It has been two weeks since the Microsoft Ignite virtual event finished and this has seen a lot of announcements and we wanted to share some of these with you. There were some futuristic presentations with Microsoft Mesh which offers workplace Virtual Reality services but for now we are focusing on the core Microsoft 365 updates in Microsoft Teams.
The most interesting announcement was Teams Connect which allows you to create a Team for your organisation and then create a Channel which is shared with Guests. The experience for your guest is they will see this as a Team in their own app experience, but only get access to the one Channel. I know a few people have been asking for this to separate guest content and organisation only information, so it is great to see it coming soon.
Another area of change is in Teams Meetings as we all seem to spend a lot of our day joining calls. So, we had many new updates coming with three of interest in meetings that I believe will be a big help. There is a new ‘Dynamic’ view which uses intelligence to control the meeting display: by understanding who has joined the call, what videos are being used and which presentation is showing it can work out the most effective way of sharing your screen. Expect to see this very soon and it'll be an exciting addition to making Teams meetings more engaging.
Also new presenter modes are arriving, allowing you to appear on your PowerPoint and present in a more visually engaging way. By overlaying the presenter with a presentation, it makes the experience more seamless and with assorted styles to choose from will be a nice improvement.
Lastly, the ability to host Webinars in Microsoft Teams is interesting, with a registration process, presentation, and attendance reporting. Based on the experience of Live Meetings this option takes it further so you can open a meeting to anyone who wants to join and learn, then review where it was popular along with drop-offs. This will be available to work with people inside and outside of your organisation.
In the article we have highlighted just some of the latest updates in the Modern Workplace for Microsoft Teams. There is more to share, and we hope to soon bring to life the new services available in Microsoft Viva to support Communication and a topic we are all thinking about with Wellbeing. If you'd like to check out all of the announcements made to Microsoft Teams from Ignite read this Microsoft article here.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about any of the above, then please give us a shout!