Microsoft has released new updates and capabilities for Microsoft 365 over the past month to improve user experience and workplace collaboration.
A number of features have been added to Teams Premium, Viva Engage, Microsoft Loop, and PowerPoint Live.
Included within these latest updates is a swathe of new AI, featuring technology from Open AI for which Microsoft has been in the spotlight recently. In January, Microsoft revealed its plans for a multi-billion dollar investment in Open AI. Many companies are now racing to incorporate this buzz software into their platforms. Slack recently deployed Open AI’s ChatGPT to provide instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance within Slack.
Collete Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 and Future of Work, said:
“We’re bringing new AI-powered capabilities to Microsoft Teams Premium to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected.
“Microsoft Viva Engage helps keep everyone aligned from the boardroom to the frontlines.
“New Microsoft Loop components in Whiteboard let your team collaborate and stay in sync before, during, and after your meetings.”
Teams Premium
The latest changes to Teams Premium focus on making it easier to catch up on and customise meetings.
Intelligent recap’s AI technology has been added to Teams Premium, enabling users to view the most important information from meetings quickly.
AI-generated notes use OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 to create key takeaways from meetings, which can be easily followed up on with AI-generated tasks, which create and suggest actions.
Personalised timeline markers, only visible to you, help to locate the relevant parts of meeting recordings. Microsoft has now released the ability to see when you joined and exited meetings. Timeline markers will soon bookmark when your name was mentioned when a screen was shared, and a list of the speaker names and times.
AI-generated chapters in PowerPoint Live highlight different sections within presentations to make it easier for users to find relevant content.
Branded meetings allow you to add brandings, such as company logos and colour schemes.
Meeting templates enable IT admins to customise settings and templates for different meeting types.
Advanced meeting protections can be deployed for sensitive discussions, providing restrictions, watermarks, and more to keep them secure.
Viva Engage
New AI has also been added to Viva Engage in the form of Leadership Corner, Aske Me Anything (AMA), and Answers in Viva.
Leadership Corner helps to connect leaders and employees, enabling them to connect and communicate directly. Each employee will have a customised experience, based on who they follow and the organisational structure. Posts and announcements are delivered to the relevant employees and provide employees with a means of sharing their thoughts with employers.
Ask Me Anything lets employees raise questions and concerns during events, such as All Hands meetings. According to Microsoft, Aske Me Anything is “a modern take on the live town hall” that can last for hours or days, allowing employees from across varying time zones to be included.
Primarily targeted at new employees, Answers in Viva crowdsources information from within businesses to help keep employees better informed. A Q&A-style forum allows users to ask questions and view a database of answers to similar questions. Answers in Viva also recommend the relevant subject matter expert from within the organisation who can provide further information.
Microsoft has also announced that Yammer will be rebranded into Viva Engage this year.
Microsoft Loop
Loop components in Whiteboard, which helps workers to remain in sync on projects, now have the capability to copy existing Loop components from Word for the web, Outlook, and Teams and paste it into Teams. Subsequent changes to a copied Loop component will sync for all users with access to it, as per usual.
Timer in Whiteboard helps users to meet targets on time. The time can also be used to highlight how much time is left for workers to complete their tasks.
PowerPoint Live
Closed captions in PowerPoint Live help users to understand content who struggle to process auditory information, whether that may be due to deafness, being hard of hearing, having a language barrier, or simply working within a noisy environment.
Attendees will now be able to turn on closed captions for videos that have closed captions files.
When closed captions have been turned on, they will appear at the bottom of slides for the users who have elected to turn them on. There is no need for an overall consensus to decide whether closed captions should be on or off. Equally, closed captions users will not need to worry that they may be distracting others by turning them on.
Alexis Johnston, Senior Product Marketing Manager, MW Teams & Platform at Microsoft, said:
“Closed captions make PowerPoint presentations more accessible and benefit everyone who watches videos, especially those watching videos in their non-native language, people learning to read, and individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.”
Adding closed captions: Closed captions can be added to any embedded PowerPoint video from PowerPoint for Windows and macOS. Users will need to select the video and choose “Insert Captions” from the Playback Ribbon. Next, select the WebVTT file(s) via the “Insert Captions” box. Finally, choose the “Insert” option.
Turning on closed captions: To turn on closed captions, users need to click the closed captions button on the video player in PowerPoint Live. Next, choose your preferred language from the dropdown menu, and closed captions will be turned on.
Microsoft at a Glance
Earlier this year, Microsoft launched its Teams Premium license. The company also announced it has now reached 280 million active users, with five million PSTN seats added to Teams Phone.
UC Today’s Microsoft Teams News Update discusses these major developments at Microsoft, news from the ISE 2023 in Barcelona, and features Microsoft Teams Expert and Co-Founder of Empowering.Cloud, Tom Arbuthnot, along with a panel of industry experts.
The headline act for Microsoft right now, ChatGPT, has caused a tidal wave reaction within companies around the world, as well affecting its latest Microsoft 365 releases. UC Today’s David Dungay and Rob Scott discussed ChatGPT and the impact of integrating such tools into services like Microsoft Teams with UC analysts and experts.
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