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Microsoft announced more new features for Teams at its annual Ignite developer conference. These include a ‘Together’ feature to create more of a meeting feel, a virtual journey to structure work from home, and additional features to keep colleagues connected and safe, whether at home or in the office.
Together mode scenes are intended to create a more real world atmosphere during video conferencing. Configurations such as auditoriums, conference rooms, and a cafeteria will be available later this year, so presenters can select a scene as the default for all meeting attendees. Your image will come to the fore, while machine learning in Together mode will automatically scale and center meeting participants in their virtual seats in the scene.
Also, meeting rooms will be available next month. Meeting organizers will be able to divide participants into smaller groups to facilitate brainstorming sessions or breakout group discussions. Presenters can jump from room to room, make announcements to all meeting rooms, and close rooms to bring everyone back to the main meeting.
New hardware: Teams panels, large Hub screen
The company also introduced Microsoft Teams dashboards, a new category of devices that can be mounted outside of a meeting space to notify participants of scheduling and occupancy and to help with orientation in the office. Teams dashboards can also use information from other connected certified Teams devices, such as cameras that support people counting, to display information about room capacity. The first partners of the Teams panel are Crestron and Yealink.
In its own range of hardware, Microsoft started pre-sale of the 85-inch Surface Hub 2S model for commercial customers in the US.Available from January 2021, this is a new screen to support conferencing with Microsoft 365, Teams, Windows and other applications.
Team well-being
Other enhancements to Microsoft Teams devices and rooms are aimed at supporting health and safety as some people return to their workplaces. The contactless meeting experiences will be supported by the Room Remote app, Teams streaming, and voice assistance with Microsoft Cortana, so employees can comply with security guidelines without spreading infections.
New Teams personal wellness insights and features include a virtual commute launching in the first half of 2021. It’s designed to give homeworkers time to get ready in the morning and unplug at night important transition to maintain productivity during the day, Microsoft said. It has also integrated the Headspace app with Teams to help users de-stress and access mindfulness and meditation exercises.
To help colleagues stay connected, Teams is adding features that make it easy to praise top collaborators for key accomplishments and schedule one-on-one meetings to catch up. Microsoft 365 also intelligently displays suggested tasks and emails from Outlook and @mentions in Teams that may require follow-up, and near the start of the day, people can receive a daily informational email from Cortana that includes key information about personal productivity and suggested tasks for that day. .
More information from Workplace Analytics within Teams will help managers and leaders understand whether employees are at risk of burnout or whether employees can maintain strong connections with colleagues and clients.
