Users win with Microsoft Teams’ new features

Microsoft has been a market leader in the IT industry for quite some time now, and recently, they’ve shown why this is the case: they never rest on their laurels. Every now and again, competitors may pop up and jump ahead of a Microsoft product in terms of user adoption, but the tech giant only takes this as a challenge to improve its offering. Yay, competition!

This is the case with Microsoft Teams. Its rival, Zoom, dramatically captured a huge chunk of the video conferencing market as organizations all over the world turned to remote working to sustain operations. This spurred Microsoft to upgrade Teams and fight for a greater share of video telephony customers.

Below are some of Teams’ latest features:

Mobile updates for the Microsoft Teams app

According to Statista, nearly 45% of the world’s population has a smartphone. This makes improving the experience of mobile users an excellent strategy for gaining market share.

For instance, Teams is primarily a group chat app, but now it also enables users to switch to video conferencing with a touch of a button. Additionally, the new “Safe” feature allows individuals and groups to store and encrypt sensitive and valuable information (such as home Wi-Fi passwords) on their mobile devices.

Most of the other updates are specific to particular operating systems for mobile devices.

Android

• Invites for free meetings – Android users can send links inviting people to join online meetings for free, whether or not the invitees have a Teams account.
• Image uploads – While on the Microsoft Teams app, users can upload image files directly from their photo gallery.
• Search function – Users can now search within chat dialogs and channels on the Android version of Teams.

“Zoom spurred Microsoft to upgrade Teams and fight for a greater share of video telephony customers.”

iOS

• Option to reduce data consumption – During a video call, users have the option to use less data while the video is on (instead of having to turn the video off).
• Viewable participants – When in a video call, iPhone users can see up to eight participants at a time (in a 2x4 grid), while iPad users can see up to nine participants (in a 3x3 grid).
• Single sign-in access – Once a user is signed in to Teams, they’ll also be automatically signed in to the tools and bots they’ve added to Teams that use the same login credentials.
• Agenda view – Users can check out the agenda of an upcoming meeting and edit it, use it to join the meeting, or share it with their contacts.

Non-mobile updates

Beyond mobile-exclusive features are new updates that are available to computer users.

• Easily accessible apps – Teams users can now pin their favorite apps on the left sidebar of the screen, making these immediately accessible.
• Corporate branding – Enhanced admin controls allow admins to add corporate branding to a Teams meeting.
• 49-person view – Up to 49 participants can be viewed at once during a video call.
• 1,000-pax interactive meeting limit – Teams meetings can have up to 1,000 active participants in a meeting. Exceeding this limit automatically turns the meeting to “view only” mode.
• 20,000-pax “view only” meeting limit – This powerful live streaming feature permits users to hold live events such as concerts, conferences, and corporate mega meetings.

Competition pushes even tech titans like Microsoft to improve their products and services. What is true for software companies is also true for managed IT services providers, which is why XBASE always offers Exponentially Better™ IT services. Discover how we can help you use tech to power up your business by scheduling a FREE consultation with our IT experts today.