Teams

Microsoft plans to match Zoom’s 7×7 calling but that is likely not enough for the tool.

This week in Teams, we’ve been exploring some new functionality rolling out for use with Intune, meeting limits/meeting join improvements, interoperability settings and more.

Microsoft has rolled out a bunch of new features in the last week, here’s a recap of what functionality is new.

It’s not too often that you realize an application that you are using frequently is missing some basic functionality. Especially with Teams, an application that is used by more than 75 million people every single day. But that’s the case with the search inside of Teams. While you can search from the top of the app…

One of the big feature updates coming to Teams that many have been waiting for is the ability to chat with Skype contacts inside the Teams application. Microsoft stated that this feature would be available by the end of April but that timeline has come and gone. The company has posted a new message to its admin center and…

This week, Microsoft’s Build conference is happening and the company is making announcements from updates to Windows development to new API features in Office. For users of Teams, and more specifically developers of apps for Teams, there are updates that you should know about. Microsoft has announced new extensions for both Visual Studio and Visual…

Microsoft is finally increasing Teams calling to support 9 participant streams, up from 4 but well behind Zoom.

Microsoft’s Teams has quickly found itself at the center of the work-from-home conversation that has kicked up during the past month. The company reported that they added 12 million new users in a week last month and coming next month, they will roll out a highly requested feature.

The Slack CEO says that the company is working on a calling integration with Teams. Slack hasn’t released any technical information, which leads to a certain amount of speculation as to how such an integration might happen. Slack’s previous attempts to integrate with Office 365 applications haven’t been too successful, but perhaps a federated hook-up like the one between Skype consumer and Teams might work.

Although Teams has seen a spike in usage due to more people working at home, the view of participants in Teams video meetings is not as good as competitors such as Zoom. Basically, the 2 x 2 view used by Teams isn’t as visually attractive or useful as the gallery views supported by other video conferencing systems. Microsoft says they have elevated the priority of the work necessary to increase the number of participants in the meeting window. They don’t say when this will happen.