Direct from Microsoft
The Microsoft Teams Blog posted their monthly round in What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2020 edition covering updates such as spotlight video in meetings, optimized media in VMware Horizon 9, Skype Online Connector coming to Teams PowerShell module, new Power Automate triggers, and tons of updates for US Government tenants.
The Education Blog also released their roundup for August 2020 going into more depth on education-specific features including better data insights for tracking engagement and progress of students, better integration between school data sync and OneNote, and detection and deletion of inappropriate messages.
Another blog post announced the availability of the Microsoft Lists app for Teams. Many people are excited about the Lists app and its ability to track information and organize work within a team. A list can be added to any channel as a tab. Microsoft has 3 templates available for getting started (Patients, Loans, and Incidents) or you can start from a blank list.
Community Contributions
People are excited about using NDI support with Microsoft Teams. This allows broadcasting the audio and video streams from a Teams meeting in a high-quality, low latency manner. Here are a few articles and videos covering its use:
- YouTube: Using Microsoft Teams video calls in your live production with NDI and vMix
- YouTube: Build your live stream with Microsoft Teams NDI and OBS Studio
- How To Broadcast Teams Meetings Like a Pro with NDI and OBS
MVP Jan Ketil Skanke (@JankeSkanke) notices that a new Teams device administrator role is available in Azure but currently unable to assign it. Good to see additional options in granular admin control along with the existing Teams admin roles.
Hi #AzureAD #MicrosoftTeams, I found the Teams Devices Administrator role in several tenants but I am unable to assign it. This is exactly what we need for admins that just needs to manage Teams MTR devices and such. https://t.co/aV5hFCblak pic.twitter.com/ghEksW2mkV
— Jan Ketil Skanke [MVP] (@JankeSkanke) September 3, 2020
Rabia Noureen covers improvements on meeting attendance report in this article Microsoft is making Teams meetings participant reports more useful this month.
Tony Redmond covers the new file sharing updates inside of Teams with Teams Upgrades File Sharing to be Consistent with Office 365.
Rod Trent covers the public preview of the Microsoft Teams connector for Azure Sentinel in How to Enable the Microsoft Teams Public Preview for Azure Sentinel. This streams Teams events into Azure Sentinel for easy searching using KQL syntax.
Events
Commsverse is hosting a monthly chat show called Talking Teams that focuses on the business benefits of Teams. On September 30 they are hosting a show titled Bringing Your Voice to Microsoft Teams. The event is free and registration is available at this page.
Microsoft Reactor London is hosting a 5-part Microsoft Teams series starting on September 15. This is delivered by members of the MVP community. More details can be found here on their MeetUp page.
Road Map and Message Center Updates
Road Map: Update to the format Meeting Invitations for Microsoft Teams
Meeting invitations are getting an update with new formatting to make meetings easier to join. Current customizations to the meeting invite will still be available. This feature is currently rolling out.
Message Center: Incoming video support in web meetings on Safari 13 and later
Microsoft continues to add functionality to the web client for Safari. Incoming video support for Safari 13 and higher will be available soon. Expected rollout to be completed by the end of September 2020.
Message Center: Teams Meeting support for 20,000 attendees
Users with the Advanced Communications add-on license will be able to support 20,000 meeting attendees as view-only participants. One thing to note, these are not Live Events but regular Teams meetings that are normally capped at 300 participants. The first 300 attendees will have the regular interactive capabilities, and every attendee after the 300 will be in a view-only mode. This will be on by default for users assigned the Advanced Communication add-on license.
Message Center: Introducing six new European markets for Microsoft Calling Plans
Austria, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland are all set to have calling plans available in those regions starting October 1, 2020.
Microsoft also updated several messages that the previously announced features were going to be delayed in their rollout. This includes:
- New file sharing experience in Teams
- Microsoft Teams Call Merge
- Multiple Number Dialing
- Microsoft Teams new calling and meeting experience
Training
Microsoft released a new YouTube playlist in the Coffee in the Cloud channel covering Teams Calling and Meeting Technical Readiness. This training was originally delivered to people within the Microsoft Partner Community and is now available on demand for everyone.
Tip of the Week
Arif Bacchus covers some great tips on how to Become an expert at Microsoft Teams meetings with these top five best practices.
