My 5 favorite Microsoft Teams Announcements from Ignite 2020

Microsoft Ignite is most definitely my favorite conference of all the conferences we host at Microsoft. It is the one that is always jam packed with new announcements. Being in touch with many Microsoft partner and customers, I can imagine it can be difficult to keep track of everything that is new and how it will impact you as an individual or how it can help your company focus on what is most important. Here are my top 5 favorite Microsoft Teams announcements from Ignite 2020.

1. Well Being Insights

Work is different now. To help people and organizations thrive, we're bringing wellbeing and productivity insights – powered by MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics – to Microsoft Teams. We signed a partnership with Headspace to offer 'unwinding sessions' on your 'virtual commute' to discovering opportunities to prevent burnout, experience how new insights for individuals, teams, and organizations can help.

How it will help you and your organization

To thrive at work, we need to take care of ourselves and meeting fatigue is a real thing. Studies show that brainwave markers associated with overwork and stress are significantly higher in video meetings than non-meeting work like writing emails. Further, due to high levels of sustained concentration, fatigue begins to set in 30-40 minutes into a meeting. Looking at days filled with video meetings, stress begins to set in at about two hours into the day.

Therefore, it is crucial to keep track of your well-being and what better way to get some nudges and insights in the new Insights tab in Microsoft Teams?

2. Webinar support

For more structured meetings, such as customer webinars, meeting organizers can use event registration with automated emails to make it easier to manage attendance. And after the meeting, view a detailed reporting dashboard that will help understand attendee engagement. These new features are expected to begin to roll out by end of year.

How it will help you and your organization

No more need to purchase other webinar tooling but run everything from Microsoft Teams and let it fully integrate in what you are already doing. Basically, you can soon run single virtual meetings, hybrid meetings, training with breakout rooms, webinars, live events and more all through Microsoft Teams.

3. Breakout Rooms

Coming in October, breakout rooms will allow meeting organizers to split up meeting participants into smaller groups to facilitate brainstorming sessions or workgroup discussions. Presenters can choose to hop between breakout rooms, make announcements to all breakout rooms, and/or close the breakout rooms that then bring everybody back into the main meeting.

How it will help you and your organization

Starting a brainstorm with a larger group and breaking out in small teams in Microsoft Teams becomes 10x easier. Yes, there was a workaround to leverage meetings in channel, but we can all agree that that was far from ideal. Now you can break out, use whatever app or screen you want in the breakout room and have productive breakout session.

For a full video on Breakout Rooms please check out this link

4. Custom layouts

Coming later this year, custom layouts allow for a more dynamic content viewing experience and enable presenters to customize how content shows up for participants during a meeting. For example, when a presenter is showing a PowerPoint slide, participants will be able to see the presenter’s video feed transposed onto the foreground of the slide they’re showing. If you are an OBS power user then with the help of the OBS Virtual Cam and a green screen you can already produce these types of setups. Soon this option will be available out-of-the-box.

How it will help you and your organization

Create more effective layouts to ensure that your audience focusses on what is most important. Whether that's the slides or a sign language interpreter for more inclusive meetings.

5. Approvals

Whether you need written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorization from a diverse group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer, getting things approved is part of almost every workflow. However, they can be hard to track and manage when so many systems and people are involved. Approvals in Microsoft Teams lets you easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from your hub for teamwork. You can quickly start an approval flow from the same place you send a chat, in a channel conversation, or from the Approvals app itself. Just select an approval type, add details, attach files, and choose approvers. Once submitted, approvers are notified and can review and act on the request.

How it will help you and your organization

You can see and manage all your approvals from one place, the Approvals app in Teams. Each request is displayed along with key details such as the status, source, requestor, and approvers. You can also select a specific approval to see some more info and track its progress.