Happy new year, and welcome to 2025! I hope your year is off to an excellent start, and that you have lots of exciting things on the horizon. I know that this year will be a big one for Teams – it’s only January, and we’re already releasing a host of useful features that can save you time and help you communicate efficiently and effectively.
For example, the ability to forward messages between channels helps you share important information with colleagues more easily (“Forward channel messages” in Chat and Collaboration), and giving meeting attendees the freedom to move between breakout rooms (“Meeting participants can move between breakout rooms” in Meetings, Webinars and Town Halls) can simplify event management and participation.
Those are just two of the many features that we’re releasing to kick off 2025, so read on to see what else is new in these categories:
Chat and Collaboration
Meetings, Webinars, and Town Halls
Workplace-Places and Rooms
Teams Phone
Teams Devices
Teams Fundamentals
Frontline Worker Solutions
Chat and Collaboration
Quick hyperlink insertion
Seamlessly integrated hyperlinks enhance message readability and accessibility, ensuring that links are naturally woven into the text. This new feature streamlines the process of adding links, making it faster and more efficient. To use this capability, copy the link you want to insert, type your message in the compose box, highlight the text you want to hyperlink, and paste. Your hyperlink is now ready.
Forwarding Loop components
You can now forward chat messages containing Loop components, allowing for seamless sharing and real-time collaboration across different chats and channels. To forward a message with a Loop component, navigate to it, click on the ellipsis (three dots), and select ‘Forward’ from the menu. When the Loop components are shared, their permissions are maintained, ensuring that recipients have the appropriate access rights. This feature is available on desktop and mobile.
Forward channel messages
You can now forward messages between channels, allowing you to share important information with relevant team members with fewer clicks. To forward a channel message post, channel post reply, or chat message to another channel, 1:1 or group chat, select the message’s ellipsis menu and choose Forward. You can also add additional context to the message and @mention recipients for greater clarity and alignment.
Meetings, Webinars, Town Halls, and Immersive
Meeting participants can move between breakout rooms
Now, meeting organizers can make the list of breakout rooms visible to all meeting participants and allow them to choose which room to join. Enabling this setting in breakout rooms allows participants to move freely from one room to another, simplifying breakout room coordination for meeting organizers and participants.
New calendar experience in Microsoft Teams: Generally available now
The calendar in Teams has been redesigned for reliability and familiarity—you can now enjoy the same calendar experience across Teams and Outlook, with integration of both Copilot and Places to help infuse intelligence into your time management. Copilot capabilities like draft an agenda and managed booking, and Places capabilities like recommended in-office days, Places finder, and Places card are all available in the new Teams calendar experience. In addition to Copilot and Places features, the new Teams calendar brings new capabilities to Teams like calendar sharing, month view, multi-day view, print support, filtering, support for multiple time zones, and more. You’ll find the ‘New calendar’ toggle at the top right of the calendar app in Teams. It only takes one click to upgrade to the new Teams calendar, and you can easily pick up and resume exactly where you left off in classic Teams calendar.
Meeting organizers can turn off copying or forwarding of live captions, transcript, and recap for meetings
We are expanding the existing ‘Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat’ control for meeting organizers to include live captions, transcription, and meeting recap. With this change, meeting organizers with Teams Premium licenses will see a control called ‘Turn off copying and forwarding of meeting chat, live captions, and transcript’ in the meeting options. When this control is enabled, meeting participants won’t be able to copy the meeting chat, live captions, live transcript, or any insights generated from intelligent meeting recap.
Microsoft Purview support for town halls
Microsoft Purview now supports eDiscovery for town halls in Teams, ensuring compliance by preserving and managing event data effectively. Effective data management helps in organizing and categorizing data, making it easier to search and retrieve specific information. This reduces the risk of data loss and ensures that sensitive information is protected and handled according to compliance standards.
Audio support for screen sharing in Mesh events (Premium)
Audio support for screen sharing has now been added in Microsoft Mesh. Presenters will now be able to choose whether they’d like to include system audio when starting a screen share in a Mesh event. This feature is available for presenters in Mesh with a Teams Premium license.
Workplace: Places and Teams Rooms
Workplace check-in with workplace presence
Workplace presence facilitates in-person connections by allowing you to check in on the Places app and let colleagues know you’re in the office, confirm work plans, receive check-in reminders, and view which of your colleagues are nearby and who has planned to come in.
Workplace presence at building level upon peripheral connection
With work location in Teams now including buildings, make your presence known, coordinate with others, and take advantage of AI-assisted booking in the future. Once enabled and opted-in, your workplace presence can auto-update to a specific building when you connect to a peripheral at a bookable desk or BYOD room.
Speaker recognition and attribution in BYOD rooms with Teams Premium or Copilot
You can now take advantage of speaker recognition and transcript attribution, unleashing new AI capabilities in any meeting space, whether or not it has a Teams Rooms system deployed. This feature identifies and attributes people in live transcripts, utilizing a unique voice profile for each participant enabling intelligent recaps and maximum value from Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams meetings. Users can easily and securely enroll voices via Teams Settings. This feature requires a Teams Premium or Copilot license for the user hosting the meeting. Learn more.
Auto-association of BYOD room devices in the Pro Management portal
Manually associating peripherals to rooms may feel like an endless task if your organization has several bring your own device (BYOD) rooms. IT admins can streamline the process and get enhanced inventory visibility with this feature which utilizes meeting room invite data to intelligently associate peripherals to these spaces. Once associated, users can more easily connect and utilize shared peripherals in rooms. Learn more.
Start or stop recording on Teams Rooms on Windows
In Teams Rooms on Windows, you can now start or stop recording without needing to join on your companion device. The start/stop recording button is available on the console or touch boards through the More menu. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license.
Multiple camera view for Teams Rooms on Windows
When attending remotely, you now have enhanced viewing options during meetings in a Teams Room on Windows which now supports displaying up to four single-stream cameras. With multiple camera views, you can follow all the action in the room and manually switch between different views as desired. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro license. Learn more.
Custom name for Teams panels
Admins can now use the Pro Management portal to assign custom names to licensed panels. This name will then display on the panel’s home screen, replacing the global address book name shown in Outlook or Teams. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro or Teams Shared Devices license. Learn more.
Usage reports for bookable desks in the Pro Management portal
Where your people choose to work is crucial information for workspace planning and management. Get more insight into workspace usage when you can see which desk pools are used, and when. Usage, occupancy, and other key data points attributed to desk pools are visible in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. Learn more.
Teams Phone
Queues app available on Teams phone devices
The Queues app experience for agents is now available on Teams phone devices. This experience will help agents manage customer interactions directly from their phone device. Agents will be able to opt in or opt out of queues and access call history, which includes details like customer names, phone numbers, call times, and actions taken during the call. This ensures agents have all the information they need at their fingertips, making it easier to provide personalized and effective customer service.
Teams Calling Plan enablement wizard in the Microsoft 365 admin center
Unlock a faster way to manage Teams Calling Plans with the new Calling Plan enablement wizard in the Microsoft 365 admin center. This tool streamlines the process of enabling Teams Calling Plan seats with phone numbers, saving valuable setup time. Admins will automatically see this enhanced experience once Teams Calling Plan licenses are assigned to the tenant. The wizard provides an intuitive, step-by-step guide to set up emergency addresses, acquire phone numbers, and assign them to users—all in one smooth workflow. Ready to simplify your Teams Calling Plan setup? Learn more
Collaborative call delegation on Teams phone devices
Teams phone device users can now share access to their phone line with a specific group of users, without a structured delegation system. This enables group members to receive, and initiate calls on behalf of others, enabling a simple and collaborative communication experience.
Teams Devices
Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices.
Owl Labs Owl Bar
The newly certified for Teams Owl Bar is an intelligent 4K front-of-room camera, microphone, and speaker device. It features a 30MP camera lens, four omnidirectional microphones, and an integrated speaker. The Owl Bar can work alone or pair with the Meeting Owl to focus on the speaker and switch cameras, ensuring remote participants always have the best view. Owl Labs’ Owl Intelligence System™ captures the best view of in-room speakers, making hybrid discussions effective and productive. Ideal for huddle and small meeting rooms. Learn more
AudioCodes C430HD Native Microsoft Teams Common Area IP Phone
The AudioCodes Microsoft Teams-native C430HD IP phone is an entry level/common area phone specially designed to deliver low-cost yet feature-rich unified communications in any shared space or phone booth. Equipped with a 4.3” color LCD screen, the C430HD supports Microsoft Teams out-of-the-box for quick installation and streamlined provisioning. Learn more
Fundamentals
Block malicious users from your organization
With this feature in Teams, you can prevent users in your organization from collaborating with specific people outside the organization. Admins can now set up a list of users that are blocked from collaborating with their organization. If a user is added to the block list, people in your organization will not be able to have 1:1 and group chats with these users. If chats already exist before a user is added to the block list, the blocked user will be removed from the chat.
Brand impersonation phishing protection
This feature helps IT admins identify if an external user is targeting their enterprise users by impersonating a brand commonly targeted by phishing attacks. It monitors initial contacts in chat with individual users, and notifies the user that the message may be spam or a phishing attempt.
Frontline Worker Solutions
App-Powered Tasks
App-powered tasks, currently in public preview, offers your organization more control over what users see when they open their tasks within Teams. Instead of showing only the standard set of task fields, users now have an experience tailored to the task at hand. When the user selects an app-powered task, the destination app will open directly to that specific task information. This allows employees to view all tasks in one place, even when tasks are stored across multiple third-party systems, and offers task-specific guidance on completion from right within Teams.
For more information, please read our public preview announcement or learn how to manage app-powered tasks.
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