Credit: Microsoft
It wouldn’t be a Microsoft event without a series of Teams announcements. And on the first day of Microsoft’s Ignite Spring 2021 virtual event, employees were not disappointed.
Microsoft has announced a new channel sharing feature that will arrive at Teams later this year. Called Teams Connect, the feature will allow users to share channels with anyone – internal or external – in the organization. The shared channel will appear on a user’s primary Teams tenant, along with other Teams channels. The new Teams Connect feature will be available in a private version starting today.
If you’re wondering how Teams Connect compares to Teams guest access, it seems that with guest access, you can add an external user to the Teams environment, where he becomes a guest. With shared Teams Connect channels, multiple organizations can share a single channel that all members can access from their own Teams environments.
Channel sharing seems more appropriate for scenarios where multiple organizations are collaborating together on a specific project. Guest Access seems best suited for situations where an outside party needs broad access to organizational data and information, above and beyond the channel.
See too: Microsoft Teams Panels wants to make your meetings easier when you’re back in the office | Added support for multiple account login (more or less) | Teams Pro adds new webinar and ‘meeting intelligence’ features | Outlook reminder gets a ‘join meeting’ button
Microsoft executives also said today that Teams will support end-to-end coding (E2EE) for Teams one-to-one calls. IT will be free to choose which users can use E2EE. E2EE for Teams 1: 1 ad-hoc VoIP calls (as the feature is officially known) will be available in advance for commercial customers at the end of the first half of this calendar year.
In addition, Microsoft is officially announcing the expected ability to host a Teams webinar, which leaked last month under the name “Teams Pro”. Authorities said today that Teams users can organize webinars for those inside and outside an organization of up to 1,000 participants. Webinars can make use of personalized registration; rich presentation options; host controls; and post-event reports. The authorities said that those who wish to broadcast to a larger audience (up to 20,000 people by the end of this year and 10,000 after that) can switch to the broadcast for viewing only. Webinar functionality will be included at no additional cost in many existing Microsoft 365 / Office 365 business plans.
Microsoft is adding a number of features to Teams that will appreciate public speakers and PowerPoint jockeys.
PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams allows presenters to conduct meetings with notes, slides, chat and participants in a single view. PowerPoint Live is available to teams starting today. The new Team Presenter Mode allows users to customize how their video feed and content appear to the public. A mode called Highlight shows the announcer’s video feed in front of the shared content. Reporter and Side-by-side modes are also available. Featured in Presenter Mode will be released this month; Reporter and Side-by-Side are “coming soon”. In addition, there is a Dynamic View that organizes the elements of a meeting prioritized for a great video experience, officials said. Dynamic View is scheduled to launch in April, officials said.
At Ignite, Microsoft announced a new category of speakers called Teams Intelligent Speakers. Smart team speakers can identify and differentiate the voices of up to 10 people speaking in a Microsoft team room. The speakers were created in partnership with EPOS and Yealink, officials said, two OEMs who have devices certified as smart speakers. (The Surface Hub is also considered a Teams smart speaker device, officials said.) Users can enable or disable assignment at any time for privacy and security reasons. And if these devices sound familiar, yes, there is / was a precedent: a conical speaker that Microsoft publicly demonstrated in 2018 that could recognize multiple speakers even when their discussions overlapped.