New Copilot Features for Teams and Outlook

No…I did not us copilot to write this blog…

There are a ton of new announcements from Ignite.

I found this article on new Copilot in Outlook very interesting: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/outlook-blog/copilot-in-outlook-helps-you-achieve-more/ba-p/3981033

A lot of creative new features that I will need to give a try:

• Ask copilot to schedule a meeting
• Get ready for your next meeting
• Summarize long email threads and get suggested actions
• Follow a meeting you cannot attend
• Preserve declined meetings
• Draft messages that sound like you
• Summarize an email you are authoring
• Coach on improving tone and clarity of a message you are authoring

I will definitely need some time to start playing around with these features….

Additionally a ton of Microsoft Teams Copilot features are discussed here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2023/ba-p/3976670

• Copilot compose for Teams Chat and Channels…. Copilot will literally change your quick chat into fuller more complete communications
• Copilot in Teams Channel will help summarize key information in long chats to help you catch-up
• Copilot Teams Calls can take notes as you are doing direct calls with team members, capture notes and capture all your tasks.  Can even capture questions and activities that need to be competed.
• Intelligent recap helps you get information from meetings that you were not able to attend.
• Copilot collaborate notes will take real-time notes, shared with all participants.

Frankly there is so much here, I am going to have to sit down and really start trying to learn how to use all these tools in my day-to-day work.

Town Halls replacing Microsoft Teams Live Events

Microsoft Teams Live Events is now being replaced by Town Halls in Microsoft Teams.  Live Events has a long legacy at Microsoft, and it was part of an old platform that is not utilized by Microsoft Teams.  Live Events also a different user experience than what users were accustom to in the Teams client.  Live Events will be supported through 9/30/2024.

Town Halls is now Generally Available (GA) and is fully integrated into the Teams app user experience.  Town Halls has tons of features to help you have large virtual events.  New features such as attendee capacity, event concurrency, event duration, eCDN, green room, structured Q&A, attendee reporting, live translated captions, etc., etc.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/introducing-town-halls-in-microsoft-teams-and-retiring-microsoft/ba-p/3925739

New Microsoft Teams App is Generally Available (GA)

The new Microsoft Teams App for Windows and Mac has moved from Public Preview now Generally Available (GA).  This has been a long time coming.  One of the biggest objectives was performance with it being two times faster using 50% less memory.  I have personally seen a big difference because running video in meetings used to really tax my older devices.  It is a pretty seamless upgrade and for an every day user like me, with all the capabilities I am accustomed to are there.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/announcing-general-availability-of-the-new-microsoft-teams-app/ba-p/3934603

Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO) for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is now releasing a new group of features that fall under what is called Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO).  Over the past several years, Microsoft has received a significant amount of requests for supporting organizations that have multiple tenants.  Administrators need the ability to provide common configuration and management of users across these tenants, plus enable collaboration between users in these tenants.

Some important features that are part of this are:

• Side-by-side multi-tasking and cross tenant notifications – This allows a user to be in multiple tenants within a single Teams client user experience. 
• Improved people search and chat experience – Allows users to find their peers in other tenants and chat with them.
• Richer meeting experience – Enables full fidelity meeting experience between users in different tenants.

Highly recommend reviewing the entire article.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/announcing-more-seamless-collaboration-in-microsoft-teams-for/ba-p/3901092 

Cross Cloud Guest Access Features

Two new features are now available for Public Preview.

Cross Cloud Guess Access

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/solutions/collaborate-guests-cross-cloud?view=o365-worldwide

Cross Cloud Meeting Access

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/cross-cloud-meetings

Additional Logs to be made available

For the past few months, CISA has been working closely with the Microsoft team to identify solutions that will help US Government organizations and their partners to protect themselves from evolving threats.  In recent announcement is a result of this teamwork.  In the coming months there will be expanded access to additional security logs at no additional cost.  These logs are very useful for forensics and incident response teams examining potential intrusions.  Please read the article for additional information.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/07/19/expanding-cloud-logging-to-give-customers-deeper-security-visibility/

Teams Collaborative Notes

Heavy note taker?  “Collaborative notes” is a new interesting Microsoft Teams that was just released for Public Preview. It leverages Loop components to enable collaborate note taking in a meeting.  Meeting agenda, notes, actions, tasks, etc. are developed before or on the fly in meetings.  All meeting attendees can contribute, and all the information is then available across the Microsoft Office suite at conclusion of the meeting so meeting attendees can continue to collaborate. I will give this a try next week!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/now-in-public-preview-collaborative-notes-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/3848533