Highlights:

  • The Excel Live feature for real-time collaboration on Excel documents within a Teams meeting is coming to Office Excel.
  • Users from various organizations don’t have to change tenants to communicate on the channels because this provides a shared place.

Microsoft has released several new features to its video conferencing platform, Teams. It has also announced inter-app communication tools that it believes will be helpful for hybrid work.

The Excel Live feature is set to be incorporated into Office Excel for real-time collaboration on Excel documents within a Teams meeting. Excel Live will join PowerPoint Live for Teams, and according to Microsoft, live collaboration features will be added to other Microsoft apps joining.

Additionally, Microsoft announced that it would add a Video Clip feature to Teams Chat so that users can record and share quick videos.

This month, Teams Connect, a feature enabling intra-and inter-organizational collaboration, will become generally available. Because this offers a shared space, users from various organizations don’t have to change tenants to collaborate on the channels. This is helpful for businesses that have recently merged, large corporations with subsidiaries, and joint ventures.

Microsoft lists various upgrades since the shared channels preview in March. There are now 200 standard, 30 private, and 200 shared sharing channels for each team, increasing the number of channels from 50 to 200.

Additionally, it has upgraded the tools for developing apps for shared channels and now supports sending rich messages to outside users, including GIFs and emojis. Better user activity reporting benefits administrators as well.

As part of the hybrid mix for training or customer meetings, Microsoft has launched a new webinar management interface with more tailored choices for users using Teams for webinars. A public preview is scheduled for August release.

The user will have the option to make a webinar internal or external while setting it up. Users have the option to add more presenters and choose up to 10 co-organizers who can aid in running the meeting. Users can provide additional specific information about the webinar presenters, such as the speaker’s firm, title, LinkedIn profile, social network profiles, and a brief bio.

According to Microsoft, a new organized Q and amp;A experience will make it simple for hosts to oversee the discussion and give attendees a ‘seamless’ way to connect with speakers. As questions and responses are submitted, organizers can control and filter the conversation and decide which questions to publish or ignore.

For individuals who want to keep notes or remain organized inside of Teams, there is “Chat with self” on the other end of Teams. It can be used to transmit files to yourself and for drafts.

Additionally, Microsoft has linked Teams and LinkedIn so that users may view contacts’ LinkedIn profiles via Teams chats, channels, calls, and meetings. This is currently widely accessible.

Furthermore, as stated by Microsoft earlier this month, Teams users can connect new or current chats to their Dynamics 365 records, as Microsoft stated earlier this month. This minimized the need for Dynamics 365 users to switch apps. It is currently under public preview and will be widely accessible soon.

One of Microsoft’s features for collaboration, the Live Share idea, too, was highlighted. It was designed using Microsoft’s Fluid Framework and is mainly geared toward app developers. As a technology that enables apps to go beyond simple screen sharing to offer immersive collaboration, Live Share was introduced in May. Since then, it has been in preview, and as of today, “developers can create any app collaborative within the Teams meeting stage,” according to the statement.