At Microsoft’s recent Inspire conference, Microsoft Teams announced the launch of an array of new features and services that will make our lives infinitely easier and improve hybrid working as we learn new ways to work collaboratively. Inspire is Microsoft’s annual conference bringing together the partner community and creating new opportunities for collaboration and growth.
Here are some great new features to help us collaborate easier with Teams:
LinkedIn and Microsoft Teams integration
We’re loving all the new connections we’re making at exhibitions and networking events now that we can meet in person, and so has LinkedIn, with our profiles burgeoning with new contacts! But the relationships don’t stop there… Microsoft Teams is now fully integrated with LinkedIn, allowing us to connect directly and build deeper relationships with our connection base. From Teams chats, channels, calls, or meetings, you will now be able to view your colleague’s LinkedIn profile, including their current role, past experiences, and other insights such as connections you have in common.
To set this up, you will need to link your Microsoft account to your LinkedIn, which you can do through the LinkedIn tab on your personal chat.
Personal chats
Don’t let people tell you that talking to yourself is a bad thing. Teams now allows you to chat with yourself giving you a space to stay organised by uploading draft documents, memos from meetings, to-do lists, important files, or even just use it as a practice place for chat features and apps to get to know them a little better. Why not put yourself first and pin your profile to the top of your Chats!
Polls
The new Polls app has replaced the Forms app and is available within your Teams app store. Add polls, quizzes and word cloud polls before or during your meeting for real-time collaborations and instant responses. You can also add polls to tabs within specific chats or channels; or insert the results from the poll directly into your messages. You’re able to view your polls status knowing which polls are in draft and which are live as well, as the corresponding results.
Collaborative apps
Excel Live allow all members of a meeting to edit and filter Excel documents in real time, without disturbing other users while in the document. It takes documentation collaboration to the next level allowing remote and hybrid workers to work together on projects easier.
Similarly, Collaborative Annotations have also been added, allowing meeting participants to type up notes and feedback, draw and react on top of the content being shared within the meeting, in real time. Collaborative Annotations can be enabled easily by the person sharing their screen in the meeting.
Shared Channels is a great way to collaborate with people outside your organisation, making it easy to work together both inside and outside of your organisation. Once you create these shared channels, you can then schedule meetings, share files, and work together in apps making for project management and co-working on tasks across vendors a breeze.
With so many new features being released monthly on Teams, it’s hard to keep up with all the great new features to use in your day-to-day. We’ll continue to look out for new features that will benefit both you and your team’s collaboration.
For more information on how to use features and how to make the most of Microsoft Teams, get in touch to learn more.
Microsoft Teams: Tips and Tricks 2022
Read our recent blog for more ways to maximise Teams with features like automatic transcription, active filtering, and breakout room groups within your organisation.
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