Microsoft Teams, as part of certain Office 365 Suite of products, is a business productivity app made for collaboration and sharing. Microsoft Teams can bring co-workers together that are working remotely by using chat instead of email, channels instead of file folders, a secure workspace to edit files and share documents along with websites. Microsoft continues to update and enhance its product offerings and this is the same with the very popular Microsoft Teams App. With the latest enhancements; below are the best new features in Microsoft Teams.
Noise Suppression. To help avoid unwanted noises for working from home employees, such as dog barking, outside traffic, ect, Noise Suppression is found under Settings, then Devices and is set to “Auto”. This features blocks all background sounds that are not speech. The noise suppression option can be taken off “Auto” as the default setting, and there are additional settings such a “High”, “Low” and “Off”.
Transfer Meeting Devices: Used to toggle between a Mobile Meeting of Teams to Desktop or back from Desktop to the Mobile App; you can also have 2 meetings of Teams open at the same time: Mobile and PC.
Teams for Personal Use: Before you could only use Teams for consumer use, however, if you have an existing personal Outlook account you now have access to help plan or organize your personal schedule as well. In addition, you can switch between personal and work accounts on your Desktop.
Polling: While your meeting is taking place and you want to gauge feedback from your group, you can do so by utilizing the new Polling feature. This is accomplished by going to “Microsoft Forms” beforehand in Meeting Details to create a poll for an upcoming event or meeting.
Profile Status Options: By clicking on your Microsoft Teams Status, you have several options such as “Available”, “Busy” etc. Now there is a new option to “Appear Offline”. Furthermore, you can set the “duration” of your status for a customize time, a few hours, or even the entire day.
Muting Attendees: You now have an option to mute attendees, and keep them muted, by controlling an option in “Meeting Options”. This applies when you are the organizer and the other participants are label as “attendees”
Templates: You can now use templates when selecting “Join or Create a Team”. Once you select “Create a Team”, there is now an option for “Create from Scratch” or “From a Group or Team”. There also are newly created industry-specific Team Templates such as “Manage a Project”, “Onboard Employees’ and many others. If you choose to use a predetermined Team Template, you will notice there are already built suggested channels and apps that are relevant that that particulate Team Template.
Phone Calls through Microsoft 365 Business Voice: Introduced for Teams by Microsoft if the ability to now make phone calls right from Teams through Microsoft 365 Business Voice. Business Voice is an add-on Cloud VoIP (Voice Over IP) service deeply integrated with Teams to allow your company to collaborate with video meetings, chat, and now Phone calling capabilities.
Learn more about Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Business Voice.
Posted by iCepts Technology Group, Inc. A Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider in Pennsylvania
