Microsoft recently announced that Teams now has 20 million active daily users--up from 13 million less than four months ago. There's one big reason for this sudden uptick in users.
Teams rapid growth is partly a result of how fully integrated it has become with Office 365's productivity apps. Office 365 subscriptions already include access to Teams, but despite the rising number of organizations adopting Teams, there are still things about Teams users may not know or be taking advantage of.
Here's a list of newer Teams features:
Filter Teams chats and channels to communicate better
Using the filter icon in a channel or chat, you filter your teams list by typing a keyword to find a specific team or channel by name, or in chat, type a person’s name to filter for every group, meeting, or one-on-one chat you have with them. Select More to add more filters – like unread messages.
You can also "mute" conversions in chats and channels when message updates become a distraction. More options > Turn off notifications/Turn on notifications
Need to have a confidential consult with a few other users? You can create a private channel by selecting "Private" under the privacy settings of the new channel.
Need to focus your workflow? Teams' Multiwindow capability provides users the option to pop out chats, meetings, calls or documents into separate windows.
Teams adds new calling capabilities
As of September, Teams has added improved cloud voicemail updates. For example, configuring call answer rules and directly transferring a call to cloud voicemail.
Putting someone on hold? Music on Hold helps by playing music for people while they wait.
Teams is also working on improving its caller ID features. Now, when a user receives a call, Teams will display the caller’s name based on Azure Active Directory data and/or the Telco provided display name. This feature is available now on the desktop, and will be released on mobile soon.
Users of Teams on the web can also add Google Chrome to their list of browsers that support making calls.
Check out this complete rundown of new Teams call features that were announced at Microsoft Ignite.
Teams has new meetings features that users want
Sometimes, a meeting isn't scheduled in advance, it just happens organically. For this, Teams has a “Meet Now” feature on desktop. Go to Calendar on the left side of Teams, then select Meet now in the top right corner and add the people to the meeting. No calendar requests needed.
Have you ever missed a meeting because a call ran long, or an email interrupted your workflow? Now you will see a notification in your Teams activity feed to notify you when someone is trying to add you to a meeting. If the meeting is still going on, you'll be able to join right away.
Manage other Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook with Teams
Teams users can move Outlook emails, including attachments, into a Teams chat or channel conversation by clicking on the ‘’Share to Teams’’ in Outlook. You can also share a conversation from Teams to an Outlook email by clicking on the more options (‘’…’’) icon in a conversation.
Missed activity emails also keep you up to speed on Teams threads by showing the most recent replies from the conversation. You can even reply directly to the channel conversion without leaving Outlook.
When it comes to Teams recent upgrades and integrations, this post barely scratches the surface. With Teams becoming a hub inside the Office 365 ecosystem, the user enhancements will only continue to increase in 2020.
We love using Teams in our office. Do you need help getting your org to adopt Teams? Maybe we can help. Contact us today to learn more.
