Microsoft Teams: Breakout Rooms and Administration

In the previous article, Microsoft Teams: Breakout Rooms, we discussed how and what Breakout Rooms are and how important they are for the Microsoft Teams collaborative platform. But how does Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms work?

The organizer of the meeting is the administrator who has control of this feature. Once the organizer joints the meeting, then he/she can divide the larger video or audio group into smaller discussion groups, up to 50 Breakout Rooms, thereby making these smaller discussion groups more effective with brainstorming, collaborating, and advancing towards solutions.

The organizer can also pre-create the breakout rooms ahead of joining the meeting and configure all the settings so he/she does not have to do during the meeting.

The administrator can add, remove, name, and rename the rooms and can also assign users to a room, open or close the room multiple times during the session and move participants between rooms. Upon joining a session, the administrator is muted, though unmuting will allow the administrator to participate in that session. Important to note is that Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms management can only be created through Teams Client while participants can join via desktop, web or mobile.

Creating, Naming, and Starting Breakout Rooms

To start, schedule the meeting in Microsoft Calendar by creating a New Meeting or start the meeting in a Teams Chanel with Meet Now. Then add your attendees (your participants) and:

1. Join your meeting at the scheduled time. Upon joining, a new window will pop up;

2. Wait for your attendees to join. Once they have joined, you can proceed to create your Breakout Room;

3. Select Breakout Rooms from your meeting controls;

4. Choose from the dropdown menu the number of Breakout Rooms you want to create and whether you want to assign the attendees to each room manually or automatically. This is the only time you will be able to assign automatically.

To add participants manually:

a. Expand the Assign Participants list;

b. Hovering over each participant will bring up checkboxes. Check the checkbox if you want to add this participant to a Breakout Room;

c. Select the More option and choose the room from the list. This will assign the participant to the Breakout Room;

d. Repeat steps b and c until all participants have been assigned;

e. To see which participants are assigned to a Breakout room, locate the arrow next the room’s name. Click and expand this arrow and the names of the assigned participants will appear;

To add participants automatically, simply choose the option to do so. In order for this option to work, participants will have to have been pre-emptively assigned to the Breakout Rooms;

5. Name the Breakout Rooms to reflect the discussion such as project name so it is easily identifiable and a reminder for participants. If you need to rename the Breakout Room, then choose the More Options next the room. Then choose Rename Room, key in the new name of the Breakout Room, and save by selecting Rename Room;

6. Starting Breakout Rooms can be done individually on a room to room basis, or you can start all Breakout Rooms at the same time. To start them individually, then choose the More Options next to the Breakout Room name. Next choose Open Room. The Breakout Room is now opened. To open them en masse, select Open Rooms. The room status from closed to open will appear as Open to confirm that the Breakout Room is now opened.

There are many benefits for implementing Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms ranging from organizing large groups into smaller and manageable clusters to providing a platform that supports users that are working remotely and in person with the main objective of providing easy maneuverability, flexible accessibility, numerous personnel meeting scalability, and collaborative stability.

Administration of Breakout Rooms

As the administrator and organizer of the meeting, you have several abilities in relation to the Breakout Rooms:

1. Join a Breakout Room: to check on a Breakout Room’s progress, select More Options next to the room name. Then, select Join Room to join. Ready to leave? Select Return and you will leave the Breakout Room and join back into the main meeting;

2. Send an Announcement to the Breakout Rooms: provide prompts or time updates through an announcement. To send an Announcement after the meeting starts, select More Options and then Make an Announcement. Key in your announcement and then choose Select. Your announcement will appear in the chat for all participants, and they will be alerted with a notification that it is there;

3. Reassign Participants: move participants individually to different Breakout Rooms but note that this function can only currently be performed when the Breakout Rooms are closed. In the Breakout Room, expand the list of participants. A checkbox will appear as you hover over the participant’s name. Check this checkbox. Next, select the More Options and the Breakout Room name that you would like to reassign the participant to. Check the checkbox of the re-assigned Breakout Room, and your participant has now been re-assigned;

4. Chat with Breakout Room Participants: as with regular meetings, the administrator and participants will be able to access from the chats list and

from Chat, the Breakout Room’s chat. Participants will only see and access chat from their assigned Breakout Room, whereas the administrator can see and access all Breakout Room chats. Administrators will add the participant at the Breakout Room is opened and participants will automatically be removed from the chat if they are re-assigned to another Breakout Room or when the room is closed. The chat history and shared files will still be accessible to participants even after the Breakout Room is closed;

5. Add or Delete Breakout Room: additional Breakout Rooms can be added by choosing Add Room, keying in the room name, confirming, and then adding the participants. Deleting a Breakout Room can be done by selecting More Options next the room, and then choosing Delete Room. The Breakout Room is now deleted;

6. Close Breakout Rooms: close Breakout Rooms individually by selecting More Options next the room name, and then Close Room. To close Breakout Room en masse, select Close Rooms. The status of the rooms will now change from Open to Closed. Once all participants are out of their Breakout Rooms, choose Resume and all participants will be back in the general, larger, main meeting group.

7. Save Notes, Recordings, and Files from Breakout Rooms: these materials can be accessed in the Breakout Room’s chat, during and after the closure of the Room. However, the ability to add additional materials or continue to chat will not be possible once the Room is closed; and

8. Edit Breakout Room Settings: participants are automatically moved into open rooms as a default setting. This setting can be changed by selecting More Options, then Room Settings. Next, check on the Automatically Move check box to de-select participants. If the default setting is de-selected, then participants will receive a message to join a Breakout Room, which they must choose by selecting Join before being moved.

Microsoft Teams is evolving quickly as it adapts and flexes with the needs of its users, whether remote, onsite, or a hybridization of the two. The ability to create, monitor, and delete Breakout Rooms provides the flexibility that many users and corporations need for collaboration, communication, and project management. With Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms, collaboration has become that much easier.

Microsoft Teams: Breakout Rooms as User

For some, life may have felt like it has been on a hold pattern during this pandemic but at Microsoft, they have been anything but on a hold pattern. They’ve been busy planning, strategizing, creating, designing, testing, and finalizing new features for many of their platforms, including Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams is the interface and platform for users within a corporation and their external clients to collaborate. Communications between team members and clients is smoother, easier, and more accessible because of Microsoft Teams. There are many new features being added, but the most anticipated, and possibly the biggest game changer, is Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms.

Similar to large in-person conferences and conventions, virtual team meetings can range from two participates to upwards of hundreds that gather in one large venue. Within this large venue, areas are broken down into zones. Within these zones will be kiosks or spaces, like rooms, that have specialized vendors, consultants or where specific types of training will take place. Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms are similar in that they provide a virtual space for smaller groups of people to gather, holding discussions on similar topics, or maybe one topic, brainstorm, and reach solutions.

How the administration and creation of the Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams is managed is explained in the following article, Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms and Administration.

On the participant side, they will be able to chat in the Breakout Room and share content from Whiteboards and PowerPoint. The chat will only be visible for participants in that particular Breakout Room and only they can participate in the chat, with the exception of the Administrator who is able to access and participate in all Breakout Rooms. Participants are not able to move freely between Breakout Rooms or the main meeting. They must wait until the administrator adds them back to the main meeting or re-assigns them to another Breakout Room. The participant, can however, request the administrator contact them.

What can participants do in the Breakout Room?

As part of the new features being added to Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms, managers that are selected and assigned to rooms by the administrator will now be able to manage rooms, open or close rooms, customize Microsoft Teams meeting settings, and set timers.

New features and abilities for participants include pinning a video on the front page of the Teams meeting, which will appear next to those of other participants.

Another highlight is the ability to turn off the self-view. This can be done from the meeting settings which will hide their own video preview, which appears on the bottom right of the meeting screen by default.

Tips, Tricks, and Suggestions for Breakout Rooms

As with any meeting or any interaction, it is best to be prepared to avoid any last-minute trouble that will impact the meeting.

If you ask any professional administrative assistant, they will tell you having a dry run is vital in ensuring a smooth, and trouble-free meeting. Having materials prepared ahead of time and distributed to the attendees so they can prepare in advance will not only help them understand the agenda, but this will save time once they are assigned to their Breakout Rooms as they immediately dive into the task at hand.

As you prepare to break the large group into smaller groups, delegate responsibilities, including assigning a group leader or room manger who is responsible for monitoring the chat to capture announcements and inform the group of these announcements and is the lead on monitoring chat activity. Having announcements prepared beforehand will help the administrator to deliver these effortlessly, on time, and clearly. Additionally, the administrator could provide a link to documents those participants may need access to for collaborating in their Breakout Room.

Another beneficial tip is to make an announcement at the beginning of the session indicating when the session wraps up, and then five minutes before the wrap up time, send a warning announcement so the participants can begin their preparations for ending their session.

Microsoft Teams is evolving quickly as it adapts and flexes with the needs of its users who are comprised of users who are remote, onsite, or a combination of remote and onsite. With Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms, meetings that involve numerous people can now be held as one large meeting with smaller discussion that focus on specific topics that make up the whole of the project. Coming back together in the main meeting, participants can share their findings and proposals after brainstorming in the smaller groups. Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms provides efficient, simplified, and real-time collaboration.

Microsoft Ignite 2021 Announcements:

Security and Compliance in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams

With the majority of the world working in various combinations of on-site and/or remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cyberattacks have, unfortunately, become more common and more successful because of the quick pivoting businesses had to do in order to change from being the traditional onsite workforce to the new hybrid-style of workforce that combines both onsite and remote workers. Businesses are targeted as breaches of privacy and security, as their workforce use their own devices and points of access into their business’s systems. In response, Microsoft has worked with customers and partners to innovate and design a unique and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity, compliance, and privacy.

Secure External Collaboration

  1. Control SharePoint External Sharing Policies with Sensitivity Labels: Leveling up on the Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) sensitivity labels for a SharePoint Site or a Team, Administrators can now tailor external sharing policies. These policies are based on the sensitivity of the data and include labels like “Top Secret” that blocks external sharing and a “General” label that allows external sharing. By choosing the appropriate security level label, site owners will have the ability to manage how their sites handle external sharing of data.
  1. Access Governance Insights in SharePoint and OneDrive: As many businesses have pivoted to become more digital with their remote staff, a natural result has been the exponential growth of the external sharing of data, especially data that is sensitive. As the footprint of the digital estate grows, so does the need for ease of governance. Microsoft, in its roadmap announced at the 2020 Ignite, began planning to address this issue. This year, it was announced that a governance insights dashboard, located in the SharePoint Admin Center and accessible by Admins, will provide insights including policy settings and external sharing activities for the most important sites. What are the most important sites? These include sites that use anyone links for content sharing, sites that have the most sensitive data including the volume of data, top sites, have access policies appropriate to the business’ security policies, and sites that require tailored policies. This insights dashboard will all Admins to easily monitor these activities and modify the policies as needed to ensure the security of the externally shared data.
  1. Microsoft Teams Connect and Secure Files Collaboration: Microsoft Teams has become one of the major methods for remote and onsite staff to collaborate. Microsoft Teams files collaboration is powered by SharePoint, so it is of no surprise that there are announcements today of enhancements to Microsoft Teams. One of these focuses on external collaboration and sharing of data, especially that of sensitive data. Microsoft Teams Connect addresses this issue by granting Admins access to granular control. By doing so, Admins retain control over how information and data are accessed by external users within Teams. Microsoft Teams Connect provides the ability to share, collaborate, and access information with people, whether they are across organizations or within their own.
  1. Co-Authoring and AutoSave on Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) Labelled and Encrypted Files: In 2020, this capability was made available for Microsoft 365 apps on the web, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. This has now been extended to Microsoft 365 apps on the desktop for both Windows and Mac. With co-authoring, two or more users will have the ability to co-author on an encrypted file that automatically saves, ensuring it is intact. Labeled and encrypted files will also have autosave capabilities so that co-authors can focus on their work without worrying about constantly saving the file to prevent lost data.

Securing Access with Contextual and Conditional Policies

Implemented for many years now, labels-based policies for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams are being taken another step forward in response to the security of sensitive data and external users. Securing sensitive sites with labels-based granular conditional access (CA) policies will provide Admins the ability to secure sensitive sites and provide users with the ability to assign appropriate labels to their sensitive sites.  

By adding another layer of security, passwordless technology has become the standard for authenticating users and for providing access to resources. Passwordless technology can be applied to sensitive sites. For these sites, access for a user can be assigned based on the sensitivity of the site and the authentication context of the site. For example, a multi-factor authentication (MFA) can be enforced for a site labeled “Confidential” if the user’s context does not meet the requirement of the site. These conditional access authentication contexts can now be created by Admins in the Azure Active Directory and can be tailored to their organization’s security posture. Additionally, these can then be associated with MIP sensitivity labels. Note that when a sensitivity label is assigned to a site, the associate policies are automatically enforced. 

As a User, the complexity of the security policies is now transparent. A User can now assign, to their sensitive sites, the appropriate labels while granular contextual and conditional policies are enforced in the background. Users can be productive without interruptions unless they are accessing a sensitive site that requires MFA.

Comprehensive Compliance

  1. Information Barriers Improvements in SharePoint and OneDrive: Implemented in 2020, Information Barriers provided Admins the ability to place a barrier that blocks collaboration and communication between segments of users. This will now be extended across to Administrators and Site Owners.

    From within the SharePoint Admin centre, Administrators can manage segments of information associated with the sites. With the information barriers compliance report, Administrators can view the compliance status of sites by implementing SharePoint admin PowerShell cmdlets.

    From within the Site Information pane, SharePoint Site Owners are now able to add to their sites explicit segments.

    Of note, information barrier policies in Microsoft 365 are honoured across Microsoft 365 Groups experience at groups’ members’ addition experience.
  1. Teams Multi-Geo Support: Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo addresses and assists customers meet their data residency needs as not all countries have the same policies for data storage and use. Already supporting multi-geo are Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive, and this support has now been extended into Teams as Teams Multi-Geo. 

These are just a few of the measures that Microsoft has taken as proactive steps towards keeping externally shared, sensitive, and confidential data secure between internal and external users, within their organizations and external organizations. With the majority of the world working remotely during this pandemic, it has forced organizations to rethink how technology can be leveraged to continue the productivity of their workforce. As always, Microsoft has been forward-thinking and proactive since its inception, and the response has been in place for years. Instead of responding, Microsoft is enhancing and adding to its repertoire of defences, staying ahead as the leader in collaboration and data security.

Microsoft Ignite Virtual 2020: SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

This year’s Microsoft Ignite 2020 has been full of excitement and energy with announcements for SharePoint and Microsoft 365 that are not only exciting and amazing but are raising the bar even higher by integrating AI to produce better results and an overall, smarter system. From new purchasable add-ons, like Project Cortex and products stemming from it, including the first available product, Project Syntex, leveraging AI to targeted accurate, prioritized, and relevant content for your audience, especially those working in Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams is becoming more robust as global enterprises, from small businesses to global giants, embrace virtual and remote business as the pandemic has changed the face of how business interactions occur. With greater demand, comes higher expectations from users. Microsoft 365 and SharePoint are stable platforms, proven over decades of use, dynamic growth, and enhancements shaped by the users themselves.

Without any surprise, Microsoft Teams has received more attention, making it that much more welcomed in the virtual business world.

Teams – What We Can Look Forward To

SharePoint Home Sites in Teams: the new home site app brings into Teams directly, an organization’s intranet and the powerful SharePoint Home site. Available later this year, the app name and the organization’s branding icon can be pinned to the app bar.

Teams Templates: get started with Teams quicker with Teams templates that are industry-specific, representing common business scenarios. Customized templates can also be created by Administrators to reveal relevant apps, standardize team structures, and scale best practices.

Info Pane, Pinned Posts, and New Conversation Button in Channels:  the channel info pain is visually organized while being easily accessible It provides information such as a summary of active members, important pinned posts by members, and other relevant channel information. There is a new intuitive conversation button in channels that makes it easier to start a conversation as opposed to simply replying to existing ones.

Share News Across Teams: news articles will be able to be shared directly to your audience’s team, inboxes, or community directly from SharePoint.

New Search Results Experience: Finding people, messages, answers, and files will be faster and more intuitive in Teams as it will be powered by Microsoft Search.

Microsoft Lists Apps for iOS (Preview): Available offline and in dark mode, Microsoft Lists mobile app not only allows you access to your lists but also the lists others share with you. Microsoft Lists Apps for iOS provides on the go features for users including the ability to create new lists, share lists with other members, and edit list items.

Microsoft Lists – Offline Mode: In offline mode, Microsoft Lists allows users to instantly view, sort, filter, group, edit, adjust items, and add items.

New Together Mode Scenes: Virtual meetings take on a whole new feeling with the New Together Mode Scenes. Bring your team into a setting that sets the mood and the tone, whether it be a coffee shop, auditorium, or a conference room.

Custom Layouts: Presenters will be able to customize layouts for a dynamic presentation and viewing experience for participants in a meeting.

Meeting Recap: Not everyone is able to attend meetings, and not every bit of information can be retained after a meeting. Hence, the Meeting Recap. With the Meeting Recap, the meeting recording, chat, shared files, transcript, and more will be shared automatically at the end of a meeting. These shared files can be found by choosing the meeting Chat tab with viewability in the Details tab. Meeting Recaps will enable teams to keep moving forwards their goals after a meeting for participants and those who were unable to attend.

Webinar Registration and Reporting: Managing attendee attendance is simple with event registration with automated emails. This feature simplifies event participant management, especially for webinars or any structured meeting. It also provides to the organizer, a detailed, viewable reporting dashboard, assisting the organizer to understand attendee engagement.

New Calling Experience & Collaborative Calling: The calling experience is simplified and streamlined with a single view that displays contact, call history, and voicemail. With a single click, returning or initiating a call is effortless. An upcoming feature, collaborative calling, will allow a call queue to be connected to a channel in Teams by customers.

25K Member Teams: In the Teams tenant, there is no set limit for the number of people. However, Team membership is currently capped at 5,000 members and this will be increased to 25,000 members per individual team later this year.  

Approvals in Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams is becoming the central station for collaboration, and as such, approval flows will be able to start from a Teams channel conversation, chat, or the Approvals app. With the Approvals in Microsoft Teams, users will be to manage, create, share, and act on approvals directly from Teams.

Wellbeing Features and Productivity Insights: the goal of the new Wellbeing Features and Productivity Insights is to encourage remote staff to stay healthy through self-care and keeping to routines as if going into the office. By adding structure to the workday, such virtual commutes, it prepares the body and the mind for work. Incorporating Headspace, users can follow a guided meditation to unwind at the end of the day. Powered by MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics, these features focus entirely on the wellbeing of an organization’s remote staff. The first phase begins in October with the second phase available in the first half of 2021.

Meetings Extensibility with Apps in Meetings: Integration of developer apps into Teams meetings will help to create scenarios that provide better meeting context, such as roles, permissions, and rosters.

With SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and AI powering Teams, this app’s potential has just grown exponentially and the potential of what it can do is limitless. Collaborating with Team members, whether on-site, off-site, or virtually, is a breeze. Seamless and smooth, Teams will continue to grow as it becomes the central station of collaboration.

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dataflex for Teams

Embedded within the Microsoft Teams platform, Dataflex for Teams provides true relational data storage, and when combined with Power Apps, it becomes a true relational database. Dataflex for Teams combines Microsoft Teams and Power Apps, providing a new platform of choice for building productivity grade applications for use by teams, individuals, and business groups.

Organizations with Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Teams subscriptions will have the ability to produce no-code to low-code apps and intelligent chatbots directly in the Teams environment with Dataflex as it combines Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. Dataflex provides one-click solution deployment and is supported with enterprise-grade governance. Dataflex is built on top of the Common Data Service which has been rebranded as Microsoft Dataflex Pro.

There are some differences between Dataflex for Teams and Dataflex Pro, but in this instalment, we will focus on Dataflex for Teams.

Data

As mentioned above, Dataflex is a true relational database and with it comes capabilities to find, sort, and filter basic and rich data types such as images, files, charts, and graphs. It also can do roll up, calculate fields, and includes a version of the currency data found in Dataflex Pro.

Based on the Common Data Model (CDM), tables are easily created by adding columns and rows. The data can easily be populated into them with a friendly and easy to use UI. Creating a table is very similar to using an Excel spreadsheet, but Dataflex is a dynamic database and Excel is not. The CDM is a straightforward looking grid and can easily be edited to suit your Team’s needs.

Intelligent Chatbots

Combining Microsoft Power Virtual Agents and Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Team members can create no-code to low-code chatbots. By building an intelligent chatbot, Team members can ask questions and have these answered quickly without leaving the Teams environment. With intelligent chatbots, a Team’s productivity will increase as there is no time wasted sitting in a queue waiting for an answer.

Environments

Historically speaking, developing apps was done inside of SharePoint with Lists as the data source. Now, developing apps will be done inside Microsoft Teams and will reference Dataflex as the data source. By doing so, a single environment for each Microsoft Team is created. Because each Microsoft Team will have its own connected Dataflex environment, when data, apps, workflows, and chatbots are populated and/or created, they are created specifically for that Team. This environment supports a 2 GB capacity, translating to the storage of 100 million rows of data including relational, file, and image data. The Microsoft Teams Dataflex environment will also support backups, point-in-time restore, and disaster recovery.

Because Dataflex for Teams creates an environment for each Team, the lifecycle of the environment relates to the associated Microsoft Team, making environment management easier. When a Team is deleted, the associated environment is also deleted.

Solution and Application Development

Collaboration in Teams can take three different avenues, including members creating their documents, creating in collaboration with Team members, and acquiring documents from trusted sources. This concept is carried over with the combined powers of Power Platform and Dataflex for Teams to build and to use apps, chatbots, data, and flows (but note that business rules or classic workflows are not supported).

To easily choose templates from a trusted source, a gallery view provides a visual layout, allowing easy installation, and it is fully customizable for your Team. This can all be done from within Microsoft Teams so Team members never have to leave the application while information is at the Teams’ fingertips.

Security

When a Microsoft Team is created, Team security is defined. As Team security is based on access for collaboration between members who are internal and external of the organization, the security for Dataflex for Teams is pre-configured as security roles are based on membership types within the Team, such as Owner, Member, and Guest. Activity logs, such as the author of a record that is created, is supported. To access admin functionalities, simply go to the Microsoft Teams admin centre.

Microsoft Teams was designed to support, encourage, and enhance collaboration between internal and external Team members of an organization. As the number of staff working remotely has increased significantly in the past few months, Microsoft Teams’ capabilities have been expanded and further evolved. Within its application, Microsoft Teams combines Power Apps, Microsoft Virtual Agents, and Dataflex, allowing users to work within Teams as an application platform and to produce no-code to low-code apps. As the world continues to fight the pandemic, and workers continue to work remotely, Microsoft Dataflex and Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s solution to the surge in need for tighter, more efficient, and easy management of collaboration data, environments, and security. Working smart, Microsoft Dataflex enhances and expands productivity, communication, collaboration, and efficiency in Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams: Updates for IT Admins

Teams in Office 365 and Microsoft 365 have received many new features and enhancements that enable Teams to communicate more effectively, clearly, and quickly. These key elements were discussed in my article Microsoft Teams: Updates for Users. Users are not the only ones benefiting from this month’s updates as many new features and additions are happening behind the scenes for IT Admins.

Small to Mid-Sized Organizations: Automatic Creation of an Org-Wide Team

Global admins can create org-wide teams, and each org-wide team is limited to 5,000 users with each tenant limited to five org-wide teams. Tenants with fewer than 5,000 users will start with an org-wide team which will help streamline the process of bringing everyone together as a single team for collaboration. With org-wide teams, global admins can easily create a public team while membership is kept up to date as users join and leave the organization with Active Directory.

Calling and Meetings: In-Region Storage When Stream is Not Available in Go Local

Tenant admins have the option to enable, through the Admin Centre, “Allow Cloud Recording” settings for Teams meetings with the toggle On/Off button. When turned On, Team meetings are recorded and are then stored in the Microsoft Stream cloud storage. However, for customers where Stream service is not available in the corresponding Go Local region, Cloud recordings are currently not allowed/enabled. This behaviour will now be changed by defaulting “Allow Cloud Recording” to On. By changing this behaviour, Teams meeting recording will now be stored in the respective in-region data centre.

IT Admins: Managing App Catalogue in Teams Admin Centre

The app catalogue provides the tools for admins to streamline the process of testing and distributing line-of-business applications. Through the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin centre, IT admins can view all available apps in the tenant, including information that aides in the decision of determining which apps should be enabled for their organization.

IT Admins: Office 365 ProPlus

Microsoft Teams will now be included with Office 365 ProPlus on the 6-monthly channel. Users will no longer need to install Microsoft Teams separately.

Security & Compliance: Legal Hold for Teams Private Channels Messages

Legal litigation is a fact in the business world, and when proactively preparing for possible future legal litigation, organizations are expected to preserve electronically stored information (ESI). This includes Teams chat messages that are relevant to the legal case. In these instances, preservation of messages related to a specific topic or for certain individuals may need to be preserved. Legal hold supports the preservation of private channel messages. By preserving information in Teams with legal hold, legal requirements are being addressed.

Beginning February 2020, the default is now On for legal hold, or case hold, on private channels. Note that private channel chats are stored in user mailboxes while normal channel chats are stored in that Teams’ group mailboxes. Within Microsoft Teams, Admins can select specific users or an entire team to be placed on hold. Once this is done, all messages that were exchanged in those teams, including private channels, or messages exchanged by individuals, will be discoverable by the organization’s Teams Admins or the organization’s compliance managers.

It is important to note that all message copies will be retained for users or groups on hold. This means that if a user posts a message in a channel, and then modifies the message, both copies of the message (the original post and the modified post) will be retained. If the hold is not enabled, then only the latest message is retained.

Security & Compliance: Safe Links 

Safe Links is a new tool that verifies URLs in Office documents and emails, improving security as you click on them. Safe Links protects Teams from dangerous URLs.

Security & Compliance: Communication Compliance  

A new insider risk solution set in Microsoft 365, Communication Compliance helps minimize communication risks by detecting, capturing, and taking remediation actions for inappropriate messages in your organization. By implementing custom or pre-defined policies, internal and external communications can be scanned for policy matches for examination by the organization’s reviewers. The organization’s reviewers can investigate Microsoft Teams, scanned emails or third-party communications in the organization and then take appropriate remediation actions to ensure compliance with the organization’s communication policies. Communication compliance’s workflow involves the configuration of communication policies, the investigation of communications, remediation for inappropriate communications, and continual monitoring of communications to ensure policy compliance.

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/  

Dev Tools: Cloud Communications APIs

The addition of MS Graph Cloud Communication APIs, including Phone System Direct Routing and MS Graph Presence, provides partners the ability to create their contact solutions.

Intrazone Podcast Episode: “An API for Teamwork”

In this podcast episode, “An API for Teamwork”, hosts Mark Kashman and Chris McNulty discuss bots, tabs, and connectors with experts inside and outside of Microsoft. By exploring the basis of what and how to approach extending the Microsoft Teams platform offering, the power and capabilities of Microsoft Teams are uncovered. You can download and listen to this podcast, “An API for Teamwork”, on your drive into the office!

There are many new and exciting features with this year’s February update! These updates are enabling transparent, easy, efficient, and immediate communications for collaboration across platforms. As complex as these processes are, Microsoft has ensured to consider the effects on IT Admins and has addressed many issues that enable the IT Admin to review, monitor, and enact the necessary processes to ensure smooth delivery of the system. Microsoft has, once again, done an amazing job with this month’s updates.  

Microsoft Teams: Updates for Users

Microsoft Teams is a powerful hub for communicating with your team for ultimate collaboration in cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Collaboration enlists a variety of tools for your users to succeed, and these tools include Outlook, chats, video, and voice, and of course, there are more! With the February 2020 update to Microsoft Teams, communication between Teams members has been enhanced with several new features and improvements.

Communication: Outlook Integration

Users can move a Teams conversation to a conversation in Outlook by clicking on the options ellipses (…) in the Teams’ conversation and then choosing to move this conversation to Outlook.

Another powerful integration is the ability for users to move an email conversation, with its attachments, from Outlook into a Teams channel or chat conversation. Moving email conversations from Outlook to a Teams channel can be accomplished simply by choosing “Share to Teams”. This short video clip demonstrates how easily this can be done.

Chat and Collaboration: Targeted Messaging

By assigning tags, admins within the Microsoft Teams admin centre can control who and how tags are assigned across an organization. Team owners who have the right to assign tags can then organize users based on common attributes, such as location, project, and role. Targeted communication is based on these tags. By simply using the @MentionTheTag in a post, team members can send a communication message to everyone at the same time with that tag.

Chat and Collaboration: Receipts and Notifications

An optional tool, but a very useful tool, is Read Receipts. Once turned on, Read Receipts will provide an indication as to whether your private messages have been read or not.

Appearing in the activity feed, you can quickly connect and give new team members a warm welcome as the Colleague Joined Teams notification informs you.

Files Experience in Teams: SharePoint Powered

Powered by SharePoint, Files Experience in Teams is found under the File tab of a channel. Teams users will be able to preview over 320 supported file types while file cards can be easily reviewed while hovering over them. Creating views, working with metadata, pinning files to the top,  viewing document life-cycle signals, taking actions like check-in and check-out, and syncing files to their PC or Mac computer are a few examples of what users will experience in the Files Experience for Teams.

Calling and Meetings: Voice Administration, ThinkSmart View for Phones, and CCX Microsoft Teams Phones

Customers of Microsoft Calling Plan will have the ability to search, discover, and set phone numbers for users. Teams Admins will have greater visibility into additional workloads.

ThinkSmart View for Phones will provide users the capability to manage video/audio calls through a desktop service with extra security features.

The Poly CCX Series of Microsoft Teams phones are designed specifically for Teams calling and are highly customizable to optimize the user experience.

GCC, GCC High & DOD: Phone Systems Additions for GCC

For GCC customers, the following new features are now available:

1. Team users can screen share to Skype for Business users;

2. Callers can transfer directly to voicemail;

3. Teams users (AAD) have caller ID;

4. Users on the Chrome browser can send and receive video calls; and

5. Place PSTN calls with the PowerBar slash command.

Apps & Workflows: Enhanced Power BI Tab for Teams

Microsoft Teams has received a new tab! The Power BI tab adds support for reports in the new workspace experiences, paginated reports, and reports in Power BI apps. Users can find and track data for successful objective outcomes when the Power BI tab is added to channels and chats. For new team members joining, data is easily and readily accessible.

Apps & Workflows: Pinning Apps for Easy Access

Pinning personal apps to the left-hand rail, the Teams app bar, is not only simple and easy, but it ensures that the apps that the user frequently accesses are easily located and launched. Users can pin their favourite and/or most frequented apps by right-clicking on the app icon and then selecting Pin, and the pin remains in place even after the user navigates away. Apps can also be pinned to relevant channels or chats, making them easily accessible. Not only can a user pin apps, but the Teams Admin can create a group policy so that specific apps appear pinned on everyone’s Teams app bar. 

Education: Microsoft Teams QBot

An exciting new solution, Microsoft Teams QBot is specially designed for classroom teaching. QBot allows teachers, students, and tutors to intelligently answer each other’s questions within the Microsoft Teams platform by leveraging QnA Maker in Azure Cognitive Services.

How does this work? Microsoft Teams QBot app is deployed to a Team. Once deployed, a student can ask a question on the channel. By tagging the question @TaggingQBot, QBot will respond with the correct answer, or it will tag a group of responders, allowing them to collaborate on a response. Accepted answers are used to train QBot for future questions.

Many of these features have behind the scenes, out of sight, talent that designs, plans, deploys, monitors, and troubleshoots to keep the whole system running at maximum potential. In our next article, Microsoft Teams: Updates for Admins, we go behind the scenes to see what enhancements and new features have been made to make the IT Admin role more effective.

Optimize your organization’s cloud collaboration and communication by leveraging Teams in Microsoft 365 or Office 365. With the continuous updates and enhancements of Teams, communication and collaboration are done with ease, simplicity, and transparency.

Microsoft Ignite 2019 Announcements: Microsoft Teams: Part 3

These announcements, enhancements, and new features are super exciting and will help streamline, provide easy access, and seamless communication and collaboration within Teams. But we also know this comes with greater responsibility, more intense support, and meticulous organization on the part of the IT Admins.

Microsoft continually acknowledges the complexities that the IT Admins face from the very beginning of planning the architecture and every step in between towards a successful deployment and post-deployment support. In Teams, the IT Admins are receiving some game-changing enhancements to make their responsibilities more manageable.

Managing Teams and Protecting Data with Planning and Administration Tools

1. Advisor for Teams: Advisor for Teams provides IT Admins assistance in the planning for a successful Teams deployment across the organization by offering recommended plans, encompassing a collaboration space for the deployment team to streamline the rollout of all the Teams workloads, including meetings, messages, and calling;

2. Microsoft Semi-Annual Channel: With Office ProPlus, Teams deployment will be streamlined with the Click-to-Run, which will install the Teams client on all PCs that are already on the semi-annual channel. Going forward from January 14, 2020, the client will then update itself regularly;

3. App Catalogue: The new App Catalogue will provide administrators detailed information for applications that are available in the Teams environment. These details will include name, description, publisher, certification status and policy details;

4. Policy Packages: A Policy Package is a collection of pre-defined policies and policy settings. These can be easily assigned by IT Admins to users in an organization who have similar roles thus ensuring that users have access to the Teams capabilities that they need;

5. Policy Assignment to Security Groups in PowerShell: This will be available at the end of this year;

6. Microsoft Teams Room and the Teams Admin Portal: IT Admins will be able to manage device inventory and execute device tasks such as restarting, assigning configurations, and monitoring and diagnosing issues. This can all be performed with the Microsoft Teams Room in the Teams Admin Portal;

7. Managed Meeting Rooms: This is a cloud-based IT management and security monitoring service offered by Microsoft. This service ensures that Teams meeting rooms are up-to-date and secure with proactive monitoring;

8. Safe Links in Microsoft Teams: Safe Links in Microsoft Teams safeguards Teams messages against harmful links when a URL is shared in a channel conversation or in a private chat in real-time. Teams will perform a time-of-click verification of URLs. If there is a risk of malware or viruses, the user will be alerted. Safe Links is powered by Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection;

9. Additional Compliance and Security Capabilities: By the end of this  year, audit log search (deleting and editing messaging events within audit log search), information barriers policies (extending to include files stored in a Team’s SharePoint site); retention policies (applicable to short retentions like one day); and e-Discovery (results will now include search results for keywords and conversations around them) will become available.

Automating Workflows, Integrating Custom Apps and Data Insights within Teams using Power Platform

1. Power Apps and Teams Apps: Power Apps creators can publish their apps as Team apps. This will provide users easy access to these apps in Teams and users will be able to access them in Teams. Admins will have the ability to publish custom apps directly into the app library in Teams which will make them more easily discoverable to users;

2. Pinning an App: An app created with Power Apps can be pinned in Teams to the left rail. By pinning an app, the user will have easy access to frequently used apps;

3. Teams-Centric Actions & Triggers – Power Automate: Users can use Power Automate Teams-Centric Actions & Triggers to create new automated workflows within Teams; and

4. Power BI Interactive Cards in Teams: Users will be able to quickly find and act on their data with Power BI Interactive Cards in Teams.

With the many new and improved features in Teams, users across the organization along with external clients will have the ability to communicate from varying platforms such as Linux, iOS, and android. Flexibility, versatility, and ease of access being provided by Microsoft Teams strengthen the cohesiveness for users to work together. Microsoft continues to improve and innovate collaboration through communication.

Microsoft Ignite 2019 Announcements: Microsoft Teams: Part 2

As the day progresses and the sessions continue, there are more announcements for Microsoft Teams. Just as exciting as discussed in the previous article, the new additions and enhancements in this article are just as exciting! As mentioned previously, Teams is utilized by users and organizations in many ways and Microsoft not only recognizes this, but it encourages and has focused on these aspects.

Conduct Inclusive and Effective Meetings

1. Microsoft Whiteboard: Whether in the same room or working remotely, Teams participants can collaborate and ideate on a digital, never-ending digital canvas. Microsoft Whiteboard is available from the Share Tray in Teams Meetings;

2. Live Captions: Users and participants have different needs, and with Live Captions, differences in hearing and language proficiencies are addressed. This provides an alternate way to follow along and participate with the conversation;

3. Presenter and Attendee Controls: Meeting organizers will be able to pre-define roles for participants as presenters or attendees. Participants designated as presenters will have full control over the meeting. Participants designated as an attendee will not be able to take control, share content, admit people waiting in the lobby, remove other participants, and start/stop recordings;

4. Citrix: Microsoft Teams Calling and Meetings for Citrix virtual environments will be optimized, allowing the delivery of high-fidelity Teams experience for users who are on-prem or for users who are Azure-hosted by a virtual desktop or application;

5. Cloud Video Interop (CVI): The latest partner to the CVI partnerships, Cisco is enabling customers to use Teams meetings with the use of Cisco Webex Room devices and SIP video conferencing devices in the meeting rooms;

6. Direct Guest Join Capability: Working together with Zoom and Cisco, Microsoft is trailblazing a new approach that will enable Microsoft Teams Rooms devices to connect to meeting services through browser-based technologies. As this technology is developed, additional vendors will be added;

7. Collaboration Bars for Microsoft Teams: Working with partners to convert small spaces into online meeting and collaboration spaces, this new category of device is affordable and can be installed and managed with ease. These video conferencing collaboration bars attach to touchscreens, displays, or TVs and provide experiences such as one-touch and proximity join, Microsoft whiteboard, and content sharing. The first two partners to launch are Poly and Yealink;

8. Microsoft Teams Speakerphones: These new speakerphones have a dedicated Teams button that provides seamless interaction with Teams. The first peripheral partner, who also has the first certified speakerphone, is Yealink; and

9. Enterprise Phone System Capabilities: New enterprise-wide phone system capabilities will include emergency calls, administrative control, call queue functionality, call delegation, voicemail management, and music on hold. The Enterprise Phone System also performs Compliance Recording and coupled with the Contact Center, it is suited to be a cloud phone system solution for enterprise clients.

Firstline Workers and Ease of Access to Teams

1. SMS Sign-In: With their phone number and a one-time SMS passcode, Firstline Workers can easily sign into Teams on their personal device;

2. Off Shift Access: IT Administrators will be able to enable this new setting. By enabling this setting, Firstline Workers, when outside of their payable hours, will receive a notification when they access their Teams app on their personal device. The Firstline Worker must provide consent to the notification before they can access their app;

3. Global Sign-Out: It is not uncommon for Firstline Workers to be using shared devices. By providing a global sign-out where the user is signed out at once from all the apps they use on their shift, it secures their sessions while saving time;

4. Delegated User Management: To reduce the burden of identity management on IT, Firstline managers will be able to manage user credentials and approve password reset requests via the My Staff portal; and

5. Graph API: Enhancements will provide a two-directional communication flow between a workforce management system and Shifts to enable enterprise configuration. Customers will be able to integrate Teams with Kronos and JDA with the open-source integration templates on GitHub.

Enable Industry-Specific Scenarios in Healthcare and Other Industries

1. Virtual Consults: B2C virtual consultations can be easily scheduled and conducted via Microsoft Teams and attendees can join through their Teams mobile app or from their web browser. Conducting healthcare consults with patients, conducting interviews, or holding meetings has never been more convenient or easier; and

2. Patient Coordination: Providing health care to patients and patient-centered care requires a secure platform for physicians, nurses, health aides, and other care team members to communicate clearly. In Teams, Patient Coordination is HIPAA compliant with enterprise-grade security. Meeting HIPPA compliance means that patient care can be streamlined by centralizing and digitizing patient information that is accessible to the patient care team for multi-disciplinary meetings, rounding, handoffs, and huddles.

Communication and collaboration are strongly emphasized in this set of enhancements and features for users within a Team, potential Team members, and clients. Super exciting! And we have more announcements in the next article.