In a world where hybrid work has become standard, Microsoft Teams has become an integral part of modern workplace collaboration and communication. With more than a quarter of a billion users, Microsoft Teams is the most popular business communication service in the world, but with a clear aim at advancement, Teams is more than just a communication service. It’s a hub for innovation.

With new features unveiled at this year’s Microsoft Inspire and Microsoft Ignite, it’s clear that Teams is positioned to become a necessity for hybrid work. Teams offers an unrivaled platform for increasing agility and productivity while reducing cost and empowering the modern workforce to do more with less.

“With the number of daily active users surpassing 270 million, and with an ever-growing list of features and functionality, Microsoft Teams has clearly become the new front end for a new world of work. With key features such as messaging, calls, document sharing, intelligent meetings, real-time document collaboration, and collaborative apps to streamline workflows and business processes, Teams really delivers every experience in the flow of work. At the core of this tremendous success is Microsoft’s unyielding commitment to updates and new features since the platform was released in 2017. A trend that is clearly continuing in 2023,” said FSi Strategies CEO Redha Morsli.

From enhancing collaboration through new chat features, to creating a more immersive hybrid workspace, here are the new features in Microsoft Teams that can help your business thrive in Microsoft Teams.

Meetings

The latest updates to Teams Meetings are focused around keeping your participants engaged and active in meetings. Assigned Seats in Together mode allows meeting organizers and presenters to assign participants to seats when using Together mode in a Teams Meeting. Introduced in 2020, Together mode digitally places participants on the same background, creating the appearance of all participants being in the same room, and now, meeting organizers have additional control over how they want meetings to look in Together mode.

Shared content pop-out windows are a new feature that allows participants to stay immersed in their meetings even when someone is sharing their screen. This feature allows users to pop out the screen share so that they can see both the content being shared and the other participants in the meeting.

Set to release early next year, Teams Premium will introduce a new innovative meeting experience to users. Among the highlighted features is Live Translated Captions, which will allow your multilingual team to communicate through language barriers during meetings. The AI driven feature works to translate 40 spoken languages into captions in real-time, allowing participants to read them in their native language. The feature is available to all users until Teams Premium is released early next year. Additionally, Teams Premium will also feature an upgraded meeting experience with intelligent meeting recaps and AI-generated tasks within meetings.

Calling

The Teams calling feature can replace your office phone system, and now it’s now making calling more comprehensive than ever. Two new features offer an enhanced call history that can help you keep more comprehensive records and call groups, which can help your team group contacts based on whether they’re part of your team or a specific client or customer’s. These features enhance your employees’ calling experience.

Chat & Collaboration

Microsoft Teams has also updated its chat feature for greater collaboration, now featuring integrated Microsoft 365 templates with SharePoint, meaning your SharePoint templates can be automatically applied when you create a new team. Additionally, Teams has now incorporated Adobe Acrobat in a way that allows admins to make it the default app for viewing and editing PDF files in Microsoft Teams.

Making chats more personal, Teams has integrated a video clip feature that allows users to record, send, and view video clips within a Teams chat.

Similar to the new pop-out option in screensharing, users can now create a pop-out window for scheduling forms within the Teams calendar. This feature can allow users to schedule multiple meetings at the same time.

Management

Teams will offer upgraded usage analytics, providing more consistency across the Teams and Microsoft 365 admin center usage reports. Additionally, these upgraded analytics will allow usage reports to include historical data from up to 180 days rather than just 7, 60, or 90. Teams App usage and Teams usage reports will both be accessible through the Teams admin center and the Microsoft 365 admin center. These updates will also bring an updated version of Teams App usage report with added support for Line of Business applications.

Power Platform & Custom Development

Microsoft Teams now allows Admins to view and manage all third-party app subscriptions that they have purchased in one place from the Teams admin center. Additionally, the app update experience has been revamped to simplify the process for users. All functionality of meeting apps will soon be supported in VOIP one-on-one and group calls, allowing users to have the same experience with an app in a Teams VOIP Call as they would in a Teams Meeting.

Teams is also introducing zero-install link unfurling, allowing users to see a content card for links shared in a chat regardless of if they have your app installed.

FSi Strategies can help you leverage new features in Microsoft Teams.

Founded over 20 years ago, FSi Strategies is a Microsoft Partner, and our experts specialize in Microsoft Teams, Teams Rooms, and Teams devices. As part of Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program (TAP), FSi Strategies is one of 150 elite companies that works with Microsoft to provide real-world testing of new Teams features and updates as well as providing assistance in testing and certification of Microsoft Teams Devices.

Our managed IT services are driven by a commitment to help our clients on their journey toward innovation and greater collaboration in the hybrid world, and our experts are positioned to help you leverage these new features in Microsoft Teams so that your organization can do more with less. Connect with us today to begin your journey.