Flotek is excited to share the latest updates in Microsoft Teams that will make your workday even more efficient and enjoyable. The recent improvements have already made collaboration easier, and now with the new Copilot features, productivity is set to soar!
Check out the new features below, and let us know which ones you find most helpful or jump straight to your favourite category:
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Microsoft Places
Deciding whether to go to the office depends on your in-person meetings and who else plans to be there. Copilot in Places makes this decision easier by recommending if today is a good day to come into the office based on your scheduled in-person meetings, your coworkers’ planned attendance, and any leader guidance that exists.
Recommended in-office days with Copilot
Deciding whether to go to the office depends on your in-person meetings and who else plans to be there. Copilot in Places makes this decision easier by recommending if today is a good day to come into the office based on your scheduled in-person meetings, your coworkers’ planned attendance, and any leader guidance that exists.
Managed bookings with Copilot
With schedules and meetings constantly shifting, avoid the frantic rush to update your room booking at the last minute. Places goes beyond a simple booking app, using Copilot to help you manage room bookings. Regardless of shifting schedules, Copilot will ensure you always have the right space to work.
Places Finder
All meeting rooms and desks are not created equal. Save yourself time figuring out which room or desk has the space and technology you need using Places finder, your booking helper.
Team Guidance
Creating the ideal in-person schedule for your team can be daunting. Utilise team guidance to identify the most effective days for team office presence. This tool helps establish clear expectations and ensures a balanced work rhythm that meets the needs of the group.
Quick Book
Forgetting to book meeting rooms for the day leads to a last-minute rush to book. For in-office meetings without a room booked, Places will prompt you to book rooms and offer recommendations from the Places card. View suggested rooms for each meeting, and ‘quick book’ rooms in bulk for the day. Book a space for all your meetings all at once.
Chat and Collaboration
Copilot file summary in chat
Launching in early 2025, file summaries in Teams chats will help you quickly grasp key points from shared Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs without opening them. Available on mobile, this feature respects file security policies, ensuring only authorised users receive summaries which carry the same sensitivity label as the original file.
Storyline integrated in Teams
Launching in early 2025, employee communications often get lost across various platforms, causing frustration, delays, and information overload. Storyline in Teams enables leaders to convey messages to the entire company and streamlines the way you and your colleagues share and interact. The Storyline integration offers a fresh method for discovering content, sharing your thoughts and ideas, and expressing yourself while remaining focused within Teams. The integration of communities with Teams and additional features will be introduced next year.
The new chat & channels experience
The new chat and channels experience is designed to help you collaborate more efficiently and effectively. It’s simple by default, enabling everyone to stay on top of what matters, and it’s powerful on demand, allowing you to organise information and communicate your way. Catch up on chat, channels and teams in one place, use filters to triage messages, create custom sections to organise conversations by topics, and more.
Loop workspace in a channel
Channels in Teams enhance collaboration by uniting people, content, and apps, and organising them by project or topic. Add a Loop workspace tab to channels for real-time brainstorming and content organisation. Everyone in the Team has access, even with membership changes, adhering to Microsoft 365 standards.
To start, click the plus sign (+) in the channel and select Loop.
Name pronunciation
You can now record and share the correct pronunciation of your name, fostering inclusivity and ensuring colleagues pronounce names accurately. Simply open your profile card to make a recording. This recording will be accessible on your profile card to individuals at your workplace or school using Microsoft 365. and select Loop.
Meetings, Mesh, Webinars, and Town Halls
Copilot in Teams can analyse content shared on-screen
Maximise meeting insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot’s new ability to analyse content presented in Teams. Copilot ensures that no details are missed by reasoning over spoken words, chat messages, and on-screen content. Users can now ask Copilot to summarise information, find specific details, and draft new content based on shared content during meetings. This includes content shared on desktop screens, with future support for PowerPoint Live and Whiteboard in Teams.
Copilot in Microsoft 365 enhances meeting insights by analysing on-screen content shared in Teams, allowing users to ask questions about shared content, consolidate insights, and draft new content based on discussions.
Live transcription in Teams meetings support for multiple spoken languages
Meeting transcription will soon support multilingual meetings. When enabled, meeting participants can set their own spoken language and translation language, and the meeting transcript will capture the discussion regardless of languages spoken. Microsoft Teams supports 51 spoken languages and 31 translation languages. Live translated captions and live translated transcript will also support translation for multilingual meetings.
Intelligent recap for calls from chat and ‘Meet now’ meetings
Soon, you will be able to enjoy AI-generated summaries for more types of meetings, even when they aren’t scheduled in advance. Intelligent meeting recap will be available for impromptu calls and meetings, like those started from ‘Meet now’ and calls started from chat. You can easily browse the recording by speakers and topics, as well as access AI-generated notes, AI-generated tasks, and name mentions after the ad-hoc meeting ends. This capability will be available for users with a Teams Premium or M365 Copilot license.
Active meeting protection notifications of sensitive
screenshared content
AI is powering entirely new screensharing protections. When a presenter is screen sharing content, active meeting protection automatically detects some types of information that are potentially sensitive, such as social security numbers and credit card numbers, and alerts both the presenter and the meeting organiser to prevent unintentional sharing. This capability will be available for users with a Teams Premium license.
Meeting sensitivity upgrade notification based on shared file
For Microsoft 365 E5 and Premium customers, we’re making it easier to leverage sensitivity labels from Microsoft Purview Information Protection to help set the right protection settings to meetings. A meeting sensitivity upgrade can now be triggered when an attendee shares a file in a Teams meeting chat or during a live share that has a higher sensitivity setting. The meeting’s settings can be upgraded either automatically or via a recommendation to the organiser, to inherit the same sensitivity setting as the file shared in the meeting.
Moderated meetings in Teams
Some organisations in regulated industries such as financial services are subject to restrictions around which employees can meet or communicate with each other. Moderated meetings gives organisations with Information Barrier (IB) tenants the option to allow users with conflicting policies to join the same meeting in the presence of an approved moderator. For meetings set up with this new feature, the organiser and co-organisers can only let in attendees after the approved moderator has joined the meeting. This capability will be available for users with a Teams Premium license.
Email verification for external participants to join Teams meetings
Microsoft Teams now offers email verification for external participants. Meeting organisers with a Teams Premium license can require external participants to verify their email via a one-time passcode (OTP) before joining. Verified participants will be labelled ’email-verified’ and can join meetings directly if they use the email address from the invite. This ensures better security and a smoother experience for meeting organisers.
New admin policy to prevent bots from joining Teams meetings
Teams introduced a new policy in Teams admin center that allows admins to block unwanted bots from joining meetings. The policy consists of two parts for optimal meeting security. First, admins can use the ‘External Access’ setting in Teams admin center to block known bot domains. Second, admins can enable a CAPTCHA-based human verification test and apply it to anonymous and non-federated users. Once set, any anonymous user that attempts to join the meeting will be required to pass the CAPTCHA test before proceeding.
Event chat for Town Hall
Previously in a town hall, only presenters and organisers could chat with each other. With this new update, attendees, presenters and organisers can now chat together during a town hall using the new event chat feature. Presenters and organisers can still chat privately during the town hall as well.
Watermark in webinars
The watermark capabilities available in meetings are now supported in webinars. Help deter data leaks with watermarking over attendee screen shares and video feeds. Watermarking provides each viewer’s email address on the screen as a watermark. This feature requires a Teams Premium license.
Teams Rooms and Devices
Speaker recognition
Now you can get intelligent recaps and maximum value from Copilot in any Teams meeting no matter where you meet. Participants in any meeting space who have securely enrolled their voice via Teams Settings, can be recognised by their voice and attributed in meeting transcripts with cloud-based speaker recognition, whether it has a Teams Rooms system deployed or not. Speaker recognition in a bring your own device (BYOD) room requires a Teams Premium license for the meeting host.
Intrested In Improving Your Microsoft Teams?
If your ready to improve or to get started with a Microsoft Teams contact our team here or call us on 02921 508000
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The post What’s New in Microsoft Teams appeared first on Flotek Group.
Ian Hutchinson – Senior Web Designer/Developer
‘Mac’ joined OES following an impressive 24 years in the British Army, bringing with him a wealth of experience he could transfer to ‘civvy street’.
Wayne has been with OES since leaving the British Army in June 2012. He became the Managing Director in 2016 and then Owner in 2021. His 15 year career in the Army is where he refined his skills in project management, problem solving and leadership. He has led the growth of OES focusing on delivering innovative solutions and outstanding service.