14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has announced that Microsoft Teams is getting a new pack of features as part of the August 2020 update for all customers.
First and foremost, it’s Spotlight, a feature projected to go live in the next few months for everybody and which allows a presented to set the main video that is active for all participants. In other words, the presenter can now decide what the participates to the meeting can see, with options to lock their video as the main view.
There’s also a new option to merge several calls into a 1:1 call or another group call, as well as meeting recording storage for areas where Stream is not available.
“Teams meeting recordings are currently disabled for customers whose Teams data is stored in-country, if Microsoft Stream is not available in that country. A new admin setting will allow you to turn on meeting recordings if Microsoft Stream data residency is not yet in country. If this setting is turned on, Teams meeting recordings will be saved in the data center closest to the region,” Microsoft explains.
When it comes to chat and collaboration, Microsoft is making important improvements for the real-time presence, with the company now guaranteeing that this feature “increases the accuracy of your status so others know when to reach out.”
A little something for everybody
As a heavy user of Microsoft Teams, I can’t help but complain that the presence information has been buggy, to say the least, especially in the last few months when Microsoft struggled to keep the service online due to increased usage.
Microsoft is also bringing Visio integration to Microsoft Teams.
“Visio tabs in Teams allow team members to quickly access content in a dedicated space within a channel or in a chat. Adding a tab in Teams is available to all Teams users, editing, however is only available for those with a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription. We’re also releasing an enhanced set of multi-page operations in Visio for web, enabling you to view all the pages at once, reorder pages with drag and drop, insert pages at any position in the file, duplicate existing pages on a single click, and navigate non-sequential pages using the keyboard arrows,” it says.
The new update also includes new features for education and governments, and further information is available in this official blog post.