Hello everyone, it's Matt and welcome to Collaboration Coach.
Microsoft had their annual Ignite event last week
and as usual there were tons of new feature announcements.
There are far too many to cover in one video
so for this month's Radar, I'm going to make a series instead.
For part one, let's get started
and we'll have a look at all the upcoming features announced at Ignite for Teams.
Let's start with Mesh.
Mesh was announced earlier this year
and it aims to bring virtual and mixed reality to Microsoft Teams.
It promises to support 3-D meetings in Teams
where we'll be represented as avatars,
and also virtual spaces to bridge the gap between our physical and digital worlds.
The avatars can be personalised so they look like us
or whoever we want to look like in the virtual space
and so we won't need to turn our cameras on if we're having a bad hair day,
our avatars can carry on the conversation for us
and express themselves with real-time reactions.
We'll be able to create 3-D spaces that resemble physical locations
like conference rooms and meeting lounges for our avatars to mix in
and we'll be able to share documents and presentations and other content
and collaborate with them in the virtual space.
This looks like fun, but how much we need this right now I'm not so sure.
And I also noticed that Microsoft has started to use the term 'metaverse' in their marketing for Mesh
in the same way as Facebook or Meta does.
It looks like the metaverse is coming whether we want it or not
and the race to lead it is on.
Microsoft says that Mesh meetings and experiences will be available as a preview in Teams...
...on pc, mobile and mixed reality headsets in the first half of 2022.
Now on to meetings,
and there are a ton of new awesome features coming into this space too.
When we create a meeting we'll be able to assign roles before it starts
so if you need extra presenters or co-organisers,
you can set all that up beforehand.
Meetings will also track which order hands are raised in
so presenters can address the contribution of the attendees in the right order.
We'll have more control over notifications during the meeting too.
We'll be able to pin and hide our own video feeds
and finally, for those of us joining meetings on mobile,
a refreshed menu is being added that makes it easier for us to switch between the key features
like video and chat.
So this set of updates should be available in early 2022.
There are new features coming for Teams webinars and live events
and they should be available in preview in late 21 and early 22.
There'll be a new virtual green room that enables organisers and presenters to keep in touch,
socialise, monitor chat and manage the Q&A during a meeting or webinar.
This will provide a private space separate from the attendees
for presenters and organisers to talk and prepare before going live.
While the attendees wait, they'll see a welcome screen
and they can use the chat and ask questions with the Q&A.
Organisers and presenters will have more control over what their audience can see during their meetings
with the 'bring on screen' feature.
This will allow presenters to bring the other attendees' video
onto the meeting stage during presentations.
We'll also be able to add up to 10 co-organisers for webinars and meetings.
The co-organiser will be able to do the same things as the organiser,
like change the meeting options, create polls and manage breakout rooms.
This feature should be available by the end of the year.
The Q&A feature that's been available in live events for a long time is coming to meetings and webinars.
It will allow organisers and presenters to moderate questions and answer sessions
in a more formal way.
Attendees can post questions and they can be reviewed before being published by the moderator
and the best answers can be flagged, and responses can be filtered and pinned.
Q&A for webinars and meetings will be available for public preview in November.
A new feature called Teams Connect is going to allow us
to collaborate with people outside our organisation in new ways.
We'll be able to schedule meetings, collaborate in real time and share channels
with up to 50 teams and as many organisations as we need.
Teams Connect is going to enable shared channels
and we'll be able to invite people to individual channels rather than the whole team.
So shared channels can be shared with people and teams across multiple organisations too,
and these features will preview at the start of 2022.
'Chat with self' is a thread in the Teams chat app that acts as a safe place
for writing to yourself before you're ready to send to anyone else.
Things like drafts, ideas and reminders can all be added here
and no one else will see them.
'Chat density' lets you customise the number of messages you see in the chat window.
'Comfortable' setting is the default and that's the one we have today
and there'll be a new 'compact' setting that lets you fit 50% more messages onto the screen.
Microsoft are adding over 800 new 3-D emojis for us to drop into chats.
We'll be able to delay the delivery of messages
and choose the date and time that we want to post,
and we'll be able to check the time zone that our collaborators are in from the content card.
It will tell us what time it is where they are,
and how many hours in front or behind we are.
And finally, the search results page is getting a refresh.
We'll be able to filter results and toggle between tabs to find the information we need.
Okay, so that's my pick of all the Teams announcements from Ignite.
Look out for my roundup of the other technologies coming soon.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
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