Microsoft just introduced a new vision for its signature productivity suite. Unveiled at the Microsoft Ignite event in Orlando, Fla., Office 365 intelligent communications isn’t just about traditional unified communications. This new vision is meant to transform calling and meeting experiences for Microsoft’s customers around the world.
To achieve this goal, Microsoft is building a new, modern Skype infrastructure for enterprise-grade voice and video communications. The company is also bringing comprehensive calling and meetings capabilities into Teams. And it’s integrating data and insights from Microsoft Graph and a strong road map of innovation to empower teams that use these tools to accomplish even more on a daily basis.
Here’s a rundown of the new features and capabilities that Microsoft is employing to improve communications for Office 365 users.
Office 365 intelligent communications adds improvements for meetings in Teams
The improvements within Microsoft Teams include a few new capabilities aimed at making online business meetings easier. For instance, Teams will now surface relevant documents and rich information about the participants to help you prepare before meetings. Then during meetings, you can use Teams to capture, transcribe, and time code conversations so you can stay organized. Then Teams can add those transcripts to the relevant channel, so you can review relevant conversations, documents, notes, and action items.
New calling features in Teams
On top of that, Teams is also adding calling features, including audio conferencing (available in preview) and interoperability between Teams and Skype for Business. In the coming months, Microsoft also plans to add new calling features to Teams including inbound and outbound calls to PSTN numbers, hold, call transfers, and voicemail features. Additionally, the recent addition of guest access functionality means that you can use all of these features not only with members of your own team, but also with outside clients or partners.
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