In October 2022 Microsoft announced a new Premium version of Microsoft Teams which includes many new features that customers had been asking for. Following that announcement the release of Microsoft Teams Premium in general release is happening in February 2023. To those organisations looking to pay for this Premium service is means they can start integrating new features to the working day experience.
But what is all the excitement about and what are Microsoft offering beyond the current features and functionality in Microsoft Teams?
In the first feature is the ability to add your own organisation branding when guests are waiting in the lobby, branded backgrounds automatically added in and even custom designed together modes. There are other areas of customisation in the Teams experience that also get surfaced in Premium to support organisation identity.
When working in Teams Meetings it’s very easy to lose your organisation’s intellectual property through screen shares and chat so in Premium you’re able to add watermarks to a video recording and any shared content. Also the ability to prevent copy and paste from chat as well as watermarks for screenshots are just some of the ways to secure your meeting content. This does work in conjunction with Microsoft/Office E5 features of applying a Sensitivity label to your meeting on creation so consider whether you have the correct setup in Microsoft Purview.
I am expecting numerous AI features to appear in the Premium service over time but to start with there is already some great functionality. For meeting recordings having automatic chapters, time markers when people joined/left the meeting plus markers and auto generated tasks for when you were mentioned. If you miss the meeting there is a great way of catching up what happened by using Intelligent Recap which summarises the key decisions and points from your meeting.
There are some useful and requested for features which improves the Webinar experience and these include ability to limit numbers who register for a webinar. Then you can create a wait list on registrations once a webinar is at full capacity. When the webinar is running then a green room for presenters to use and the ability to control which presenters are visible on the screen. If your using Webinars and are looking for more functionality then these Premium features could help.
There is also the virtual appointments options available which is great for managing scheduling of appointments and SMS notifications along with additional Teams Administration analytics and post appointment follow ups.
Over the past three years remote working and Teams meetings have become a part of the working day so introducing Premium features to manage and control the experience will be used by many organisations. But it is the early stages of release so we recommend you consider what is available and if you want to find out more then get in contact with us at Perspicuity.