What’s New in Microsoft Teams - August 2024
In today’s hybrid work environment, seamless communication and collaboration are more important than ever. Microsoft Teams plays a central role in keeping organizations connected, with its powerful calling and meeting room capabilities designed to enhance productivity and streamline workflows.
This blog will keep you up to date on the latest Teams Calling features, best practices for meeting room setups, and insights into how businesses can leverage these tools to improve efficiency. Whether you’re an IT admin optimizing your organization’s call flow, a frontline worker managing high call volumes, or a business leader looking for better collaboration solutions, this series will cover everything you need to stay ahead.
Stay tuned for monthly updates, deep dives into new functionalities, and practical tips to get the most out of Microsoft Teams!
Let’s dive into the key updates and how they can benefit your business!
Chat and Collaboration
Time-based prompts in Copilot in chat There’s no need to manually scroll and search through extensive chat histories. Now when you activate Copilot in your chat, you can use time-based phrases like “yesterday,” “last month,” “6 months ago,” or " December 2023" in your prompts. Copilot will efficiently locate and provide insights on information from the time period you specify.
Request to join a shared channel via channel link
It is now easier for users to access relevant shared channels and for channel owners to manage memberships. Users that share the same tenant can request to join a shared channel by using the channel’s share link. Channel owners will receive the join request and can easily approve or deny requests. While fostering efficient collaboration in organizations, this feature also helps to reduce administrative tasks for channel owners.
Show/hide discover feed
Discover feed delivers a personalized, relevance-based feed of Teams channel content to make it easier for you to stay informed and engaged with the content that matters to you most. You can now show or hide the discover feed by going to settings > general and setting the toggle to on or off.
Teams Rooms and Devices
Join Zoom meetings with an ID and passcode from a Teams room on Android
If your organization has enabled Direct Guest Join meetings for Teams Rooms on Android, you can now join Zoom meetings with an ID and a passcode. To be configured, this feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license.
Text and UI resizing for Teams Rooms on Windows
With text and UI resizing for Teams Rooms, IT admins can now adjust the size of the text and all other UI elements on the front-of-room display by changing the display scaling settings. Text and UI elements are resized and adjusted for all supported display resolution and scaling combinations, including 1080p resolution at 100-150% scaling, and 4K resolution at 100-300% scaling. This capability is extended to support touch boards.
Logitech Rally Bar + Mic Pods for Teams Rooms on Windows (with Lenovo Core)
Transform any mid-sized room to a Microsoft Teams Room meeting place with this newly certified for Teams, all-inclusive room solution from Logitech, featuring Rally Bar, Logitech Tap, 4 Rally Mic Pods, and Lenovo Core mini PC. Rally Bar’s motorized PTZ camera, room-filling speakers, and a sensitive microphone array deliver a premium user experience that’s easy to install and manage. In addition, the Rally Mic Pods expand your audio coverage with beamforming microphones. Premium materials, thoughtful cable management, and a sleek 10.1” touch controller integrate beautifully into the modern workplace.
Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices
Teams Phone
Callback for call queues
Eligible callers waiting in a call queue can now receive a callback to their phone number when an agent becomes available. Callers become eligible for a callback based on conditions configured by admins such as exceeding a certain wait time, the number of calls in the queue, or the calls-to-agent ratio. Eligible callers will be given the option to request a callback after the music on hold finishes playing, and admins can customize the messaging, key press, and notification email for failed callbacks.