Microsoft recently held its annual Ignite conference with lots of announcements of new features across their portfolio. Copilot features in lots of products across the Microsoft stack, including Microsoft Teams, however there were a number of interesting features not using it that I wanted to highlight.
Voice isolation – Using AI and a short enrolment process Teams will be able to recognise your voice and mask background noise as well as filter out other voices, ensuring that your voice is the only one heard.
Speaker recognition in meeting rooms has been out a while to enhance meeting spaces, but required special intelligent microphones in the room. With Teams Rooms Pro in 2024 it will be possible to use existing hardware and their microphones in shared spaces to attribute speakers to individual attendees in the transcript.
Notifications in the Teams client will soon be able to all be marked as read at the same time using a single click, rather than going to each individual Channel.
Teams messaging will soon support code blocks allowing for sending of formatted code or using markdown, you will be able to pick the code to allow for syntax highlighting within the code, whether pasting or written.
Customisation of default reactions will soon be possible, rather than being presented by the current Microsoft default emoji’s to choose from you’ll be able to pick you own default reactions that you use most frequently. It will also be possible to reduce the number of reactions shown, making it easier to find the ones you use quickly.
Click to call will provide a way of people to easily reach Microsoft Teams users, call queues or auto-attendants through a single click on a webpage or app.
Microsoft is bringing to Teams a feature available in Skype for Business, Private Line. Private line enables selected users to be assigned a second telephone number, this number allows incoming callers to reach them bypassing any delegates, assistants or admins. A unique notification and ringtone will help users identify which line is being used. This feature does not provide outbound dialling on the private line number.
Autopilot has been used for years for end-user deployments of Windows, now it will support Microsoft Teams Meeting Room on Windows, streamlining deployment. The new features will support auto-login of Teams on the device, allowing for installers to just plug in the device, turn on, and then after a short while the device will be signed in and ready to use.
