New meetings features for Microsoft Teams unveiled

Microsoft just unveiled a series of new capabilities that impact how people conduct meetings with Microsoft Teams. The additions are meant to help individuals more effectively connect, communicate, and collaborate, even when not in traditional workplace environments while also helping Teams stand out in the crowded workplace collaboration sector. Here are some of the key areas of Microsoft Teams receiving upgrades.

Ease of connectivity

There are a few new features aimed at making meetings easier to schedule and start. For example, the new join experience lets you select devices and set your audio configuration before actually connecting to the call. Then video preview lets you see what others will see before you go live. You can also join your personal device without audio if you’re joining from a meeting room.

The Teams meeting lobby also now supports audio conferencing for dial-in users. And with multiple room technology options, you can choose the exact settings that are best suited to your particular meeting scenario. Finally, Teams now supports up to 250 meeting attendees for large group connections.

Quality and reliability

Microsoft Teams is also getting a new modern infrastructure that’s specifically built for the cloud on a microservices architecture that’s highly scalable and optimized for global use. This means that attendees should be able to join meetings faster and get a better overall experience.

When issues do arise, Teams can detect those situations and inform you of how to fix them proactively so you can continue your meeting without huge interruptions. The Microsoft Teams desktop, mobile, and web versions also quickly work to reconnect if a call is dropped.

Added productivity for Microsoft Teams users

A few other features are aimed at helping you be more productive within meetings. For example, PowerPoint sharing within meetings lets attendees jump ahead or revisit slides with private viewing. Users can also work creatively with third-party whiteboard apps. Invision is the first of these apps to work in Teams, but more are scheduled to integrate in the next few months.

For mobile users, participants will also have the ability to share photos, PowerPoint files, live video, and mobile desktop sharing even when you’re on the go. Other new features include meeting notes, recording, and even live events.

All of these new features come with IT control for enterprise customers. You can also configure user-level meeting policies, federation policies, and other settings.