Microsoft recently announced new features as part of an update to its enterprise-focused video conferencing platform, Microsoft Teams. The updates bring in new features including the ability to watch up to 49 videos on the screen by default, scheduling messages. Users can also start instant polling, and use the newly added unread-only toggle. Microsoft made the announcement as part of its updates for November 2022 in a blog post detailing each of the newly introduced features.
The first of the new features announced via blog post By Microsoft Has the ability to start one-click instant polling during teams meeting. Presenters will have the ability to launch spoken poll questions by clicking on the Launch Instant Poll button at the bottom right of the screen. Users can choose from three buttons with binary responses on the poll: yes or no, thumbs up, thumbs down, and a heart and heartbroken icon. According to Microsoft these questions do not need to be prepared in advance – users can speak the question out loud and then click on the corresponding response toggle icon which will automatically trigger the question to go live.
Microsoft claims that Teams is the first video-conferencing platform to offer such a ‘one-click instant poll’ feature.
The second feature that has been introduced for Teams is the ability for Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) dial-in, dial-out and call-me attendees in meetings to join breakout rooms. These users will be able to rejoin the main room meeting when the breakout meeting ends. PSTN calls will also now support an automatic browser launch screen pop up that will display relevant information including CRM data, case data, etc. This feature needs to be enabled by administrators in the Teams Admin Center.
The third feature introduced is the ability to watch up to 49 videos on the screen in one sitting through a 9×9 grid layout that replaces the 3×3 grid that only allows 9 videos to be watched at a time. This is a significant jump in the number of simultaneous videos that can be viewed without the need to click any buttons to navigate to other users video boxes. However, the actual number of videos viewed by a user will depend on hardware or device capabilities, according to the company.
Microsoft has also introduced call transcription on Microsoft Teams for 1:1 calls as well as group calls Android, The company has also introduced the ability for users to accept or block a group chat invite from an unmanaged user as an additional security layer.
The video conferencing platform will now allow users to schedule and send messages as well. The feature, which is similar to the one seen on the company’s email platform Outlook, will allow users to manually select the date and time for a chat message to be sent to the recipient user. This feature can be accessed by right-clicking on the Send button and selecting the Schedule Send option.
The platform has also introduced an unread toggle button on users’ activity feed, which once enabled will allow users to see only chat message notifications that have not been read.
Teams users will also be able to start a Teams chat with distribution groups, mail-enabled security groups, and Office 365 groups with up to 250 members. The platform has also changed the way search is viewed within Messages. Chat message searches will no longer be presented with entire message threads, rather than single keywords that refer to messages in isolation. According to Microsoft, the extended chat history appears after clicking on the search result item.