Microsoft teams come out with more new features in this pandemic situation as they look to get the top spot in video calling and meetings software.
1000 was not enough so Microsoft increased the limit to 20,000. Microsoft said that “when building this capability, we were focused on your meeting experience, making sure that even as the meeting scales it is still easy to manage and listen to the speakers. Therefore, we limited the size of interactive meetings to 1,000 participants, with a seamless shift to a ‘view only’ mode after the limit is met.”
Enhanced admin control is the next new thing. Branded meeting lobbies look like an exciting feature. With this feature, you can add a background filter on your video where you can display anything you want. Like your brand’s logo or something.
This latter feature will obviously be a paid one. Each of these new capabilities will be enabled with the new Advanced Communications plan which can be added to any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 paid subscription and is available this week. Get Advanced Communications 60-day free trial via Teams Admin Center now or via Microsoft Teams website in mid-August.
“Connecting 1:1 with colleagues, customers, and partners is important, especially when meeting face-to-face can be challenging. Employees in your organization can easily call each other from Teams without a phone number,” Herskowitz said in a statement on Monday.
A new Cloud-based phone calling system in the Team will help employees who use phone numbers to make and receive calls with customers, partners, and vendors, whether they are in the office or working from home.
Microsoft is also coming up with a new device named ‘Teams Display’. This is a dedicated Teams device featuring an ambient touch screen, high-quality calling and video, and a hands-free experience powered by Cortana.
It is not necessary to buy this device as Microsoft has also stated that
“We also realize that being able to use existing hardware can provide important cost savings when moving to a new phone system. Today, we are announcing extended support for Skype for Business (3PIP) phones beyond 2023. So you can continue to use your existing Skype for Business phones as you move to Teams. Additionally, we will be supporting core calling features on SIP phones from Cisco, Yealink, Polycom, and others with Teams. Support for SIP phones will be available in the first half of 2021”.
Microsoft is also coming out with new phones with physical buttons, high-quality audio, and core calling features at an affordable price. These phones are designed for common areas and basic information worker scenarios, with options available from AudioCodes, Poly, Yealink starting early 2021. These will be available in late 2020 and the first of which will be shipped with Yealink.
There are a lot of things which Microsoft have announced. They are trying their best to improve their ‘teams’ and all these additions are quite good. They have released a blog related to all these new features and you can find it on their site.