What more can Teams do for us that it isn’t doing already? From the shift to remote working, and now to hybrid, it feels as though we’ve got all the tools we need within Teams. But there’s always room for improvement, and we are lucky that Microsoft is constantly working to better our experience.
The latest features in Teams bring enhancements to making meetings more collaborative and seamless. Let’s explore some of the recent updates.
- Microsoft Poll advancements: Opinions are important! Teams has implemented new additions to the poll feature, making it much easier to find and add them directly to your chat. They can now be positioned in a side pane next to a chat, and there is also a poll results view, which allows the poll creator to see how the poll will look to the meeting audience after it’s launched. You will also notice an improved poll result view to be more intuitive and easier to read. Polls can play a vital role in understanding the needs of employees, encouraging participation, and detecting the obstacles that may be causing decreased productivity.
- LinkedIn integration: Teams has expanded its application integrations which means you can now view your teammates' LinkedIn profiles through the LinkedIn integration. The integration allows for you to quickly see your colleague’s current role, past experience, and lots of other insights which can help you connect and build deeper professional relationships, all without leaving Teams. This integration gives you the ability to quickly get a glance of who you are talking to ahead of a meeting, whether it’s a colleague or someone new.
- Automatic groupings: Automatic grouping is available for channel posts, which means you can now notify the owners of any team all at once when creating a message post in a team channel by mentioning “@Team Owners”. This removes the manual element of mentioning team owners individually.
- Chat to yourself: this is one we didn’t even know we needed! The “chat with self” feature allows you to send important reminders to yourself and file notes that you may need later. The options available when chatting with other users is the same, so you will be able to save memos, take quick notes, and store documents under the “files” tab inside the conversation. Make sure to keep it pinned to the top of your Teams chats for quick access.
- Annotation: Get creative during your meetings with the annotation feature, which helps you to collaborate during a presentation while sharing your screen during a Teams meeting. When screen sharing, participants will be allowed access to begin annotating and a red pen tool is selected by default. This creates a dynamic environment that increases collaboration and gets the creative juices flowing.
Microsoft is doing its best to make meetings, chats, and collaborative experiences as inclusive and connected as possible. With the constant flow of new features and updates, there is so much available to us, right at our fingertips. Now it's time to try out some of these new tools and see how they can bring a new lease of life to your working day.