Over the past month, Microsoft has added a lot of new features to Teams, including animated wallpapers and improvements to Teams Phone.
A new month, a new overview from Microsoft that includes all the new features that were introduced for Teams in August. You can find the full list here behind. We list the most important parts below.
Animated Wallpapers
With Teams’ dynamic background functionality, you can replace your current background with a dynamic animation. Microsoft sees this as an important new step towards a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance the meeting experience with creativity and customization according to their preferences.
You can enable the new option before the meeting starts. And you can identify the new backgrounds through the small video icon in the lower left of the image. You can also choose or edit this background during the meeting.
Team phone updates
August has become a big month for Teams Phone. The app got an improved interface for authorizing phones and the user interface on devices is now much simpler. Certified devices can now also be programmed to directly call pre-set phone numbers, such as emergency services at the factory.
Shared device licenses for Teams are now available through the Teams mobile app on Android. This allows Android phones to be set up as community phones. Workers can now make and receive calls from shared Android mobile phones wherever they are at work.
Encrypted voicemail messages are now provided with a helpful notification that you don’t miss these important messages and lots of new devices are added to the list of approved devices: AudioCodes C435HD, AudioCodes C455HD-DBW, Yealink BH71, EPOS IMPACT 1060T, B&O Beocom EX earphones and Algo IP devices via SIP gateway.
Chat and collaborate better
Now when you hover over a chat message with your mouse, in addition to emoji interactions, a button with more options and a button to reply to that specific message automatically appear.
Those who prefer to keep things compact have been turning on compact mode for quite some time now. Microsoft has now enhanced this view with additional information such as timestamps, additional blank lines, and indications of where the message is coming from in the collection.
Finally, you can now sync your to-do lists with Microsoft Loop. To Do and Planner are both available. This way you can easily make changes in Outlook or Teams, for example, and then everything is automatically synced across all platforms.
Team rooms and new devices
Microsoft has done a lot of work on Teams Rooms in the past month. The so-called “first row” experience is now resized where everyone is cut from the background and appears in a single environment. For example, you no longer have people’s heads small and large depending on how close or far they are from the camera.
Spatial audio is now an option you can enable for spatial audio. The only requirement is that the amplifier has a left and right channel of audio and be Teams certified.
Yes, multiple streams can now be processed from one room in Teams Rooms. Multi-stream IntelliFrame provides conference room participants with their own frame in the video gallery, meeting room participant face recognition, active speaker recognition, and panoramic video on cameras at the front of the meeting room (180-degree view) and in the center of the meeting room (with a view 360 degrees).
Finally, you can scan a QR code on Teams Panels to quickly book a room, and facial recognition or voice recognition is now an option to add the correct nickname to the relevant window when you’re in one room with multiple rooms.
New devices supporting Teams: Cisco Room Kit EQ and Navigator, Lenovo ThinkSmart Core with Lenovo IP Controller Kit, Jabra Speak2 75, AudioCodes RX-PANEL, Logitech Rally Bar Huddle, Yealink DeskVision A24.
