Dynamic View, Translating slideshow content and other Teams roadmap updates

There has been again some changes in the roadmap for Microsoft Teams. Let me highlight you some of them

Dynamic View is now in the public preview! This means you can start enjoying the benefits of much better Teams meeting experience. I have been using that for a while already – and I have to say it feels a nice improvement to previous one. I didn’t see this one any of my public preview environments but it should roll out soon (April 2021).

Learn more about Dynamic View from the public preview announcement blog post.

End-to-end encryption option for Teams 1:1 VoIP Calls is now scheduled to June 2021. This is a great feature to add security to 1:1 calls when the content is very sensitive. “Teams will support an option to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for ad hoc 1:1 Teams VoIP calls, providing an additional option for conducting sensitive online conversations. To support customer security and compliance requirements, IT will have full control of who can use E2EE in the organization.”

Translate slideshow content is something I am looking really forward in this global multi-lingual world. This is scheduled for May 2021. When presenting a PowerPoint in Teams (sharing a PowerPoint presentation to the meeting) attendees can translate the slide content to their language. The translation is personal and does not show to other attendees. “Translate the slide show content privately in a Teams meeting with PowerPoint Live”

Time Clock APIs ( coming this month: April 2021) :“with new Time Clock APIs, organizations can create rules such as how late someone can clock-in without requiring manager approval or requiring a health screening survey before clocking-in for the day.”

Create a task from a message in Microsoft Teams is also scheduled to April 2021. This has been jumping forward in the roadmap a few times already – but with the recent updated (12th of April) it looks like this schedule might hold. There is still two weeks left of this month. Release schedule does not mean it will land instantly to people’s Teams – it can take weeks after it starts to roll out. Sometimes it takes a day so we will see early May how this one goes.

With Co-Organizer meeting role postponed to September 2021 I am keeping my fingers crossed that Breakout Room Presenter support that allows extending the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters will keep it’s schedule of June 2021. Being just recently updated in the roadmap brings some hope to that. Along with June update to Breakout Rooms is also coming “Enhanced UX for participant assignment. This includes new capabilities such as sorting participants and rooms and performing multiple selections and assignments to rooms.”. Big time needed “Introducing capability for organizer to perform breakout room configuration and participant assignment before the meeting starts.“ is scheduled for May.

Manage tags in Teams programmatically – Microsoft Teams Tags APIs are going to go for public preview in June 2021. “This set of APIs can be used to programmatically assign users tags in a team, making tag creation and maintenance faster and easier. Tags in Teams let users quickly reach a group of people without having to @mention or type out everyone individually. Users can use tags to start a chat or by @mentioning a tag in a channel post. For more information on tag in teams, see Using tags in Teams. Using these new APIs, developers can now: create tags in a team and assign users,  get a list of tags in a team, update tags or delete tags.”

Organizational wide backgrounds are rolling into public preview. This feature requires Advanced Communications add-on. These will allow distributing organizational wide background images that can be used in Teams meetings as video backgrounds.

Microsoft also released this week new accessories for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Modern webcam (Teams-certified). I am very curious to look this one up once I get a chance and see how it differs in everyday use compared to Logitech Stream-cam.

Modern USB-C Speaker (Teams-certified) This also got onto my “extremely curious”-list. There has been already some good comments about the preview-version quality and experiences so I am eager to see & test this one some day.

Surface Headphones 2 for Business (Teams-certified)

These headphones are really similar to Surface Headphones – except these are certified for Microsoft Teams and come with a Teams-button & dongle. I expect that the dongle will eliminate random Bluetooth issues and thus will have a much more stable connection between the headset and computer.

Microsoft Modern Wireless Headset (Teams-certified).

And also Wireless version (Teams-certified)

And of course Surface Laptop 4. Check out specs and configuration from Microsoft Store.

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