What’s New in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a popular piece of software used worldwide to increase productivity. Microsoft Team was launched in 2017 as a part of Microsoft 365 for Business. The major reason behind its launch was to enhance productivity. Over the years, Microsoft Teams has undergone many changes, and with each new year, it comes with more advanced and modified solutions to increase the efficiency of employees. The features keep updating according to the needs and demands of businesses. Therefore, Microsoft Team is regarded as the best tool for collaborating at the workplace. Teams allow employees to store documents, chat, and conduct meetings from anywhere and at any time. All businesses now consider Microsoft Teams their best friend in professional life.

In this article, we will study what makes businesses consider Microsoft Teams their best friend at work and what exciting features it has.

Benefits of using Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is more than just an ordinary application. We all know that it is quite useful and best for an organization, but besides, it is a house where team members can utilize an ideal time or do their work with full efficiency. Let us learn about other benefits a user gets from Microsoft Teams.

1. A chat platform
Ever been bombarded with questions that you want to ask related to a project? But don’t find an appropriate way to ask over WhatsApp or Telegram during working hours. Fortunately, you have the option to use Microsoft Teams, which is helpful at this point. With Microsoft Teams, you can ask any little query from your team members or managers. Send a quick chat to your team in a group. You can also rename your group and tag anyone to get their attention and highlight important colour conversions.

2. Share files and collaborate in real time
Collaborating in real time has become easier for team members these days. One can share files directly over Microsoft Teams and start a mini-conversion about the projects. Microsoft Teams allows users to conduct instant meetings from anywhere and at any time. You can also send meeting reminders to the team so that they can join on time. Leave behind the worry about whether your voice is audible to others or not, as with Teams, you can host a video call conference without any effort. Teams offer high-quality HD videos and audios through which businesses can function smoothly. Thus, teams help us a lot in collaborating in real time with their file sharing and video chat features.

3. Integrates well with Microsoft 365 and Suite
With Microsoft Teams, you won’t have to open an Excel or Word file separately. Now, you can open all of your favourite Microsoft apps in one place only. And the files you sent through Microsoft Teams are secure. Moreover, files are already saved in a system. As well as open developer apps like Microsoft Azure at that time.

4. Email Threads Channels
In your professional life, you must have also been struck by the number of emails you get each day from clients, colleagues, and managers. Thankfully, you have Microsoft Teams to manage all of your emails properly. As with teams, you can send customized emails to your team with a specific objective. Managers and team leaders can create different channels for all the departments. Like for human resources, a different group can be created, and the same is true with different marketing teams for different products.

5. Review activity feed
Begin your day by checking who said what, when, and where. See a glimpse of a day and check out what urgent to-dos are on your list and what is coming up next. With the Activity Feed in Microsoft, you can review all these activities. It is a quite handy tool that levels up your day by planning in the right manner. 

6. Accessible from anywhere
After COVID 19, the work from home concept evolved, making it easier for employees to manage their personal as well as professional lives in one go. And Microsoft Teams helps a lot in increasing an organization's productivity. With this, one can log in from any device to their teams and drive accounts from anywhere in the world. thus making it accessible. So, these are the benefits that an organization gets from implementing Microsoft Teams in their
workplace. There is one more advantage for those who have purchased Microsoft 365 for business: they do not need to buy Microsoft Teams separately as it is included in the Microsoft 365 plan.

New and updated features included in Microsoft Teams
There are a number of features that are present in Microsoft Teams, and all these features keep on updating regularly. Microsoft is a superb tool when used correctly. In this part, we will be discussing what all those new features are that help teams increase their efficiency:

1) Together Emojis
Together Emoji is a new feature that was updated by Microsoft on National High Five Day. Microsoft Teams was the first platform to give honour to this day. This emoji helps employees show their emotions in Microsoft Teams. During a call, two people can do this high-five emoji in the conversion. When a second person replies back with an emoji, two emojis meet and make an emoji together in team chats.

2) LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is of immense importance in the professional world, and no one can deny this fact, even Microsoft Teams. Therefore, with its updated feature, it offers team members the ability to add their LinkedIn profile on Teams, which simplifies team members and other connections over a large platform. Besides, those who are new members of a company find it easier to increase their network.

3) Speaker’s coach
Are you also the one who lacks confidence while handling a foreign client? If yes, you do not need to worry about it, as Microsoft Teams will help you. Speak Coach is an amazing feature of Microsoft Team that assists a person in improving their speaking skills over a call. Taking on a speaker coach during a meeting with a foreign client will help you achieve a major accomplishment for your organization. To enable a speaker coach, follow certain steps as
mentioned below:
Step 1: Select more options on Teams.
Step 2: Choose the language and speech option from more options.
Step 3: Click on Turn on Speaker Coach from the Language and Speech option.
After enabling it, you will receive a notification from teams, and it will be visible to you only.

4) Teams Avtar
When we are in our comfort zone, i.e., when employees work from home, they often shy away from showing their faces over a video call. So, to overcome this major issue, Microsoft Teams has come with an exceptional feature called Avtar, which helps employees log in with the Avtar option. This allows the user to switch on the video camera without distractions or excuses. To enable this feature, follow the steps:
• Open the Microsoft Teams application.
• In a search box, type Avtar.
• After it appears, select it, and get started.
Create an avatar that suits your personality well.

5) Filter Video Background
Imagine a situation when you have gone on a holiday without informing your manager about it, or you have lied to him that you are sick and taking rest at home. And urgently, your boss asks you to join a meeting from home only. Isn’t it like a nightmare? What will you do in this kind of situation? Relax, Microsoft Teams has a solution to this problem as well, as it comes with the option to filter your video background. You can easily switch to video filters in Team during or before a meeting. It is no less than a safeguard option.

6) Leave a meeting on all the devices
Suppose due to some network issue, you were not able to connect over a call-in laptop. So, for this reason, you joined a meeting on your phone. But afterwards, it was connected to a laptop too. And when your meeting ends, you do not need to leave it on different devices at different times. You can leave a meeting with just one click by enabling an option in Microsoft Teams. It comes with two options, i.e., Leave and Leave, on all the devices.

7) Automatic lower your hands raised
In a public relations meeting or a conference, when the views of a person are asked over a meeting, those who wish to answer raise their hands in the meeting. When teams detect that they have spoken, it automatically lowers those raised hands during the meeting, whereas if you check out other video call apps, this feature is hardly found on any platform.

Final Thoughts
We have discussed around seven updated features in Microsoft Teams. But there are more than fifty features that will be updated by Microsoft Teams in 2023. This shows how exciting it is for organizations to use Microsoft Teams with full efficiency. All those features are available on this platform and are much in demand among the employees. Microsoft Teams is working more closely with the employees to know what other advanced features they will love to use in Microsoft Teams.