Wishing you could have live reactions during a staff meeting or conference? Finding it intimidating having people staring at you while you talk from their remote work environment? Would you like to use teams within the family? Wish you could talk to Teams and ask it to send a message while you’re out and about? Look no further than the new updates and features coming to Microsoft Teams in 2020! Now that more of us are working remotely than ever before people have been looking for more ways to feel connected and work together as a team. New restrictions have tested every type of software that is aimed at doing just this, but one software that stood out from the rest is Microsoft Teams. Teams brings excellent security, easy to use features and reliability in these times of uncertainty and separation. So, what are these new updates which Teams will be adding to their software? There is a lot to get through, so bare with me here-
- Dynamic view: Microsoft Teams wants to make meetings more engaging and interesting. They will do this by improving the way which participants see shared content. You will be able to view your team in large gallery view which will include up to 49 people on one screen and virtual breakout rooms. This will be helpful for smaller group activities like project planning and brainstorming.
- Together mode: Microsoft Teams will be introducing a mode which can place participants into a shared background. For example, seated in a lecture type environment. This makes it seem like everyone is more together for the speaker and they won’t be so intimated. This will be generally made available in August.
- Video filters: No more not being able to see who you are talking to because of bad lighting. Users can now adjust the filters before joining a meeting to make lights brighter or soften the focus.
- Reflect messaging extension: This will be a tool targeted for managers/ team leaders to create a poll for their colleagues to check in on how they are feeling. Some of these questions will be automatically built in and suggested but you can also have the power to create your own questions. This will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
- Live reactions: These will be Teams version of emojis. This feature will also come to PowerPoint Live presentations, which Microsoft says will be integrated with Teams in the future.
- Chat bubbles: Instead of manually opening a chat during a meeting, Microsoft Teams will now open the chats in the form of a bubble for all participants. This will make chat more streamlined during meetings.
- More people in interactive meetings: Soon Microsoft Teams will be able to support up to 1,000 people with an interactive meeting and up 20,000 in a non-interactive meeting.
- Task App: This is a planner which will unify tasks across Outlook, Planner and Microsoft To Do.
- Cortana: This will be your new best friend. For those who have Microsoft Teams installed on their mobile devices, they will soon be able to download an app and be able to ask Cortana to join a meeting, send messages, share files and make calls
- Stay connected with family: Coming soon, you’ll be able to be connected with your family via Teams. You will be able to collaborate over shared to-do lists, assign tasks to family members, share photos and files and organise the family calendar.
- Suggested replies: Microsoft Teams will suggest replies for you based on the context of the previous message. Replying will be only one tap away.
