What’s New in Microsoft Teams | October 2024

I hope that you’ve had the chance to try out some of the time-and-effort-saving new features we launched in September, like one of the favorites for Teams Premium and Copilot users, ‘Copilot in Teams meetings can now source responses from meeting chat’. It’s incredibly helpful that Copilot can now process the content from chat, as well as the transcript of the meeting, to make sure you don’t miss anything.

This month, we have even more updates to share that are bringing intelligence, convenience, and productivity together in Teams. A few that I’m most excited for you to try are: the highly anticipated ‘Queues App’ that makes handling and monitoring customer calls easier for call center agents and leads,  ‘Voting, Filtering, Sorting and Archiving in Teams Q&A’ for Town Halls and Webinars, that allows attendees to upvote questions they find most compelling, and ‘Expanded cross-platform meetings via SIP join’ that give you the ability to use Microsoft Teams to join meetings from other services like Google Meet, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Amazon Chime, RingCentral, and others.

Have a look at those, and all the others, and let us know what you think!

Chat and Collaboration

Meetings, Webinars and Town Halls, & Mesh

Teams Phone

Teams Rooms and Devices

Devices certified for Teams

Frontline Worker Solutions

Chat and Collaboration

Manage your teams and channels easily with the refreshed teams and channels view

This new page view allows you to easily access and manage your teams and channels. Simply click on the ellipsis at the top of your teams list and select “Your teams and channels.” This new hub lists all the teams you are a member of, allowing you to search, triage, and manage them efficiently. Here, you can create a new team, use search and filters like ‘teams you own’ or ‘archived teams’ to find what you need, respond to pending channel invites, and utilize the analytics tab to learn about your teams’ engagement. When you select a team, you can view all its associated channels and personalize your workspace by choosing to show only the channels of interest in Teams.

Chat details information pane

Now you can easily get an overview of all of the key details in your 1:1 and group chat with a new information pane. Just click on the ‘open chat details’ button located on the top-right of Teams next to the participant list, to see and access important information about the chat, including participants, shared files, pinned messages and the option to start a search within the chat. With the information pane, you are now able to able to access key chat information without losing sight of activity happening in the chat.

Meetings, Webinars and Town Halls, & Mesh

Recap notifications in Teams Activity feed

Users will receive a notification in their Teams Activity feed when the intelligent meeting recap for a meeting they have been invited to is ready. Clicking on the notification in Activity feed will take users directly to the recap.

Meeting organizers can manage who can admit attendees from the lobby

This feature helps meeting organizers keep meetings secure by controlling who can admit attendees from the lobby. On the Meeting Options page, organizers can select to either only allow the organizer and co-organizer to admit attendees, or allow organizers, co-organizers and presenters to admit attendees.

Voice isolation for Teams on MacOS

With voice isolation, you can enjoy clear and uninterrupted calls or meetings, no matter where you are. Voice isolation is an AI based advanced noise suppression feature that eliminates unwanted background noise including other human voices. The technology recognizes your voice profile and ensures only your voice is transmitted. Voice isolation can be enabled for calls and meetings making it easy to work from anywhere.  It is now available on MacOS in addition to Windows desktops.

Manage Teams Town Hall and Webinar attendee communication

Organizers and co-organizers can now enable external email automation platforms to manage event communications with their Town Hall and Webinar attendees and registrants.  This allows your organization to streamline your communications efforts and aggregate data from all aspects of your campaigns from within the main email automation platform of your choice.    

Voting, filtering, sorting, and archiving in Teams Q&A

These enhancements to Teams Q&A can boost digital event engagement and make your town halls, webinars, and training sessions more interactive and organized. With Voting, each attendee can upvote important questions, ensuring they rise to the top of the Q&A feed. Both attendees and organizers can sort questions by votes or activity, which escalates the more relevant questions that are getting the most activity/interactions. Archiving allows organizers to move older or irrelevant questions to a separate feed, keeping the current Q&A focused and clutter-free. Learn more at https://aka.ms/GetQnA 

Teams webinars in GCCH

Teams webinars is now available in the Government Community Cloud High (GCCH) environment, providing a secure and compliant platform for hosting large-scale virtual events. 

Microsoft Mesh developer environment update with Mesh Pavilion sample

Introducing the Mesh Pavilion sample, a versatile environment designed specifically for developers to build and customize interactive scenarios. This sample includes a variety of pre-built elements such as a bean bag toss, fire pit, waterfall, and screenshare, all constructed from objects found in the Toybox package and other Mesh Toolkit features. It simplifies the development process by providing ready-to-use assets and activities, enabling developers to create engaging and high-performance environments efficiently.  More info.

Expanded Avatar Catalog

Enhance your avatar creation with 51 new professional wardrobe items and 19 diverse hair options, allowing for greater self-expression and personalization. These updates allow you to create avatars that better reflect your unique identity and preference.  The expanded options are available through the catalog to all Teams customers with avatars enabled.

Teams Phone

Queues app for Microsoft Teams

The new Queues app is a solution for collaboratively handling customer calls natively in Teams. Call queue members can easily handle inbound calls without ever leaving Teams, whether the call is made via PSTN or VOIP. Agents and supervisors can make outbound calls on behalf of the call queues or auto attendant that they are assigned to; and they can review the call queue statistics while seamlessly collaborating with their colleagues, all within the flow of work. Members of the queue can easily opt in and out depending on availability and business need.

Supervisors can monitor their call queues and auto attendants in real-time, generate reports on queue and agent performance, and access historical reporting. Call queue and auto attendant configuration is intuitively designed, with admin delegated rights that allow leads to manage members as well as call queue and auto attendant settings, all within Teams.

Additional silent coaching controls such as monitor, whisper, barge and take over will be available post GA. Queues app for Microsoft Teams requires a Teams Premium license and is now generally available.

Teams Rooms and Devices

Digital signage in Teams Rooms on Windows

IT Admins can now configure Teams Rooms on Windows to display dynamic, engaging, and relevant content for users to view on the Teams Rooms front-of-room display when the device is not in use. Admins can configure tenant-wide and room-specific settings from the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. Integrations with selected third-party digital signage providers and content management systems are supported, with initial partners Appspace and XOGO. This feature is available in Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more about digital signage in Teams Rooms.

Manage digital signage in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal

IT Admins can now use Teams Rooms Pro Management to manage digital signage, configure device settings, set custom URLs as sources, and enable trusted third-party integrations. This feature is available in Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more about the Pro Management portal.

Teams Rooms expanded cross-platform meetings via SIP join

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows is now enabled to join meetings like Google Meet, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Amazon Chime, RingCentral, and others from conferencing services that support SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) join. This functionality creates a seamless collaboration experience which mirrors the native Teams interface and supports features such as 1080p video, dual screen, various layout options, HDMI input, and others contingent on the third-party platform’s in-meeting controls.  This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license, and a SIP plan from a CVI partner (currently limited to Pexip). Learn more about third-party interoperability in Teams Rooms.

Enhanced admin controls for Cloud IntelliFrame in Teams Rooms on Windows

Admins can now override the default settings of Cloud IntelliFrame and support cameras even if not on the supported camera list.  This feature is available in Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more about Cloud IntelliFrame.

Enhanced shared display mode with room audio auto-detect in a BYOD room

For your smallest rooms or when a Teams Rooms is not available, shared display mode in a bring your own device (BYOD) room is automatically activated when you connect your laptop to a room’s audio peripheral via USB. Teams detects the device and recommends joining with room audio on the pre-join screen, streamlining content sharing and enhancing hybrid meetings.  On devices already identified by Microsoft as shared devices, users are seamlessly transitioned to the room audio and shared display mode. Learn more about bring your own device (BYOD) rooms.

Automatically set workplace presence in a BYOD room

Sharing your work location makes it easier to connect with co-workers who are in the office. Now, when you connect to peripherals in a BYOD room, your workplace presence will be automatically set to ‘In the office’ (if you and your admin have given permission).  This feature supports intelligent booking solutions that are coming soon.

Participant roster grouping in Teams BYOD rooms

Teams will now automatically list you as an ‘in-room participant’ on the meeting roster when you join a Teams meeting with your laptop in a BYOD room. Grouping in-room participants enables individual identification and meeting intelligence capabilities. Now in public preview with general availability later this year.

Devices certified for Teams

Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices.    

MeetUp 2 for Teams Rooms on Windows (with Lenovo Core)

Newly certified for Teams,  Logitech MeetUp 2 is an all-in-one USB conference camera and designed for huddle and small rooms. It brings a simple setup, a selection of AI-enabled audio and video features, and easy management to USB-based deployments with a compute or in BYOD mode. MeetUp 2 can function in USB mode with either an in-room compute or when connected to a laptop in BYOD mode. It is easy to set up in small spaces, thanks to multiple mounting options, clean cabling, and a manual privacy shutter.  Learn more

Poly Blackwire 8225 Stereo USB-C+A
Stay focused with the Poly Blackwire 8225 headset. The noise-canceling microphone enhanced with Acoustic Fence technology makes sure users sound clear in any environment. And the advanced hybrid active noise canceling (ANC) lets users adjust the setting to fit their environment, so you can enjoy high-quality audio for meetings, calls, and stereo music. Learn more

Poly Blackwire 3310 Monaural USB-C+A

This intuitive and simple to use headset is built with style and priced for enterprise deployment. It’s comfortable and reliable, with signature audio quality. The monaural over-ear headset includes a boom-arm microphone and convenient controls on the connection wire.

Epos Impact 430T

With plug-and-play connectivity and features like lift-to-mute, the Epos Impact 430T helps hybrid workers manage calls with less effort. This monoaural wired headset and boom arm microphone enables you to hear and be heard on any call, and advanced noise-filtering technology transmits your voice instead of unwanted noise. And, the ultralight, comfortable design and small noise-dampening ear pad helps you stay productive throughout the day.

Epos Impact 460T

The Epos Impact 460T provides all the quality, comfort, and features of the Impact 430T, with a binaural over-ear design for stereo sound.

Frontline Worker solutions

Working Time & Quiet Time in Teams

Rest, recharge, and reduce stress with Working Time and Quiet Time in Teams. Receiving notifications while off-the-clock introduces unnecessary strain for FLWs and their admins, and makes it harder to achieve work life balance.

• Working Time links clock-in status with access to Teams, safeguarding the valuable time employees have off work. Organization administrators can set the Teams app to be active only when employees are clocked in, and to either show a warning screen or be muted and inaccessible when they are clocked out.
• Quiet Time allows administrators to ensure that employees have the opportunity to wind down after hours and when off the clock without worry. Admins can set use Quiet Time to restrict pop-up notifications, remove notification badges from the Teams app icon, and indicate that conversation notifications are muted during hours when employees are off-the-clock. If permitted, it can be set to allow access to necessary communications when Teams is opened when off the clock.

Two screenshots of mobile phone notifications. The first demonstrates a notification from Working Time, which indicates that the user’s access to the Teams app is blocked, due to the fact that they are outside of their work time. The second is a warning screen that recommends that the user not access their account when they are in non-working time.

Managed Home Screen Re-design

Managed Home Screen (MHS) is an application used on Android Enterprise dedicated devices enrolled into Intune and for fully managed user affiliated devices. It offers admins the ability to customize and control the user experiences on enrolled devices. This update to the MHS app provides a more streamlined user experience and more robust support for organizations. One key addition is a configurable navigation bar at the top of the page, which enables easier navigation and quick access to device-identifying information. This navigation bar provides the ability for admins to configure different information display options, and set display formats based on sign-in status. This added flexibility provides clear device and user identification, and simplifies device control and management. We’ve also added a few other new features to MHS which are only available as part of this latest update. More details are on the Microsoft Community Hub. Updates to the Managed Home Screen experience – Microsoft Community Hub