Keeping up with Microsoft Teams

The average husky can run 20 to 30 kilometers in a session (10 to 20 miles). With training, a husky can run 65 kilometers (40 miles) at a time, 10 to 15 times farther than most dog breeds! A trained, conditioned, and purpose-bred husky can run well over 150 kilometers (100 miles) in a day.

Unless you train as a marathon runner, you will have difficulty keeping up with your husky.

Likewise, unless you train as an IT Pro or advanced user, you might have difficulty keeping up with Microsoft Teams.

Over the past year, based on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap which tracks features in development, rolling out, and released for all the Office products, 325 features have been launched for Microsoft Teams. This means to keep up, you need to track an average of 25 new features a month.

Starting Up

Before you can keep up with what's new, you need to first ensure you have a good foundation.

Microsoft has created a tremendous amount of learning content related to Teams. The challenge is knowing this content exists and knowing where to find it. Below I've curated a good set of foundational resources:

1. A series of short on-demand training videos: Microsoft Teams video training (Most are 2 – 3 minutes in length). There are also exercises to try and links to more information with each topic.
2. If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, here is link to Teams courses: Microsoft Teams: Online Courses, Training and Tutorials on LinkedIn Learning
3. Microsoft Advisor can help identify learning pathways for Teams. This takes a bit of effort to decipher but for larger projects can be very valuable: Use Advisor for Teams to help you roll out Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
4. A landing page for content targeted at Teams admin users: Microsoft Teams admin training - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
5. Microsoft is hosting a series of free, live training sessions over coming weeks (most in June and July 2022, some sessions are on demand). Session and registration details here: End-user training for Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs

Keeping Up

There are many tools, some built directly into Teams, to help you keep up with improvements and changes to Teams.

1. Help > What's New - available by clicking on the Help icon at the bottom of the Teams left rail and then choosing What's new from the popup menu.

This displays a list of new features available for desktop and web clients, iOS clients (iPhone and iPad), Android devices, and also includes a link to updates related to Microsoft Teams devices.

2. The Microsoft 365 Roadmap available here lists updates that are in the development pipeline, rolling out, and fully delivered. Microsoft provides an estimated launch date and updates progress as development progresses. You can download a list of all the items from this page as well.

3. The Microsoft Teams blog available here posts monthly updates summarizing all the new Teams features released during the month and also includes more frequent posts highlighting specific new capabilities along with additional Teams news.

4. IT admins have access to the Microsoft 365 Message center which is available through the Microsoft 365 admin center and accessed by going to Health > Message center.

The Message center helps IT admins to keep track of upcoming changes, including new and changed features, planned maintenance, or other important announcements, Admins can also use the Microsoft 365 Admin app on mobile devices to view Message center, which is a great way to stay current with push notifications.

A Few New Things

In the spirit of helping you keep up, I wanted to close by highlighting three of the newest Teams features:

1. Shared Channels are now generally available (aka Microsoft Teams Connect shared channels). Shared channels allow you to collaborate with people external to your organization in a much easier manner, without requiring logging into another account. I've written previously about how shared channels will greatly improve collaboration.
2. New AI-powered audio improvements in Teams continue to filter out more and more background noise and echo.
3. Video options to automatically adjust brightness and apply a soft-focus.

I'll cover more new features in detail in upcoming Taming Teams articles.

Concluding Thoughts

Teams started small and lacking capabilities; however, over the past 5 years, with the increasingly rapid pace of feature release, Teams is now a trained, conditioned, and purpose-built communication and collaboration platform. You are going to have to work to keep up!

Thank you for reading this The Taming Teams newsletter. If you have a specific Teams question or a suggested topic you would like covered, please comment below or send me a message.