It is time to take a brief look at Teams roadmap, since there has been plenty of changes recently. As always, when looking for most up to date information about a specific feature I urge you to check Microsoft 365 Roadmap. This blog post works as a curated summary of those items I feel are good to highlight. There are of course other features also so if you don’t see the one you are looking for info here: search for it at the roadmap.
June / early July
This is going to be a busy month for Microsoft Teams. And it means that users will have a lot to learn in July-August.
Something to highlight especially is Microsoft Teams and PowerPoint for Business: Annotation support in PowerPoint Live in Teams and Slideshow that will add virtual laser pointer and ink annotations so presenters can engage more with their audience by drawing attention or clarifying certain sections of the PowerPoint deck.
| Description | Details | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Teams: Windows 10 Native Notifications | Choose the style of your notifications: built-in Teams or Windows native notifications. The latter brings a suite of benefits, like respecting focus assist mode which enables you to avoid distracting notifications when you need to focus, and integrating with Windows 10 action center to helps you review your notifications in one place. | In development | Inform your users about this possibility. |
| Microsoft Teams: Room Remote for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows | Control in-room meeting devices using a new experience on the Teams mobile app. Controls include: turn mic on/off, turn camera on/off, adjust audio, leave the meeting. | In development | This reduces the need to touch on same surfaces as others have. And it can be helpful also when you sit far away from controls. |
| Microsoft Teams: Meeting room capacity notifications for Microsoft Teams Room | Alerts in-room meeting participants if the room is over-capacity based on data defined in a room account. Not all cameras will support this feature. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Create a task from a message in Microsoft Teams | Quickly create tasks right from any Microsoft Teams chat or channel conversation without having to switch apps or windows. Select More options on a Teams message to choose ‘Create task’ and track in the Tasks app in Teams. | In development | Finally?! |
| Microsoft Teams: Teams casting for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows | For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t necessarily require setting up a formal meeting, people can use Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room running on Windows, and display content from their mobile phone. Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored on locally on their device or accessible via Office 365. | In development | You can use a Teams Room easily as a screen. |
| Microsoft Teams: Share to Microsoft Teams from Outlook | Send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels or start a Teams chat related to a specific email message. Share to Teams supports Outlook on the web, Outlook for Windows, and the new Outlook for Mac Preview. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Mobile app visual update | The Teams mobile app will get a new visual look and feel that delivers new headers, icons, and styling along with the ability to automatically switch to dark theme when you set your device to dark. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Organize chats in mobile app | In the Teams mobile app, you will be able to pin chats and filter the Chat list. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Emoji library and GIFs in mobile app | In the Teams mobile app, there will be an expanding library of emojis, and the ability to trim GIFs directly in the app. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Teams and Dynamics 365 business process experience | Take advantage of Teams capabilities like chatting, sharing documents, and managing meeting and webinar invites without leaving Dynamics 365 workspace. You can also securely access, update, and share Dynamics 365 records from within Microsoft Teams. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Approval templates | New out-of-the-box templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals such as leave, expense reports, or overtime requests. Admins and team owners can use these as is, customize, or create brand new templates. | In development | Approval templates are already in Public Preview |
| Microsoft Teams: Interoperability with Azure Communication Services | Use Azure Communications Services to deliver a better customer experience by easily connecting users of a custom-built app with users on Microsoft Teams via voice, video, or chat. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Updates to Dataverse for Teams limits and upgrades | We are increasing the Dataverse for Teams environment limit for larger tenants from the current 500 to 10,000. Also, you will be able to seamlessly upgrade your Dataverse for Teams environments to take advantage of the full premium license capabilities—your existing apps and data are to go | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Co-author in encrypted docs using Office Apps | Multiple users can now simultaneously edit an Office document that has been encrypted using Microsoft Information Protection, including using AutoSave. Co-authoring in encrypted docs is supported through the Office apps, Office Web Apps, and Teams. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Task publishing editing | Task publishing enables corporate teams to create and publish tasks to, for example, all frontline locations and other configurable attributes of a distributed workforce. Corporate teams can now edit published tasks without having to recall the entire task list. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Attachments to approvals | Attach files to approvals directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, or attach a generic link to content hosted outside of Microsoft 365. Approval is connected to the latest version of the file. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Markdown support in approvals | For approvals, use Markdown formatting in adaptive cards and the details view, to ensure all approvals are formatted correctly. | In development | |
| Microsoft Viva: Topics in Microsoft Search in Bing | Display topic cards in search results when Microsoft Search is invoked from a Bing search. | In development | |
| Microsoft Viva: Improvements for Topic Management | This update will empower Knowledge Managers, providing additional metadata for sorting and filtering through the list of topics, including additional quality and usage columns, and segmentation to help manage topics at scale. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Pairing the channel and the corresponding SharePoint folder name. | When renaming a Teams’ channel, the corresponding SharePoint folder will be renamed and reflect the new name. This will help create consistency across Microsoft 365 endpoints, making it easier on users to find their files from anywhere. This new feature will be available for all Standard and Private channels. For Standard channels – The corresponding folder in SharePoint will be renamed. For Private channels – The corresponding site name and the folder in SharePoint will be renamed. For legacy Teams channels that were renamed prior to this rollout, there will be no change in experience. When a legacy channel is renamed after this release, it will simultaneously rename the corresponding SharePoint folder. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Present slides from PowerPoint app for Mac | Present your slides directly from the PowerPoint app to a Teams meeting via PowerPoint Live in Teams. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams and Forms: Word Cloud for Polls in Teams | When users have collected responses for an open text poll in a Teams meeting, word cloud data insight will be available to help them get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Data reports for polls after Teams meeting | If user has used Forms poll in a Teams meeting, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with meeting organizer and presenters. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Data reports after Teams meeting class | If a teacher has used Forms polls in a Teams meeting class, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with teacher. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Share to Teams from Outlook | Share to Teams from Outlook allows you to send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels. Find the Share to Teams option in the Outlook ribbon or the action menu for an email. Share to Teams supports Outlook on the web, Outlook for Windows, and the new Outlook for Mac Preview. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Admins can install Apps in Meetings | We will enable IT admins to select Teams apps that can be installed in meetings for their organization. | Rolling out | |
| Microsoft Teams: Power Automate templates to be added to teams templates | Team templates enable end users to create the right team with predefined channels and preinstalled apps. Select Microsoft provided team templates will include a new Power Automate tab. In the tab, you can find a variety of Power Automate flow templates that support the template type. | In development | This is going to open new possibilities with team templates |
| Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Extensibility | Build your own scenes that elevate your meeting experience. We believe that by making Together Mode extensible, creators can create immersive scenes and users can go beyond simple video conferencing. Started building your scenes by going to the Developer Portal for Microsoft Teams. | Rolling out | I already blogged about this one. |
| Microsoft Teams and PowerPoint for Business: Annotation support in PowerPoint Live in Teams and Slideshow | We are introducing virtual laser pointer and ink annotations so presenters can engage more with their audience by drawing attention or clarifying certain sections of the PowerPoint deck. Just as you would use a physical laser point in a room, PowerPoint Live allows you to effectively point at different places in the presentation so the audience can easily follow along what’s on the slide. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Attendee Dashboard | Measure meeting and webinar registration and attendance data in the reporting dashboard. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Approvals in Teams | Get to results faster with Approvals in Microsoft Teams. Easily create, manage, share, and act on approvals directly from your hub for teamwork. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Offline access for files | Users can now access previously opened files even when there is no internet connectivity. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Admin notifications for Custom app submissions | When a developer submits a custom app for IT admin approval, admins will receive a notification in a dedicated Teams channel, so they can review and take next steps to publish the app. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Support open-text question poll for Teams meeting | For Microsoft Forms poll in Teams meeting, there is a new question type – open text. You can use this question type to collect attendees’ open-ended information before/during/after the meeting. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Chat bubbles | Chats sent during a Teams meeting will surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Large Gallery for VDI | Large Gallery feature will enable a Teams meeting participant to see an expanded view of the meetings gallery with 7×7 = 49 simultaneous user video streams in a Teams meeting. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Lock a meeting from additional joins | In the Teams meetings desktop app experience, organizers can choose to lock their meetings to prevent subsequent join attempts. Anyone attempting to join a lock meeting from any device will be informed that the meeting is locked. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Large gallery layout update on Teams mobile | To provide a better experience for our Large Gallery for meetings on Teams mobile, we are introducing a mobile-optimized layout that let you swipe through all the participants in a meeting. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Translate slideshow content | Translate the slide show content privately in a Teams meeting with PowerPoint Live | In development | |
| Yammer and Microsoft Teams for Business: Customize branding & link previews. | Microsoft Teams admins can customize the branding for the Yammer Communities app for Microsoft Teams to suit their Yammer network with their preferred app logos, naming, accent color, and more. with this Communities app for Microsoft Teams, users see a rich Yammer preview in chats and channel conversations when the user pastes a URL of a conversation from a public Yammer community. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Lower all raised hands. | Meeting organizers and presenters will see an option to lower all raised hands from the participant pane. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: Join a meeting by digital code | User can join a meeting by entering a digital code. | In development | |
| Microsoft Viva: Topic management dashboard | You can track the stats over time for topics through the lifecycle of suggested, confirmed, published, and removed with the new visual topic management dashboard. | In development | |
| Microsoft Teams: App risk evaluation | Teams admins will be able to view the security, compliance, and data privacy details for apps coming from Microsoft Cloud App Security. This will help Teams admins save time on security reviews and enable a more focused selection-based security specifications, resulting in increased app quality. | In development |
July – September and delays
This has really good stuff in it. Some delays are there as well (most notable the new Search results page in Teams has been postponed to September. This was already postponed to summer 2021 from December 2020..). What people are expecting to see the most are improvements to Breakout Rooms and to Whiteboard and those using Live Events the possibility to restart Live Event.
| Description | Details | Status | reLEASE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whiteboard: Additional facilitation features | Participants in Teams and on Web will have additional facilitation features. These include annotation, adding pictures/stickers, laser pointer etc. | In development | August CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Video filters | Before joining a meeting, you can use filters to subtly adjust lighting levels and smooth out facial features to customize your appearance. | In development | August CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Search results page in Teams | A new search experience in Teams will make finding messages, people, answers, and files faster and more intuitive. A redesigned search results page provides better context and faster results, with AI-powered relevance based on the people and content you engage with most in Teams and other Microsoft 365 services. | In development | September CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Top hits in Search Autosuggest | Top hits is a new section at the top of the autosuggest results in search where users will see the most relevant results across people, chats, files and more. This feature will improve discovery and reduce search times. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Immersive reader support for Mobile | Immersive Reader, which uses proven customization techniques to support reading across ages and abilities, is coming to Teams iOS and Android apps. You can now hear posts and chat messages read aloud using Immersive Reader on the Teams mobile apps. This functionality was previously available only on the web and desktop apps. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Public Preview: Teams follow Office preview | Public Preview has provided IT admins with the ability to allow their users to receive preview features before they are released to the public. Coming up in June 2021, not only can users be opted-in to use Teams Public Preview, but IT admins can even configure Teams users preview state to follow Office preview state. All of this functionality will be accessible from the Teams Admin Center. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Stream: Variable playback speed (0.5-2x) for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings | For Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive & SharePoint you’ll now be able to change the playback speed (0.5x – 2x) while watching the video. | In development | September CY2021 |
| Microsoft Search: Find a meeting recording based on what was said | For a Teams meeting that was recorded to OneDrive & SharePoint and was also transcribed live during the meeting you can now search in Microsoft Search to find the meeting recording file based on the transcript. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Direct app purchases and invoice billing support in Teams Admin Center | Admins can complete orders for paid app licenses directly within Teams Admin Center. In addition, invoice billing is a new supported payment method. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Day view in calendar on iOS and Android. | View all meetings and events for the day to easily see when you’re available or busy. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Related Content for Teams Meetings (iOS and Android) | Related Content makes meetings more effective by providing customers with important information from their mailboxes, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint sites. This helps them prepare before their meetings by offering them content they haven’t had a chance to read or may want to revisit. During the meeting, they can easily access relevant content to share, present, or reference. After the meeting, they can catch-up on completed meetings by returning to content presented during the meeting, sent meeting notes, and other high-utility related content. | In development | August CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Direct guest join for Zoom and Webex meetings on video-enabled certified Teams Android devices | Direct guest join (aka Third-party meeting join) is an ability to join meetings of other meeting providers from Microsoft Teams. Third-party meetings will appear on the Teams calendar and users will be able to join them the same way they join any other Teams meeting. This functionality will be limited to video-enabled certified Teams Android devices and will support only Zoom and Webex meetings. | In development | September CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Restart Live Event | Previously when a producer or presenter ran a live event, they were not able to restart it even if you accidently ended it or if the event ran into an error. With this new feature, you will be able to restart your live event after you have ended it or if you have encountered a problem during it. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Multi-language meeting invite control | IT administrators can apply a new policy to set multiple languages in Teams meeting invites. | In development | September CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Room Remote Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android | Control in-room meeting devices using a new experience on the Teams mobile app. Controls include: turn mic on/off, turn camera on/off, adjust audio, leave the meeting. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Reading Progress in Teams for Education – reading practice and review software | Reading Progress is a reading practice and fluency experience that is part of Microsoft Teams for Education Assignments. Reading Progress saves teachers time in capturing audio/video reading fluency practice and helps students practice reading out loud independently in a private and non-stigmatizing way. Reading Progress also provides insights and analytics to educators. | In development | August CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Breakout Room Presenter support | Extend the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Breakout Room pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment | Introducing capability for organizer to perform breakout room configuration and participant assignment before the meeting starts. | In development | July CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Group Assignments | With the new group assignment feature you can organize your students into groups so they can work together to create, collaborate and submit the same work – like a Whiteboard file or Word document. Each student in the group gets the credit and recognition for having turned in their work. | In development | August CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Apps in Assignments | Educators and students rely on a variety of tools to support learning. With this new feature, educators can include links to content from other learning and resource tools directly into a Teams assignment. | In development | September CY2021 |
| Microsoft Teams: Whiteboard integration with Assignments | Digital whiteboards give educators and students a canvas to spark creativity and collaboration. Now, educators can include a Whiteboard as reference material or the content type of a Teams assignment. | In development | July CY2021 |
Vesa Nopanen - My Metaverse Day 
One thought on “Roadmap watch: What new to expect to Microsoft Teams in June 2021 (and a bit beyond)?”