove the Teams section of the app when the new experience rolls out in public preview in November. That public preview will be available on iOS, Android, and the desktop version of Teams. The redesigned Microsoft Teams will have an onboarding experience that helps you customize the app's interface. The app will feature custom sections that can be filled with chats, channels, meetings, and AI agents. There will also be a favorites section by default, which will show pinned chats and channels from the current version of Teams. Microsoft outlined the new experience and plans for rollout in a blog post. A Tech Community post dives into further details about the new experience. Granular controls will let you customize if chats and channels appear separately or together. The revamped Teams also has an "@mentions" view that collects all mentions of you from across the app. You can then action any items flagged up to you quickly. Tom Arbuthnot, who provides insight regarding Microsoft 365 at Empowering.cloud, said that this could be "possibly the biggest change in Microsoft Teams history." I agree with that assessment and echo Arbuthnot's thoughts that the new experience will see some pushback. Microsoft Teams without teams? While teams will still exist in the new Microsoft Teams, they will not live in their own section of the app. That's a drastic change, and I'm not sure it will be well-received by everyone. It's not that the new experience is bad. Personally, I prefer the customizable design that can gather different elements together, but it is very different than what people have gotten used to. Change is a tricky thing, even if for the better. I know several people who hated Windows 8 but then got used to the operating system. After years of reluctantly learning the tile-focused interface of Windows 8, those same people were hesitant to upgrade to Windows 10. Even though they liked several of the design elements of Windows 10 more and had previously disliked Windows 8, they had grown accustomed to it. Sometimes, it isn't about what's best, it's about what people are comfortable with, even if that comfort came grudingly. (Image credit: Microsoft) Microsoft Teams is not Windows 8 (thankfully), but I think the same principle applies. Many have learned to use Teams, and in some cases have been forced to use it as organizations chose to use Teams over Slack or other communication platforms. Now, those people are used to the Teams interface and have to learn a new one once again. For those who prefer to keep things separate, Teams will support keeping chats and channels apart from each other. That won't be exactly the same as the current layout of Teams, but it will be nice to have the option. Setting Teams to keep chats and channels separate will be possible during the onboarding process or later. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Microsoft today announced a redesigned chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams. The company claims this update will help users work more efficiently and effectively. Previously, Teams had separate sections for chats, teams, and channels. With the redesign, Microsoft is bringing everything into one place, allowing users to continue conversations without switching context. New filters, including "Unread," "Chat," "Channels," "Meetings," and "Muted," will help users easily triage their messages. When returning to Teams after a break, they can simply click the "Unread" filter to catch up on all unread conversations across chats, channels, and meetings in one place. The new @mention view brings together all messages directed at a specific user into a single interactive list. Instead of searching through multiple conversations for @mentions, users can now access them with a single click. The new "Favorites" section in the left navigation bar is enabled by default, displaying all pinned chats and channels from the previous experience. New custom sections will allow users to organize conversations from chats, channels, meetings, Teams bots, or AI agents into one place. Microsoft Teams will support up to 50 sections and 50 items per section. Sending a new message in channels is now easier. Users can create a chat or channel post from the same place, eliminating the need to navigate to the specific channel first. Microsoft will not force this new combined chat and channel experience on users. Instead, it will offer controls allowing users to customize their experience based on their preferences. Users can choose to view chat and channels separately, see message previews, or display all channels in a single list. This new chat and channel experience will be available on both desktop and mobile. Customers with access to the Microsoft public preview will be able to try out the new experience starting in November. You can learn more about this new experience in the video below. Finally, Microsoft also revealed that it will begin testing threaded conversations with Teams users this quarter, expanding testing in early 2025. Threaded conversations will be broadly available in mid-2025. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of September): 4,292 news posts RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Microsoft has posted a new notification in the Admin Center to notify users about the future state of the new Teams client on older Windows 10 and 11 versions. Soon, the app will start nagging users to update their operating systems to remain supported, and in a few months, Teams will stop working altogether. Here is the company's reasoning: Starting October 15, 2024, the new Teams desktop client will show a banner with a prompt to update from an unsupported operating system to a newer release. This will affect customers with Windows 10 version 21H2 and older, Windows 10 and 11 LTSC (not Modern Lifecycle), and macOS 11. On macOS 12, the banner will show up one month later. Teams will continue operating on unsupported operating systems, but not for long. On Windows 10 21H2 and older, it will cease operations on January 15, 2025. On Windows 10 and 11 LTSC, that will happen on August 15, 2025. As for macOS, the new Teams will stop working on macOS 11 on November 15, 2024, and on macOS 12 on March 15, 2025. Launching the new Teams on unsupported operating systems will result in a blocking page with a requirement to update and a link to a support page describing the situation in more detail. You can find the full system requirements for the new Teams here. Microsoft says IT Admins would "plan a regular OS update cadence" to avoid disruption. More information about the upcoming Teams compatibility changes can be found in MC898394 on the Admin Center. Source RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years. 2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of August): 3,792 news posts

As usual, during the last part of each month, the Microsoft Teams division has a new blog post that goes over the many updates it has added during the last month of January 2024. We have already reported on some of these additions, including the new 3D avatar and locations that are available for Teams users with the Microsoft Mesh technology. We have also reported that the AI-based background feature became generally available earlier this week. Another new feature that is new to us is the ability to forward chat messages. Microsoft stated in the blog post: If you are using Teams with Google's Chrome or Microsoft's Edge browser, you now has support for up to 9 video chats on screen in a 3x3 layout, instead of the previous 4 videos in a 2x2 design. Business administrators and managers can now set up specific employees to handle on-demand services with their own appointment time duration in Teams. The Teams mobile apps have received a few improvements in January as well. They include a new user interface for calls, as well as the ability for mobile Teams users to see the current status of a meeting, including who is in the meeting, how long it has lasted up until that moment, and if someone is recording it. Microsoft also revealed a number of new third-party apps that launched for Teams in January. One of them is the well-known Calm sleep and meditation app. Microsoft says: The Calm app for Teams has a total of over 3,000 sessions that can be accessed. Source

Update 2: 12:18 am ET January 27 - The Microsoft 365 Status X page has posted the following: Update 3: 3:22 am ET January 27 - The Microsoft 365 Status X page has posted an update: Original story: If you have been having issues signing onto or using your Microsoft Teams service, you are not alone. Teams is currently experiencing outages that have affected the online meeting and collaboration service worldwide. Microsoft first announced Teams was having problems on its Microsoft 365 Status X (formerly Twitter) account at 11:45 am Eastern time today, saying "We're investigating an issue impacting multiple Microsoft Teams features." A follow-up X post at 12:17 pm Eastern time said that the company "identified a networking issue impacting a portion of the Teams service" and that it was "performing a failover to remediate impact." The last post on the account, at 1:22 pm Eastern time, has this update from Microsoft: Meanwhile, Microsoft's Service Status page shows that Teams has quite a few problems at the moment: The status page ended with this message: We will continue to keep an eye out on this ongoing Teams outage and will update this post as needed. Update: 4 pm Eastern time - It looks like Teams features in some parts of the world are still down. The Microsoft Service Status page states: Source

Microsoft Teams never seems to stop making improvements, adding in changes, or introducing new features. Today, Microsoft announced a bunch of new features related to the gallery view feature for online video meetings. These features will be available as a public preview later in January. In a blog post, Microsoft revealed that the new default gallery view will put all meeting attendees in boxes of equal size in a 16:9 aspect ratio. This will be the setting even if a person's video is turned off. AI will be used to make sure people who raise their hands or speak during a meeting will have their viewpoints optimized. While the default gallery view will have 16 people on screen, there will be options in place to change that down to four or nine people or all the way up to 49 folks on screen. People who don't want to see themselves on the screen will be able to hide their own box from their view of the meeting gallery, although everyone else in the meeting will still be able to see them. There will also be a new option for people to move their own box in the gallery view to the side or on the top of the main gallery. In addition, users will have a way to place the tiles of people who don't have their video cameras activated at the top of the main gallery to focus on the people who do have their video cameras turned on. Teams has also added a new Light Theme option that's available for all users right now. Microsoft stated: Microsoft is also making changes to Teams invites "to better group related information as well as clean it up visually," which will be added sometime in February. The link to join meetings will also become shorter sometime in the second quarter of 2024. People who use Microsoft Teams (free) with a personal Microsoft Account will soon be able to join Teams work meetings without having to leave the Teams client. That will go live sometime in February. Source

Microsoft constantly adds new features and improvements to its Teams service for paid commercial users. However, it also adds a few new features every month for personal users, under the Microsoft Teams (free) brand. This week, the company revealed what it added to the free edition for the month of March 2024. In a blog post, Microsoft announced that Windows 11 users of the free edition of Teams can now create what it calls a Community Bot. It's a new automatic welcome message that is sent to a user when they join a Teams (free) community group. Microsoft stated: Community group leaders can add the bot message by selecting the community they wish from the list, and then clicking on the More options (…) menu next to the community name. They can select the Community Bot option and write the welcome message. They can then preview it and finally, they can select the Save option to have it ready for any new community members. Microsoft Teams (free) also added two new features for iOS and Android users in the past month. One is a new noise suppression feature for meetings. You can use the default Auto setting in the apps which will automatically make the changes to the noise suppression levels, or manually switch it from Low to High. Be aware that the High option will block all noise except your own voice. Finally, mobile app users for Microsoft Teams (free) can now add a website link in community groups. Once added, the link will be available for all members of that community along with anyone who gets an invite link to that group. Source

Microsoft separated Teams from its Office products in Europe last year to address regulator concerns. Now it seems the company will be implementing this change globally. According to a Reuters report, Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally. A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters: The unbundling means Microsoft enterprise customers around the globe will be able to purchase Microsoft 365 subscriptions without Teams, or have to buy a standalone version of Teams. The spokesperson added: The report states that starting April 1, customers will have the option to either continue with their current arrangement, renew their existing license, update it, or switch to the new offers available. As for the pricing, Reuters notes: The decision comes after the European Commission (EC) opened a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams software with the Office productivity suite last year. However, the EC first received a complaint against Microsoft regarding its bundling of Teams with Microsoft 365 from one of Teams' competitors, Slack, over three years ago. Slack contended that packaging the products together provides Microsoft with an unfair advantage. Microsoft has yet to publicly announce the changes regarding the unbundling of Teams officially. Source

Microsoft is making some new Copilot announcements today, this time tied into its popular Teams online meeting and collaboration service. They include some additional Copilot enhancements specifically for people who attend Teams meetings. Teams already includes a way for users to get summaries of meetings via Copilot under the label Intelligent Recap. Today's blog post states that Microsoft Teams will add a way for Copilot to include "information and insights from the meeting chat." That feature will roll out sometime in May. In April, Microsoft plans to add a way for Teams users to access Copilot so they can get help with composing messages for meetings. Copilot will be able to create a longer message with just a few text prompts. The company is promoting this as a way to save time in writing messages in Teams meetings. In June, Copilot's Intelligence Recap feature will be extended to voice messages for VoIP and Public Switched Telephone Network calls in Teams. This specific feature will be available for Teams Premium users. In a separate blog post, Microsoft revealed even more features that will be added specifically for Teams Premium users. One of them that will be added in Apri will let organizers of Teams town halls get access to live translated captions in 10 different languages. Another feature that's launching right now is adding Copilot's Intelligent Recap feature for the Teams apps on iOS and Android. Teams Premium admins now have the option to set up a background for meetings that cannot be changed by the meeting's attendees. Also, Teams Premium company subscribers can now add their company's logo and image to the Teams launcher screen. Microsoft has also announced a new Teams app called Queues that lets users take customer calls in Teams. Microsoft says: The new app will be available sometime this summer. Source

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would give people who were still using the classic Teams desktop app some more time to make the transition to the more recent "Teams 2.0" version, until at least July 1, 2024. This week, the company offered some more concrete info on when support for classic Teams will end and also when it will become completely unavailable to use. In a support page on Microsoft's site, the company confirmed that it has started sending notifications to classic Teams users, warning them that the app will reach its official end-of-support date of July 1, 2024. After that date, Microsoft will no longer release any updates, patches, or new features for classic Teams users. While the classic Teams app won't get any more updates after July 1, it will still be useable for people and businesses who have yet to make the move to the new Teams desktop app, After July 1, classic Teams users will see another warning notification, informing them that it is no longer supported. Those notification warnings can be dismissed but they will continue to show up occasionally for people still using the older app. However, the real day of reckoning is when the classic Teams app will no longer work at all. Microsoft has announced that anyone using classic Teams on older and unsupported operating systems (Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and MacOS Sierra 10.12) will begin to see warnings in August that the app will no longer work after October 23, 2024. After that date, those users who try to use the app will see another notification saying their use of the app has now been blocked. Those users can continue to access Teams on supported web browsers. For all other users, the shutdown of the classic Teams app will take a bit longer, but it will happen. The blocking of the use of classic Teams all supported Windows and MacOS operating systems will happen on July 1, 2025. Source

Unbundling Teams from Office has apparently failed to impress EU regulators. Brussels is set to issue new antitrust charges against Microsoft over concerns that the software giant is undermining rivals to its videoconferencing app Teams. According to three people with knowledge of the move, the European Commission is pressing ahead with a formal charge sheet against the world’s most valuable listed tech company over concerns it is restricting competition in the sector. Microsoft last month offered concessions as it sought to avoid regulatory action, including extending a plan to unbundle Teams from other software such as Office, not just in Europe but across the world. However, people familiar with their thinking said EU officials were still concerned that the company did not go far enough to facilitate fairness in the market. Rivals are concerned that Microsoft will make Teams run more compatibly than rival apps with its own software. Another concern is the lack of data portability, which makes it difficult for existing Teams users to switch to alternatives. The commission’s move would represent an escalation of a case that dates back to 2020 after Slack, now owned by Salesforce, submitted a formal complaint over Microsoft’s Teams. It also would end a decade-long truce between EU regulators and the US tech company, after a series of competition probes that ended in 2013. The EU then issued a 561 million euro fine against Microsoft for failure to comply with a decision over the bundling of the Internet Explorer browser with its Windows operating system. Charges could come in the next few weeks, said the people familiar with the commission’s thinking. Rivals of Microsoft and the commission are meeting this week to discuss the case, in an indication that the charges are being prepared, the people said. However, they warned that Microsoft could still offer last-minute concessions that would derail the EU’s case, or the commission might decide to delay or scrap the charges against the company. Microsoft risks fines of up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover if found to have breached the EU competition law. The company declined to comment but referred to an earlier statement that said it would “continue to engage with the commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe.” The commission declined to comment. The move against Microsoft comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of its activities. The EU is also investigating whether the tech group’s $13 billion alliance with ChatGPT maker OpenAI breaks competition law. Microsoft is also part of a handful of tech companies, including Google and Meta, caught as “gatekeepers” under the new Digital Markets Act, meaning it has special responsibilities when trading in Europe. The tech company has also faced complaints from European cloud computing providers that are concerned that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the sector to force users to buy its products and squashing competition from smaller start-ups in Europe. Source

The European Union is still conducting an investigation if Microsoft violated its anti-trust regulations when it bundled its Team online meeting services with Microsoft 365 subscriptions. This week, a new report from Reuters claims that Microsoft's tech rivals have been sent a questionnaire concerning this topic by the EU's European Commission regulatory agency. The European Commission officially began its investigation into Microsoft for bundling Teams in July, over three years after Slack sent a complaint to the EU, stating that Microsoft was "hiding the true cost" of Teams to its customers by bundling it with Microsoft 365 with no option of offering Teams on its own. In August, Microsoft announced it would offer Teams as a separate service in the European Economic Area, and Switzerland starting on October 1. The prices for that stand-alone service are €5 per month or €60 per year. Microsoft also announced plans to improve interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 with other apps and services along with adding support for "third-party solutions to host Office web applications." However, these moves by Microsoft were reportedly not enough for the European Commission to stop their investigation. In this week's story, Reuters stated: The European Commission is reportedly planning to send a list of objections to Microsoft sometime in early 2024. Officially, Microsoft repeated previous statements that it was committed to finding solutions to address the needs of the EU regulators. Source

Among the many apps that are available for Microsoft Teams users is the Updates app. It allows, among other things, for employees to send reports to their employers about their work progress, like daily updates, incident notes, and more. Today, Microsoft announced a number of new features to the Updates apps that it claims will help streamline workers' reports and more. In a blog post, Microsoft stated: The Updates app in Teams has also added a new export feature, which will allow users to send all of their update submissions to be collected into an Excel spreadsheet. Microsoft says this should make it easier for users to analyze that data and also to share it with others via Excel. In addition, The Updates app includes a feature that allows employee-submitted data to be organized by questions. For example, one of the questions might be, "How many projects are you working on?", with the numbered answer displayed. Employers can use data collected and organized in this way to better view what their employees are working on and if they need help in that area. Teams also allows workers to "like" info on the Updates app submitted by others as well as leave comments. The blog states these specific features were put in " to boost teamwork and make work more efficient." Microsoft launched the new "Teams 2.0" app for Windows and Mac in early October. The old "classic" version of the Teams app is scheduled to auto update to the new Teams app after March 31, 2024. Source

As part of today's Microsoft Ignite 2023 developers conference, the company announced a ton of new features it plans to add to its Teams online meeting and collaboration service. The announcement included word that Teams would make its new immersive spaces feature generally available sometime in January 2024. The feature, which launched in a public preview in October, will allow Teams users to join meetings in full 3D virtual spaces as avatars. In addition to ordinary meetings, these immersive spaces can also let team members have fun, by roasting virtual marshmallows, throwing beanbags, answering icebreaker questions and more. Microsoft Mesh, the platform used to make custom Teams immersive spaces, will also be made generally available in January. Some of the other new features coming to Teams meetings include: Teams chats and channels will get some new additions as well, including a way to add a group chat profile picture, a way to customize default reactions and more. Microsoft also announced that the new Teams experience is now available on the web for people who use the Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome browsers. Source

Microsoft has posted what has now become a monthly tradition, revealing all of the new features it has added to the various versions of its Teams apps and services for the last month. In this case, the blog post looked back at December 2023's new additions and improvements. The blog post itself goes over many of the new features and changes we have already reported on in the past few weeks. That includes a new OneDrive app for storing files in Teams, along with new features to its Shifts app, and the fact that the Teams app is now generally available for virtual desktops. December also saw a new way to create custom backgrounds via AI for channel announcements. However, there were other new additions and improvements added for Teams users in the past month. One of them is a new search experience for chats and channels that includes a new “find in channel” search button. Users can now click on that button to search for things in a specific chat or channel, and have the results of that search show up on the right-side panel. Search filters like “files”, “group chats” or “teams and channels” have also been added to Teams so user can narrow down search results. Other new features added to Teams in December included a new chat button in the activity feed that will let users start a chat with a caller that they might have missed initially. Users of the Copilot AI chatbot in Teams can now see previous chats they may have had. The blog post also covers a number of devices that are now certified for Microsoft Teams. They include a new Logitech Sight video conferencing camera, along with the HP 960 4K streaming camera and more. Microsoft recently revealed that over 320 million active monthly users access the Teams apps and services. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Source

Microsoft published a post in the Microsoft 365 Message Center with details about the upcoming end of support for the legacy messaging infrastructure. The company highlighted the importance of staying up-to-date and using the latest version of its software to avoid service disruptions and other issues. According to Microsoft, the legacy service infrastructure for chat messaging will reach its end of life by the end of March 2024. After that, Teams clients older than three months may experience delayed chat messages in one-on-one chats, group chats, and channels. The change will affect Microsoft Teams Desktop, Teams on iOS and Android, and Virtual Desktop Interface clients (VDI). It will not change how phones, panels, meeting rooms, Surface Hubs, or the web version operate. In addition to issuing the warning, Microsoft provided a short guide about updating Teams to the latest version on computers and mobile devices. IT Admins can pass this information to their clients to ensure they are running the most recent version. Source: handsontek.net Source

A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that a number of new features would be rolling out shortly for its Teams online meeting and collaboration tools. One of the features mentioned was a way to change and decorate a person's background when they were on camera during an online meeting. Today, the company announced that feature is now rolling out for Microsoft Teams Public Preview and Microsoft 365 Targeted Release users. In a post on the Microsoft 365 Insider blog, Microsoft stated: If you want to change and decorate your background either before or during an online video meeting you can select the Effects and Avatars option. You can then pick the  Video effects selection and then you can click on the Decorate button. You should see the Background settings pane. You can pick a theme from the pane, and then click on the Generate backgrounds button. Pick one of the backgrounds, and then click on the Apply and save background button so your custom background is available for others to see in the meeting. At the moment, this new feature is available for Teams Public Preview or Microsoft 365 Targeted Release users. Admins must set up their Teams clients to accept public preview features. They must also have a paid Teams Premium license and they have to use the new Teams app for Windows or Mac. Microsoft has already announced that the new custom background decoration feature will be generally available for Teams Premium users sometime in early 2024. Other new features, including using avatars in virtual immersive spaces meetings, will also roll out generally for Teams users in the early part of next year. Source

Microsoft released emergency security updates for Edge, Teams, and Skype to patch two zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source libraries used by the three products. The first bug is a flaw tracked as CVE-2023-4863 and caused by a heap buffer overflow weakness in the WebP code library (libwebp), whose impact ranges from crashes to arbitrary code execution. The second one (CVE-2023-5217) is also caused by heap buffer overflow weakness in the VP8 encoding of the libvpx video codec library, which could lead to app crashes or allow arbitrary code execution following successful exploitation. The libwebp library is used by a large number of projects for encoding and decoding images in the WebP format, including modern web browsers like Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and the native Android web browsers, as well as popular apps like 1Password and Signal. libvpx is used for VP8 and VP9 video encoding and decoding by desktop video player software and online streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video. "Microsoft is aware and has released patches associated with the two Open-Source Software security vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-4863 and CVE-2023-5217," Redmond revealed in a Microsoft Security Response Center advisory published Monday. The two security flaws only affect a limited number of Microsoft products, with the company patching Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Teams for Desktop, Skype for Desktop, and Webp Image Extensions against CVE-2023-4863 and Microsoft Edge against CVE-2023-5217. The Microsoft Store will automatically update all affected Webp Image Extensions users. However, the security update will not be installed if Microsoft Store automatic updates are disabled. Exploited in spyware attacks Both vulnerabilities were tagged as exploited in the wild when disclosed earlier this month, although there are no details on these attacks. However, the bugs were reported by Apple Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR), Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG), and the Citizen Lab, the last two research teams with a proven record of finding and disclosing zero-days exploited in targeted spyware attacks. "Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix," Google said when revealing that CVE-2023-4863 has been exploited in the wild. "We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven't yet fixed." Google assigned a second CVE ID (CVE-2023-5129) to the libwebp security vulnerability, tagging it as a maximum severity bug, which caused confusion within the cybersecurity community. While a Google spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment, the new CVE ID was later rejected by MITRE for being a duplicate of CVE-2023-4863. Update: Revised article to remove incorrect link between CVE-2023-5217 and Predator spyware attacks. Source

As usual, Microsoft added a number of new features in its Teams online meeting and collaboration service for the past month of September 2023. It has posted the highlights of those new features, and more, in the latest Teams blog post. One new feature now allows Teams recorded meetings to be watched by attendee afterwards on demand. Microsoft stated: Once a webinar ends, organizers can publish the video recording and automatically send an email to attendees with a link to watch the video on-demand. The published video will be hosted on the online event page. A recording can be published from the recordings section within the webinar setup and management experience. Another new feature that's was added last month lets Teams admins to "create up to 1,000 standard or shared channels in new and existing teams." This will be expanded to private channels at a later date. Yet another new addition in Teams lets users who are making and sending video clips message a way to blur their background, and also a way to just record their screen. They can also now record and send audio-only messages. Microsoft has also added support for adding guest users between tenants across Microsoft clouds. The company stated: Guests can participate in a full collaboration experience including audio/video, screen share, file share and both 1:1 and 1:many chat. Admins can establish trust between tenants and across the Microsoft clouds via Entra B2B and Cross Tenant Access Settings. In September, Microsoft added access to live translations of meeting transcripts for Teams Premium members in a public preview. Last week, it announced the new Town Hall feature, which will allow for up to 20,000 people to join a Teams presentation, will launch for commercial users on October 5. Finally, today is the day that Microsoft said it would start offering Teams services as a stand alone product outside of Microsoft 365 for the European Economic Area, as well as in Switzerland. This was an attempt by Microsoft to avoid an anticompetitive fine by the EU, although unconfirmed reports claim the effort won't be enough. Source

Microsoft has been testing the new version of its Teams app for Windows since March. Now there's word that the new Teams, also known as Teams 2.0, is finally coming to the Mac PC platform very soon. Petri reports, via a post on the private Microsoft 365 admin center site, that the public preview of the Mac client for the new Teams will be available sometime later in early September 2023. Admins who are a part of Microsoft 365's public preview and/or its targeted release programs should see the toggle to switch from the current Teams Mac client to the new Teams Mac app in the near future. Once the public preview for the new Teams Mac client begins, users can access it, and then switch back to the current Teams client at any time, according to Microsoft. The main improvements in the new Microsoft Teams 2.0 come on the back end. Microsoft claims that users should see the app launch up to twice as fast compared to the current version, and also join meetings up to twice as fast as well. At the same time, the app should use up to 50 percent less memory on their Mac PC and use up to 70 percent less storage than the current edition. Besides the performance upgrades, the new Teams will also offer other features including simplified actions to reduce the amount of clutter for things like notifications, messages, and more. Users will also be able to remain signed into the new Teams app, even if they switch to different organizations and accounts. Recently, Microsoft announced the new Teams will make it easier for users to switch between chats with different groups in the same organization. Microsoft has stated that the new Microsoft Teams app should become generally available sometime in October 2023. Also, Anupam Pattnaik, Microsoft's Product Lead for the revamped Teams version, stated earlier this year in a podcast interview that the new Teams will become the default version by late 2023. Source

As usual, Microsoft is packing in a bunch of new features to its various Teams collaboration services for the month of August. In a blog post, Microsoft announced that the animated background for Teams video users is now available after being launched in June for Microsoft 365 Insiders. Microsoft stated in the blog: The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows you to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Microsoft has also made some changes to the user interface in Teams Phones. There's now a redesigned dial pad along with a new “dial pad only” viewpoint when a phone is in landscape mode. Microsoft has also made some changes to the chat message hover menu in Teams: Replying to a specific message in a chat thread or editing a message you’ve sent is now easier with an intuitive hover menu design. Alongside emojis and reactions, the hover menu now includes the reply button icon, making it easy to quickly reply to a received message. If you need to make an edit to a sent message, simply click on the edit icon button that shows up in the hover menu on sent messages. Teams chat can also be switched over to a new compact mode that, among other things, adds things like time stamps and extra line breaks between each message. It also includes indicators of who sent messages. Teams Rooms also now support spatial audio, which we first reported on at the beginning of August. Microsoft has also added a new sync feature to task lists in Microsoft Loop. It stated: Tasks added to task lists in Microsoft Loop components will now be accessible in Microsoft Planner and To Do. Simply edit your task list component in Outlook or Teams and your changes will appear across apps, helping you stay on top of your tasks no matter which app you're in. There's a lot more to check out in the Teams August 2023 blog update, including a number of new third-party Teams hardware devices. Source

Last week, Microsoft revealed that the Mesh public preview for its Teams service would be available sometime in early October. While we await for the company to make an official announcement for the use of Mesh in Teams, it has now released the Mesh toolkit for developers in a public preview. In case you are unfamiliar with Mesh, it is a way for businesses to create 3D interactive environment, It uses avatars for employees to access in online meetings and those avatars can offer different reactions during events. Online Teams meetings can be turned into virtual spaces where team members can play interactive games for worker bonding. In a blog post, Microsoft talked about how developers can use the Mesh toolkit: The toolkit supports Unity so you can build environments in a familiar way and leverage existing scenes and assets to build experiences in Mesh. You can also enrich your experiences by adding interactive content, inserting logic, integrating with business data, or infusing AI – all with physics and interaction tools that you can leverage out-of-the-box. The blog post goes over many of the features of both the Mesh 3D experiences and creating custom ones with the toolkit. They can be created for use on the PC or with Meta's Quest VR headsets. At the same time, Mesh also uses enterprise-grade security that's based on Microsoft 365. While the toolkit allows developers to make Mesh environments from scratch, it also includes samples that can be used as the basis for a project: The Mesh 101 sample is a great place to start. It includes a pre-built Unity project and step-by-step tutorial that will show you how to add Mesh features and create an interactive experience. Developed for those with intermediate to advanced Unity skills, the tutorial will give you hands-on experience setting up your dev environment, adding interactivity with Mesh scripting, and triggering animations with Mesh physics. You’ll be able to see your progress and simulate the multi-user experience in Unity Play Mode. Custom Mesh environments do require the use of a paid Microsoft Teams Premium license. Source

After launching as a public preview earlier this year, Microsoft has officially launched the new version of its Teams online meetings and collaboration app for Windows and Mac desktop platforms. In a blog post, Microsoft noted the improvements it has added to the Teams app since its public preview launch in March: New Teams now has full feature parity for almost all features including custom line-of-business apps, third-party apps, breakout rooms, 7x7 video, call queues, PSTN calling, contextual search in chats and channels, cross-post a channel conversation, and more. We have focused on providing high-quality performance and enhancing the basics in areas such as reliability, security, and IT management to make sure that new Teams meets the evolving requirements of your organization. The new Microsoft Teams app has been promoted by the company as a major revamp from the ground up. It says the new app launches twice as fast as the older app, and also people can enter meetings twice as fast. It is also supposed to use less memory and disc space. At the same time, the new Teams app also has a simplified user interface with more personalisation options. Microsoft also says that the new Teams app will work with its Copilot generative AI assistant: Copilot in Teams chat helps you get up to speed on conversations by quickly reviewing the main points, action items, and decisions without having to scroll through long threads. You can unlock your meeting productivity by using Copilot in Teams meetings to summarize key discussion points—including who said what and where people are aligned or disagree—and suggest action items, all in real time during a meeting. The Classic Teams app can be turned into the new Teams app by clicking on the toggle at the upper left corner of the app. Microsoft says that the Classic Teams app will automatically be updated to the new Teams version in the coming months. Enterprise customers should start seeing the new Teams toggle in the Classic Teams app, and a full update schedule for those users is available at Microsoft's support page. Source