Following the Microsoft Teams Roadmap, you will notice a few Microsoft Teams updates in June 2021:
- Chat Bubbles
- SharePoint: Updates for Microsoft Teams connected team sites
- Webinars plus new meeting registration options
- Teams: Join a meeting with digital meeting ID
- Live Transcription
Chat Bubbles
Previously, Teams users needed to manually open a chat window to view the chat screen. Now thanks to this new feature, chats sent during a Teams meeting will surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation.
Key points:
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 65948
- Timing: we will roll this out beginning in mid-July and will be complete by late July.
- Rollout: tenant level
- Control type: user control
- Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization:
Chat has become a lively space for conversation and idea-sharing and offers an option for people to participate in the discussion without having to jump in verbally. But it can be challenging to pay attention to video feeds, presentations, and chats all at the same time.
With chat bubbles, meeting participants can follow chat on the main screen of a meeting.
This is default on but users have the option to hide chat bubbles during a meeting from the ellipsis
What you need to do to prepare:
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
SharePoint: Updates for Microsoft Teams connected team sites
With this new feature, when you create a team in Microsoft Teams, a SharePoint team site will automatically get created in tandem and you are also able to connect any existing SharePoint team site to a new team in Microsoft Teams. These are called Microsoft Teams connected team sites.
For private channels in Microsoft Teams, a SharePoint team site automatically gets created and is known as a channel site. These Teams connected team sites and channel sites are managed differently than your typical SharePoint team site.
Key points:
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81945.
- Timing: This will roll out for Targeted release (select users and entire organization) beginning in late June and be complete by early July. Standard release will begin in mid-July and be complete by early August.
- Rollout: tenant level
- Control type: user control
- Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization:
The below updates to the viewing and management experience of Teams connected team sites and channel sites will simplify the end-user experience in the following ways:
Updates to managing site classification and site permissions:
Previously:
- Site classification (sensitivity) and advanced site permissions could be managed in the SharePoint team site Settings pane.
Currently:
- Site classification (including sensitivity labels and information barriers) will be read-only in SharePoint. Site permissions will not be available to edit in the SharePoint Advanced Settings page and instead will be managed in the team settings in Microsoft Teams.
The only exception to this rule is for a parent site. The parent site is a group connected team sites that hosts standard channels and is connected to private channel sites. The Parent site still allows edits to the site permissions from SharePoint.
New visual updates to the SharePoint team site header:
A Microsoft Teams icon in the site header and Go to Channel button in the document library command bar are designed to help users confirm the type of SharePoint site and channel and easily navigate to the connected team in Microsoft Teams or private channel.
Removal of the Go to Channel banner in document libraries:
The Go to Channel link has been updated to consistently be available in the command bar when viewing document libraries, while removing the additional banner that was occupying space in the library.
Simplified SharePoint team sites:
This update improves the template utilized for the channel sites by having the classic SharePoint features off-by-default and will employ the full capabilities of the modern team site.
What you need to do to prepare:
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn more:
Private channels in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams: webinars plus new meeting registration options
We are excited to announce the forthcoming availability of Teams webinar capabilities, beginning rollout at the end of April 2021, completing in May 2021.
Associated features that apply to webinars and meetings, include:
- Registration page creation with email confirmation for registrants.
- Reporting for registration and attendance.
These capabilities will be available to users with the following licenses: Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5/Business Standard/Business Premium. For the rest of 2021, we are offering temporary availability to Teams users to try the features with their existing commercial subscription.
Note: We will honor any existing meeting settings enabled within your organization.
Key points:
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80099, 65952, 66459, and 66586
- Timing: beginning of May (previously end of April) through end of May
- Control type: user control / admin control / admin UI
- Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization:
When scheduling a meeting, your users will see the Webinar option on the Calendar drop down menu in Teams (desktop/web).
Additionally, users will be able to add registrations for meetings and webinars for people in your organization and outside of your organization.
The registration feature will be on by default For everyone. In order to view who attended the webinars, we recommended setting the “AllowEngagementReport” policy to true.
Note: We will honor any existing meeting policies enabled within your organization:
- If allow scheduling private meetings is turned off, then users will not be able to schedule webinars.
- When anonymous join is disabled for the tenant, users can schedule a public webinar but it will fail on join.
- SharePoint lists are required in order to set up webinars. To set this up, learn more here: Control settings for Microsoft Lists
What you need to do to prepare:
By default, all users within your tenant will be able to schedule webinars unless current policy configuration prohibits it.
Should you wish to restrict who can host a webinar that requires registration for everyone, change the WhoCanRegister policy accessed in the Teams admin center.
- You can disable this policy tenant-wide
- You can enable this policy for specific users
You can manage the registration feature in the Teams admin center or with PowerShell commands. There are three options for admin management.
- Turn off registration for the entire tenant (set AllowMeetingRegistration to False)
- Turn off registration for external attendees (set AllowMeetingRegistration to TRUE and WhoCanRegister to EveryoneInCompany)
- Give select users the ability to create a registration page that supports external attendees. All other users would be able create a registration page for people inside the tenant. (Leverage the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to create a new meeting policy that includes AllowMeetingRegistration to TRUE and WhoCanRegister to Everyone and then assign that to your specific users)
These policies are managed via PowerShell.
- Edit an existing Teams meeting policy by using the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet.
- Create a new Teams meeting policy by using the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet and assign it to users.
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Teams: Join a meeting with digital meeting ID
Updated June 08, 2021: At this time we will not be moving forward with rolling out the feature as outlined. We are evaluating changes based on feedback and will announce our new plan via Message center when we are ready proceed. Thank you for your patience.
This release of Microsoft Teams Meeting ID will be rolling out across Microsoft Teams Desktop, Mobile and Web and will provide an additional way for users to join a Microsoft Teams meeting by entering a digital ID.
Key points:
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80668.
- Timing: We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed.
- Roll-out: tenant level
- Control type: user control
- Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization:
All meetings will have a Meeting ID that is automatically assigned to a Microsoft Teams user and added to the meeting invite under the meeting link. Meeting attendees can join the meeting by entering the Meeting ID. For all meeting attendees, the pre-join, lobby and security will remain the same.
Join a meeting by ID in Outlook.
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Join a meeting by ID on Teams desktop.
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Join a meeting by ID on mobile.
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What you need to do to prepare:
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Live Transcription
This feature update of Live transcription with speaker attribution in Microsoft Teams meetings is a written record of the conversations available during and after the meeting and will provide another way to both follow and review meeting conversations. This feature release will roll out on Teams desktop.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82029.
When this will happen:
We will begin rolling this out in late June and expect to complete rollout in early July.
How this will affect your organization
This update improves the accessibility of Microsoft Teams and allows meeting participants to be more productive. It also creates a more inclusive experience for participants who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, or have varying levels of language proficiency. Participants in noisy places will also benefit from the visual aid.
Live transcriptions will be available in English (US) on Teams Desktop for scheduled meetings under the below licenses:
- Office 365 E1
- Office 365 A1
- Office 365/Microsoft 365 A3
- Office 365/Microsoft 365 A5
- Microsoft 365 F1
- Office 365/Microsoft 365 F3
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic SKUs
Live transcription is already available under the below licenses:
- Enterprise E3/E5
- Business Standard
- Business Premium customers
What you need to do to prepare
Once admins have enabled this feature, Live transcription will be generated whenever a user starts recording a meeting on desktop client.
- Currently, Live Transcription needs to be started separately from the recording.
Enabling live transcription is required to ensure that closed captions are available during the playback of a Teams meeting recording stored on OneDrive and SharePoint.
Steps to get started:
- The tenant admin needs to turn on the Allow Transcription policy, then
- Meeting organizer or a presenter can start transcription
- Live transcription with speaker attribution is available in new meeting and calling experiences.
