Microsoft Teams, the hub combining workplace meetings, notes, chats and attachments, has continued to evolve throughout December.

Highlights are set to include new voice capabilities, allowing the support of various communications scenarios, while at the same time fresh manageability and automation functionality means you can provide better support to your teams all over your organisation.

More effective communication

Everyone has their preferred way of communicating, depending on how they work and what role they do.

Some of the new voice-based features from Microsoft Teams include:

• Group call pick up – Meaning you can create a tailored group of co-workers who can answer your calls
• Shared line appearance – This lets you select someone to take a phone call for you
• Call park – Thanks to unique codes, this makes it easier to connect callers who can’t easily be reached and helps targeted users retrieve calls via a Microsoft Teams client
• Location-based routing – Comply with local regulations thanks to the restriction of the routing of the calls between PTSN and VoIP endpoints, based on where they are located

New IT admin features

For your users to collaborate effectively, your admin team needs a range of capabilities, and Microsoft Teams is introducing new automation and manageability capabilities for enhanced organisation-wide teamwork. These range from improved control and visibility to improved streamlining of key areas of the Microsoft Teams lifecycle.

Team management straight from the Admin Center: You can now access a list of all your organisation’s teams directly in the Admin Center for both Skype and Microsoft Teams. Just hit ‘Team’s in the left-hand navigation, choose ‘Manage Teams’ and you can read this list and use it to manage the membership, remove or add channels, plus alter settings.

At the same time, you can make a new team, customise it and add members, so that you improve the way you support users.

• Fresh Teams admin roles: Customers have access to new Azure Active Directory roles, assigned via the Azure Admin Portal.
• New lifecycle automation via Graph APIs: Save time and streamline the process of forming and customizing teams with new Graph APIs.

Team customisation with third-party integrations

Don’t forget the constantly refreshed apps that are all part of the Teams experience:

• Disco, Previously called Growbot, this lets you celebrate staff achievements and strengthen core values and working cultures.
• Q, This AI Assistant supplies key data according to what you happen to be working on. It goes through millions of articles and other sources to get you the most relevant information.
• Trello, Stay on top of project tasks with this one. There are cards across different boards with details of tasks so everything can be seen on a single screen.
• The Site24x7’s refreshed Microsoft Teams app supplies DevOps teams with services and tools to avoid downtime.
• Lucidchart for Microsoft Teams lets you co-ordinate flowcharts, network diagrams and other documents.
• Decisions for Microsoft Teams Empowers groups which meet frequently to enjoy better meetings thanks to key functionality. That includes seeing a list of future meetings, or reviewing the notes or outcomes of previous meetings.

If you have any questions regarding these updates, please get in touch with a member of the Care team by emailing helo@carecomputers.co.uk