Microsoft's Teams communication service is one of the company's big focus points right now. New features are added very frequently, particularly for enterprise users. To help users keep up, the company rounds up the features added to Teams every month. Now, we have the full list of features that were added to Teams during the month of June. These features cover a few different aspects of Teams, including new Teams devices.
New Teams features for meetings
Starting with new features for meetings, Microsoft has added the option to lower all raised hands, so meeting organizers can easily end a Q&A session before moving on. Also, when someone sends a chat message during a meeting, a chat bubble will now appear on top of the video feed to make it more visible.
On the topic of video, it's now possible to spotlight multiple users during a meeting, ensuring their video feeds are always visible to every participant. Microsoft has also added the ability to use inking and a laser pointer during PowerPoint Live presentations in Teams. Over on mobile, a new large gallery view lets users scroll through the video feeds of all the participants, and screen sharing now supports sharing audio.
The Large Gallery feature is also now available for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users. Meanwhile, live transcription with speaker attribution is now available for more types of licenses, including Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A3/A5, Microsoft 365 F1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 F3, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
To follow up on meetings, there's a new attendance dashboard. This lets organizers see how many people showed up, and how long they were in the meeting. Dynamics 365 Marketing users also have the option to follow up with customers after a meeting.
Chat and collaboration features in Teams
There are also a few new Teams features for chat and collaboration in June. There are new approval templates that make it easier to repeat common approvals like expense reports. It's also now possible to quickly create tasks within Teams, based on a specific message. These tasks sync with the Tasks app for Teams. Microsoft has also added rich previews for SharePoint pages within Teams, and the Yammer Communities app now supports custom branding.
Android is catching with iOS and adding the ability to save files in Teams to view offline later. Meanwhile, users on macOS can now opt to use the native notification style instead of Teams' custom style.
Management and security
Moving on to management and security features, Teams admins can now see security and compliance data for apps from Microsoft Cloud App Security. This information can be found in the app's page in the Teams Admin Center. Admins can now also set up alerts that let them know when devices are experiencing issues and take action more easily.
New government features
Government (GCC) customers got the most new Teams features in June, and it's because most of them have already been available for a while. Together mode is now available, and there are new ways to manage video for attendees. Meeting organizers can now assign other attendees the role of presenter, and when sharing your screen on macOS, you can now include sound. It's also now possible to merge calls with other calls.
On to chat and collaboration features, it's now possible to create private channels in a team. The Tasks app is now available with the ability for admins to publish tasks to specific locations. Approvals, Praise, and Out of Office settings are also now available. Finally, Teams device management and compliance capabilities for card content generated from Teams messages are available for GCC users.
New Teams devices
Finally, Microsoft announced new devices certified for Teams. For starters, there are new intelligent speakers for Teams Rooms from EPOS and Yealink. There's also a new headset from EPOS, and new devices from Microsoft are also available.
The HP Elite Slice is a Teams Rooms device that you can now get as a bundle with the Logitech Tap Controller. There are also new Lenovo ThinkSmart Core Kits that can be added to rooms that already have Teams certified devices, or as a whole setup including a camera and the ThinkSmart Bar. Finally, there's a new Logitech Rally Bar, which includes an automatic panning camera with 15x zoom and built-in audio.
Microsoft also released the new Teams Rooms experience for Surface Hub it announced at an event earlier this month. There's also an improved Together Mode for Teams Rooms devices.