Are you affected by COVID-19?
Free consultation on how we can help you to change your services and offerings with online systems! – GET a free consultation

Microsoft Updates Teams for Hybrid Workplace

Microsoft has divulged new inventions in Teams and Viva designed to further enable hybrid work. The expansions will solve better, and richer, hybrid meeting experiences for every person, beginning with designing for the people who aren’t in the room and leveling the playing arena for each member, Microsoft says.     

Microsoft is adding new meeting experiences with improvements to Teams Rooms comprising new video layouts, Whiteboard experiences, Fluid components, and more. Enthusiastic users of the Teams chat function will soon be able to pin a message and reply to a particular chat message.      
Moreover, Microsoft is bringing users a curated set of guided meditations and mindfulness aerobics from Headspace to the Viva Insights app in Teams, designed to assist users to start their day energetically.
“At Microsoft, we believe that hybrid work is the future of work and that to empower their people to succeed in hybrid work, business leaders will need to re-imagine their organizations with a new operating model for people, places, and processes.”

Over this year, Microsoft will roll out the front row in Teams Rooms, an “immersive room layout that makes interactions feel more natural” and provides in-room members a better sense of connection to remote members.
Microsoft has moved the video gallery to the bottom of the screen so remote participants are face-to-face with those in the room. And to assist everyone stays engaged. Meeting chat will also be noticeable to those in the room; therefore they can see and reply to comments shared through chat.

To support remote members establish their presence in the room, Teams Rooms will enlarge screen real estate by new video layouts that separate the video gallery across multiple displays when content isn’t shared.
Jabra, Logitech, Poly, and Microsoft’s latest Teams device partner Neat are using advanced AI-powered camera technologies to deliver new video views improved for hybrid meetings, allowing each individual in the room to be seen more clearly.

“Meetings have increased significantly over the past year, along with unstructured communications,” says Spataro. “Research from our Work Trend Index shows the average Teams user is sending 45 percent more chats per person per, week than they did one year ago. And ad-hoc, unstructured meetings are on the rise as well.”
“To help manage this digital overload, new Fluid components in Teams meetings make it easy to co-create an agenda, take notes, and assign tasks, right within the Teams meeting, and access persistent recap content whenever you need it,” he says.

“And the note, agenda, and tasks from meetings will be automatically “placed” in the new meeting notes home of OneNote. While the meeting is underway, take the discussion a step further by ideating and brainstorming together by creating and editing live Fluid components in Whiteboard.”
“Fluid components can also be leveraged across Outlook—in email or the calendar—making it easier to manage your time, agenda, notes, and tasks across apps.”