Recently Microsoft has rolled out new features for their hottest product Microsoft Teams. Within the last two years, during the age of Covid, Businesses have been forced to shift their meetings into the virtual realm. In doing so, Microsoft has been committed to adding new features into Microsoft Teams in order to make the entire process more user-friendly.

Teams meeting recordings

Recording meetings in Teams allows you to review what you may have missed and helps others who could not attend catch up on their own time. Over the past year, we’ve shifted to saving new Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint to provide better control and sharing options. We’ve also added a number of improvements including:

• Multi-speed playback – Now you can watch recordings at slower and faster speeds (0.5x up to 2x)
• High-quality transcripts – Transcripts now have speaker attribution for meetings that have Teams Live Transcription turned on
• Indexed recordings – Recorded meetings are indexed into easier-to-consume segments based on slide transitions
• Auto-recording – Meeting owners can set meetings to automatically start recording
• Auto-expiration – Coming soon, admins will be able to set a default number of days after which newly created Teams meeting recordings will be sent to the recycle bin.

Order of raised hands

Ensure that all voices are heard and people feel seen just as in person by seeing the order of raised hands in a meeting. Simply click on the Participants panel to see who raised their hand and in what order. Now you know the order of who to call on first to speak so that no participant is missed.

Breakout room managers’ support

Meeting organizers can now give presenters permissions to manage breakout rooms. By taking control from the breakout rooms management panel, appointed presenters will be able to perform breakout room operations as managers or meeting organizers and join rooms as a breakout room manager. Only participants who given the presenters permissions can be appointed as breakout room managers.

Hot Desking on Teams display

Hot desking on Microsoft Teams display gives your employees the ability to find and reserve workspaces to get in touch, make calls, set up ad-hoc meetings, or sign in to access their personalized Teams experience. With hot desking, employees can reserve a workspace in advance through Teams and Microsoft Outlook though their cell phone or tablet, or straight from their computer if they’re already in the office.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams new features?

Join our exclusive webinar on March 28, Microsoft and Workplace better together in the Cloud, where we will showcase the new features of Microsoft Teams along with the other hottest Microsoft technologies in 2022.

As we move from the “remote everything” era into a hybrid model, the future of work is being shaped before our eyes. The question is how to choose the best collaboration tool for your business? While the answer seems obvious to us, you probably need some convincing if you’re reading this blog, which is why we outlined four reasons to choose Microsoft Teams over Zoom.

Empowering the Future of Work 

Microsoft Teams is designed for everyone to transform the way people work and interact with each other with collaboration firmly in mind. Teams is an integrated workplace solution that fuels organic interactions, fosters a culture of collaboration, and enhances productivity. The real benefit is how businesses can leverage ready-made apps, take advantage of low code tools, and develop custom solutions. 

Learn More

We hope our four reasons to choose Microsoft Teams over Zoom helped you convince Microsoft Teams is the right tool for your business. If you want to learn more about Microsoft Teams, join our upcoming Bootcamp on September 21.

As digital teamwork becomes increasingly important to your business, you’re probably wondering how to get the most from the tools you have in place—particularly Microsoft Teams. In this blog, we’ll cover proven strategies for using Microsoft Teams not simply as a tool for digital meetings and file sharing but to transform the way your business works. VOX ISM is also organizing Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp on June 17, 2021, to get you up and running with Microsoft Teams.

With adequate planning, a phased approach, and the effective use of built-in project management, partner applications, workflow, and process automation tools, you can ramp up Microsoft Teams usage to achieve new levels of collaboration and productivity.

1. Plan your Teams adoption inside a Teams workspace

You can start by using Teams to plan the adoption process itself. This gives you valuable experience using the platform and makes you the expert other employees can call for advice. 

• Appoint Teams champions: Create a team to track adoption: Use Teams tools to track the progress of the adoption plan: Choose one or two people to be accountable for driving adoption across the business, preferably with a mix of IT and business knowledge.

• Create a team to track adoption: Bring together leaders who can promote Microsoft Teams usage and ensure progress is being made.

• Use Teams tools to track the progress of the adoption plan: Track activities using Tasks (previously Planner): If you’re using Microsoft Teams, organize your work by adding one or more Tasks tabs to your team channel. You can then work on your plan from within Teams or in Tasks for web, remove or delete your plan, and get notified in Teams when a task is assigned to you in Tasks.

• Review adoption analytics in Power BI: With Power BI, you can use Microsoft 365 usage analytics inside a Teams tab to gain insights on how your organization is adopting Teams to communicate and collaborate. You can visualize and analyze usage data, create custom reports, and share the insights within your organization.

• Communicate within Teams: Schedule a recurring stand-up in Teams: Use Teams to share data, chat, and meet with the adoption group.

• Schedule a recurring stand-up in Teams: Make it a habit to have short daily meetings reviewing progress. 

2. Deliver chat and meeting capabilities

As the Teams adoption project moves forward, do not wait to enable basic Teams functionality for everyone in your organization.

• Turn on Teams for everyone: As an administrator for your organization, you can assign user licenses to control individual access to Teams.
• Separate chat and meeting deployment from longer-term activities: As an administrator for your organization, you can assign user licenses to control individual access to Teams. You may be undertaking more complex tasks such as migrating PBX functionality or adding Teams calling to meeting rooms, but you can provide employees with Teams on their personal devices immediately.
• Use adoption assets: Get everyone on board using ready-to-use Teams adoption assets from Microsoft.

Encourage everyone to download the mobile and desktop apps: Teams can be installed on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. Get the apps. Teams also provide a high-quality experience on popular web browsers.

3. Run a project in Teams

While people are getting used to using Teams for everyday chat and meetings, the adoption-working group should choose a pilot department to work with. 

During the pilot project, you can:

• Demo Microsoft 365 apps in Teams, including Word, Excel, Tasks, and more. 

• Help the group identify common projects, workloads, and audiences for Teams. 

• Guide them in setting up a workspace. 

• Evaluate the workspace after a few weeks and adjust. 

• Replicate these successes with other teams and use a template embodying best practices for your organization.

Mike Fontaine will cover this topic at our Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp on June 17 event. Make sure you register for this event to learn more about projects in Teams. 

Run a project in Teams: Template for Sales

Teams can help sales quickly build proposals with input from different stakeholders, while making it easier to manage longer-term projects and programs, such as planning, training, and sales-readiness. Collaboration, reporting, and knowledge sharing can happen in one place, helping sales professionals everywhere work together to meet sales objectives.

1. Create the team: Create a new team for your entire sales organization or a team for each sales segment.
2. Add Channels: Add channels, such as Sales Planning, Sales Readiness, RFPs/Proposals, Wins, and Best Practices, as well as a channel for common topics.
3. Add apps via tabs: Add apps that help with sales projects. For example, check sales metrics in Power BI, manage RPF templates in Word, track future fiscal plans with Trello, connect to CRM applications such as Dynamics 365, and celebrate success with Kudos.
4. Meet regularly: Schedule recurring team meetings, such as a monthly business review.
5. Share documents: Upload team documents to relevant channels, for example, sales playbooks and guides in the Sales Readiness channel and RFP documents in the RFP/Proposals channel.
6. Connect to information: Set up connectors, such as an RSS feed for customer updates.

4. Streamline a process

The next level of Team usage is to streamline and simplify business processes. As with running projects, the best way to get started is to choose a specific group or department with a process that could use help. The basic sequence looks something like this:

1. Choose your group or department to work with. 
2. Demonstrate a process template to streamline the workflow. 
3. Demonstrate Office 365 apps in Teams.
4. Help the group set up a workspace. 
5. Create a routine for process improvements. 
6. Evaluate after a few weeks and adjust workspace and process based on learnings.

5. Automate repeated workflows

Teams include built-in automation functionality provided by Power Automate, part of the Power Platform. As with other phases of Teams adoption, the Teams working group should choose a specific business functional area to focus on for its first automation.

Power Platform provides templates for a wide range of business needs, including new-hire onboarding, incident management, contract lifecycle management, and sales. Using Power Automate, you can simplify repeated tasks in processes like these and many more. Once the solution has been proven in one business area, it becomes easier to expand further.

Resolve incidents within a Teams workspace

Employees who provide support are often burdened with repetitive, manual steps—a perfect opportunity to create efficiency through automation. First, create a channel or team for managing the incident lifecycle, then add automation to save time and stay focused.

Manage a contract lifecycle

Typically, contracts must be shared, reviewed, and approved multiple times across various people inside an organization. Use a team workspace to manage the lifecycle of critical documents in your organization, then add automation to save time and stay focused.

Start creating your Teams center of excellence with Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp

Join us for Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp with Mike Fontaine on June 17 from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM (ET).

This Bootcamp a free, virtual training class designed to get you up and running with Microsoft Teams.

From chatting and meetings to using teams and channels, this Bootcamp will provide the foundation to use Microsoft Teams with confidence. 

2020 was the year work, and learning moved to the cloud. And it’s clear that flexible work is here to stay: According to research conducted for Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, over 80 percent of managers say they expect more flexible work from home policies post-pandemic, and more than 70 percent of employees say they expect to take advantage of them. So we can anticipate some pretty significant changes in the weeks and months to come.

To thrive in this new hybrid world, Canadian businesses need fluid, dynamic, and cloud-powered solutions.

In this blog, we will cover new features coming to Microsoft Teams Meetings. 

Dynamic view

Dynamic view intelligently arranges the elements of your meeting for an optimal viewing experience. As people join, turn on the video, start to speak, or present in a meeting, Teams auto-adjusts and personalizes your layout. The dynamic view is rolling out soon.

View switcher

The new view switcher in your Teams meeting’s top bar allows you to control how you see the meeting content. You may prefer to interact naturally with your colleagues and without visual distractions using Together mode. With Gallery at the top, all video feeds display at the top of your meeting window, making it easier to have a more natural eye gaze with others. Focus hides all video feeds and fully focuses on the shared content, and Fullscreen can help remove other desktop distractions. View switcher will be available soon.

Presenter mode

Use Presenter mode to step up your presentations’ production level and customize how your video feed and content appear to your audience. Our first mode, Standout, show your video feed as a silhouette in front of the shared content. The reporter places content as a visual aid above your shoulder, just like a news story. Side-by-side display your video feed next to your content. Presenter mode will be available soon.

PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams

PowerPoint Live in Teams gives presenters control and confidence while providing a more interactive and inclusive experience to your audience. As a presenter, you can now lead meetings with a single view of your notes, slides, meeting chat, and participants. Attendees can also personalize their experience by navigating the content at their own pace or using the screen reader to consume content, allowing people with vision disabilities to follow along with the presentation more easily. PowerPoint Live in Teams is available now. 

Live Reactions in Microsoft Teams meetings

All attendees can now use emojis to react during a meeting. These reactions help promote inclusivity in meetings and keep things upbeat and interactive. Live Reactions in Microsoft Teams meetings is now available.

Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp

Join our Microsoft Teams Training Bootcamp on March 30 from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM (ET) for a unique experience designed to help Canadian organizations connect in a new way and thrive in the face of change.