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By Brenna Robinson, General Manager, Microsoft SMB
At this year’s Enterprise Connect conference, Microsoft showcased new products and solutions improving business communications and collaboration. The Enterprise Connect conference features the latest unified communications (UC) trends, technologies and best practices to help you expand your business. We’d like to share some of the announcements we’ve made, including new ways to manage your phone calls in Microsoft Teams Phone with the new Queues app. We’ve also enhanced Microsoft Teams channels with the new discover feed, and we’ve added meet now to group chats.
Teams Phone and unified communications
Microsoft Teams Phone is a key addition for a small business already using Microsoft Teams because it’s the only cloud telephone solution natively built for Teams. A business can get the benefits of unified communications without many technical hassles or much extra expense.
UC puts all your communications medium under one roof, including things like voice, chat, collaboration, scheduling, presence management and more. Unifying these capabilities lets you save on costs and increase productivity because you can see all your communications inside a single interface rather than having to switch across multiple providers. It also greatly helps with external communications, like customer service for example, since it combines conversations from different channels into a single, productive exchange. Teams Phone is your shortest path to all those benefits because it’s purpose-built to easily integrate with Teams.
Queues app
Case in point is the new Queues application now in private preview. This new app improves call management for Teams Phone users by allowing individuals to better manage customer calls and for supervisors to manage incoming call queues. It also provides new call analytics. The app will be available in the Teams Store and can be pinned to the left rail of the Teams client.
The Queues app will be available as part of Teams Premium in Summer 2024 and requires a Teams Phone subscription. We are offering a limited number of pre-launch previews for interested customers. Share your interest by nominating your organization to participate.
Private Line
We also want you to know that the Private line feature we announced last fall is now generally available. Private line allows you to identify and respond to priority callers, the people whose calls you want to receive immediately without wait times. Private line is like having a second, private line that is only accessible to hand-picked contacts. Your priority callers can call you directly and bypass delegates, admins, or assistants. Supporting incoming calls only, Private line calls will be distinguished by a unique notification and ringtone.
Private line is available in Teams Premium and requires a Teams Phone subscription.
Discover feed in channels
Beyond Teams Phone, we’ve enhanced our core Teams collaboration and communication experience with discover feed, which builds off Teams channels. A channel enables workgroups to collaborate in a dedicated virtual workspace that you can organize by topic.
But with so much communication happening every day, it can be hard to keep track of the information that’s most important to you. The new discover feed is a personalized feed. It surfaces all the content most relevant for you, based on the people you work with and topics you might be interested in. Discover posts you may not be aware of because you are not directly mentioned, replied to, or tagged. You can then add comments or share a post just like any other channel. Find out more about Teams discover feed.
Meet now in Teams group chat (May 2024)
We are also enhancing Teams meet now feature by adding it to your group chats. This will make it even easier to start a conversation with others in your business without having to schedule a meeting. Meet now in group chat lets you communicate with your colleagues no matter where they’re located. You can start a huddle as easily as if you met by the water cooler. It’s a ringless experience that notifies you when a huddle has started and who initiated it. Then you can choose to join it or decline if you are busy. Since the huddle started from an existing group chat, any chats you send while the meeting is in progress will stay a part of your ongoing group chat thread, which maintains the right context around the content, and helps you find the information when you need it. Meet now will be available in the spring.
Copilot in Teams compose enhancements
Copilot in Teams can help transform your ideas into clear chat messages and channels posts. Just type a few words or sentences and Copilot will draft a message for you. You can also ask Copilot to customize a message by using your own prompt, like “make it shorter” or “add a call to action.” This capability will be available this spring and will require a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers can enhance their Teams experience with all these new features and be ready for the new Copilot capabilities as they’re released. Just add Teams Premium, Copilot for Microsoft 3651 , and Teams Phone to your subscription. If you do not already have these core productivity offerings, you can purchase them now and then add Copilot for Microsoft 365 to your subscription.
Resources
- Find the right Microsoft 365 business plan for your business.
- Learn more about how to set up and use your Microsoft 365 subscription and find tips and templates to help you accomplish your business tasks.
- Get free resources, tech training, and guidance to keep your business thriving and growing.
- Partners can access training resources, customer decks and deployment checklists to do more with Microsoft 365.
- Copilot for Microsoft 365 may not be available for all markets and languages. To purchase, enterprise customers must have a license for Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 or Office 365 E3 or E5, and business customers must have a license for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium, or a version of these suites that no longer includes Microsoft Teams.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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