Microsoft November 2023

Teams Updates

1. Forward Messages in Teams Chats

NEW FEATURE
How this will affect your organisation:

With the forward message feature, Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to send chat messages from one chat to another. Messages can be forwarded to 1:1 chats, group chats and meeting chats. This feature will also allow the sender to add additional content to the message in order to provide context and clarity to the recipient. This feature will be rolling out across Microsoft Teams Desktop, Web and Mobile.

When this will happen:
mid-January 2024

2. Private Team Discovery

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

This admin only control will help admins make all or label-based private teams discoverable in their organization, for all or scoped end users with a simple toggle. The set of end users who have private teams’ discovery turned on for them by the admin, can search for private teams through the “Join team gallery” in their client. End users will still need to send join request for approval to the team owner.

When this will happen:
Early January 2024 and expect to complete by mid-January 2024.

3. Addition of Chat button in Missed Call Activity

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

Teams users will have an option to chat with Teams users after receiving a missed call from them by simply clicking on an additional ‘chat’ button on the missed call activity.

When this will happen:
late November and expect to complete by early December.

4. Custom Backgrounds for Announcement Posts in Channels

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to create custom backgrounds for their Announcement posts with the generative AI power of Microsoft Designer. Before, in Channels 1.0, users struggled to "find the right picture," to "find images that work correctly with banner sizing, so it takes ages," etc.
Now, whether users have their own image or an idea in mind, or absolutely nothing at all, they can create rich, engaging backgrounds for their announcement posts through the generative AI power of Microsoft Designer. A few clicks is all it takes--let the imagination run wild!
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When this will happen:
early November and expect to complete by mid-November.

5. Set 'Out of Office' from Teams Mobile Application

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

With the introduction of this added capability, your mobile users would be able to set 'Out of Office' with an Autoreply from the Teams iOS or Android application itself by clicking on the avatar and clicking on 'Out of Office'.

When this will happen:

mid-October 2023 and expect to complete rollout by late October 2023.

6. Quickly Capture Content in Teams Mobile

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

Most meetings involve some form of content that folks in the meeting might want to refer back to, or share with others – however, the only way to do this right now is through watching meeting recordings, or taking OS-level screenshots to share. Quick Capture will enable users to take screenshots and annotate/add text to content, to be saved and/or shared with Teams or outside of Teams, using sensitivity labels to ensure only content that is allowed to be saved/shared is done so.

When this will happen:
early November 2023 and expect to complete rollout by late November 2023.

7. End-to-end encrypted Meetings - 200 participants (Premium)

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

For meetings that require heightened confidentiality, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is an extra layer of security that encrypts data at its origin and decrypts it at its destination. Only audio, video, and video-based screen sharing is end-to-end encrypted. Apps, avatars, reactions, chat, and Q&A are not end-to-end encrypted. We had launched end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for meetings with 50 participants in February 2023. We are increasing the meeting size to 200 participants.

More Information: Use end-to-end encryption for Teams meetings - Microsoft Support

When this will happen:
late October and expect to complete by early November.