What’s New In Microsoft Teams – January 2023

Our regular monthly Microsoft Teams update for the month of January. Last month’s release includes updates to the Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android, Microsoft Whiteboard, new certified devices, and platform and chat feature updates.

Devices

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android—new touch and collaboration experiences

The newly released Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android Update 3 includes many touch-enabled experiences to enhance the meeting and collaboration experience on touch-enabled devices. Continue reading for more information on these new features, including “walk up and use Microsoft Whiteboard”, “bring Whiteboard into an ad hoc meeting”, “redesigned sharing menu and Whiteboard support”, and finally “touch awareness and 4K display support”.

Walk up and use Microsoft Whiteboard

With Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android displays, whiteboard sessions can be started from a supported displays home screen at any time, including outside of a formal meeting. With one touch, a Microsoft Whiteboard session can be launched for instant collaboration. Admins can enable this feature with the “Allow initiate Whiteboard” setting on the device.

Bring Microsoft Whiteboard into an ad hoc meeting

Seamlessly switch from a local collaboration experience to an online co-creation space by tapping “Start meeting” on the local Whiteboard screen. ”Start meeting” quickly kicks off an ad hoc meeting and automatically presents the Whiteboard already started on the home screen onto the meeting stage. Simply add remote participants to the meeting and contribute across the same board in real-time. Instead of having to choose between viewing the gallery or the shared board, remote participants can now be seen side by side with Microsoft Whiteboard using the Content & Gallery layout.

Redesigned sharing menu and Microsoft Whiteboard support for resource accounts

Content sharing in a meeting is now more accessible with the redesigned share menu. When you tap “Share” in the meeting control bar, you can find all content options that can be shared in one place, including Microsoft Whiteboard. This Whiteboard sharing experience in a meeting is now supported on resource accounts.

Touch awareness and 4K display support

Touch screens will allow you to control the room system from both the touch display at the front of the room as well as the touch console, making it convenient to operate a Teams Room using whichever device is closest to reach. Admins can turn on this feature with the “Enable touch screen controls” setting on the device. Additionally, a 4K display is now supported to further enhance the meeting experience on a large-screen device.

Chat bubbles during meetings

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android can now display chats sent during a Teams meeting on the front-of-room display. Chat messages are displayed as chat bubbles over the current view, enabling in-room participants to engage with the conversation that is happening in the chat.

Hardware occupancy sensor integration

With supported occupancy sensor devices, a notification banner is displayed on the Teams panel if the room is occupied when it is available or if the room is not occupied when it is reserved. The room will also be automatically checked-in when the sensor detects occupancy if check-in is enabled. Learn more.

Certified devices

Neat Bar Pro 

Neat Bar Pro packs a stack of tech into a simple and elegant device and joins the rest of the Neat device portfolio certified for medium-sized Microsoft Teams Rooms. Neat Bar Pro natively runs Teams Rooms on Android, delivering an immersive & natural meeting experience. It supports up to two large screens, making it easy to see people and content together more clearly, and offers high-quality audio and video through two extreme-resolution cameras, a multiple microphone array, and three full-range speakers. Learn more.

Neat Bar Pro supports Neat’s unique experiences to make video meetings more engaging and natural for hybrid work. This includes the patented Neat Symmetry, which presents everyone in the meeting room equally up close, whether they’re sitting, standing, or moving around. Its powerful microphone array and Neat Audio Processing also ensure clear vocal pickup whilst minimising background noise. As with all Neat devices, it is easy to set up and manage, and Neat Bar Pro comes with a dedicated Neat Pad controller to make it easy to start and manage meetings.

Platform

Approvals as PDFs can be saved, printed and transferred 

Approval creators can save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. This feature allows customers to easily transfer their proof of approval as a PDF to another system or store it as a file.

Adobe Acrobat streamlines the PDF experience in Teams

Adobe has now released the new integration of Adobe Acrobat into Microsoft Teams – Adobe Acrobat can now be set as the default PDF app in Teams. This makes it easier to share and review PDFs, collaborate with comments and annotations, easily access PDFs stored in Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive, and more.

Chat and collaboration

Delete Chats

Organise and easily remove chat conversations you no longer need without impacting other participants in the same chat.

Expanded reactions

Express feedback more creatively with over 800 Teams emojis for every situation. Communicate reactions to celebrate, express your agreement, or emphasize the completion of tasks.

Add people to a group chat with @mention

Add new participants to the chat with @mention, removing the need to navigate to the add-dialogue. When adding new participants, you can control how much of the chat history to share.

Recommended people when creating a new message

Save time looking for the right stakeholders. Using AI, Teams chat will assist you in initiating new conversations by recommending colleagues based on your previous collaborations. 

Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent

The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs, has been extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned.

Sign Language View and always-on captions in meetings

Prioritise up to two other participants’ videos for sign language in meetings so they stay visible even while content is shared. Additionally, you can set captions to stay on across all meetings.

Stay Up To Date With Microsoft Teams – Free Download

Microsoft is constantly adding new and updating existing features to Microsoft Teams.

If you’d like your business to benefit from Microsoft Teams and the added system integrations that can save time and money, download our short ‘SuperCharge Microsoft Teams‘ guide here or contact us for a free 15-minute consultation and find out how we can support your business with Microsoft Teams. Call us on 0800 032 8274 or book a discovery call here.

Find out more from the Microsoft Teams official blog post here