On the SPOT - Technology Podcast

This Week in Teams E11 – July 10, 2020

This week Craig and Jay dig into the recent meeting enhancement updates. We’ve been talking about 7×7 video mode since Microsoft announced 3×3, and we’ve started to see the new 49-person mode in the wild. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, they released “together” mode.

Together what? Built on their AI and automatic background sensing, Microsoft is giving us a view of what it would look like with everyone in the same room. The view everyone is sharing right now looks a bit like a lecture hall, maybe stadium seating? But on top of that, there have been previews of smaller settings like the meeting table (reminded me of that scene in Demolition Man, frankly)

Demolition Man (1993) – under estimating the future of virtual meetings in 2032.

Other things we discussed included Cortana in the mobile app, a little more information on the Tasks app (joining Outlook Tasks, Planner, and more), and some updates on the Power Platform.

Got a suggestion for what we should talk about in a future episode? Let us know in the comments!

On This Week in Teams, July 4, 2020, we talk about Zoom’s 90 day Security release cycle, Reliance Jio Platform’s new Meet product, and the Microsoft Store closures.

Then, we get into the products.

* How to embed Modern SharePoint Pages into the Microsoft Teams sidebar* Large gallery view (7×7) was announced to increase the on-screen call participants from just 4 at the beginning of the year to 49, coming later this year.* Virtual breakout rooms will mean no more having to workaround the hold feature to have true breakouts.* Meetings are popping out! Watch for your commercial tenant to receive automatic meeting pop-outs, but be aware that the meeting functions bar will work differently (better?) in the new interface.* PTSN / Phone changes are coming! From disguised phone numbers to a safe transfer process. Even Government customers in the GCC are getting enhanced PTSN features including join/leave announcements and new lobby settings!* On demand translation for mobile applications is going to change how we communicate.* Class Insights join more than 20 other updates to the Teams for Education program.* Shifts for Teams has been out for some time, but in June it rolled out for the GCC. Jay wrote an article about Shifts for Teams in the GCC; if you plan to roll it out in your tenant, we’d love to hear how you plan to use it and how effective it is!

Many of these features have been discussed over the past 4-5 episodes. However, for a full list of June’s updates, check Microsoft’s Tech Community blog.

This Week in Teams we’re excited to bring you some new content. The day after our last release Microsoft released an article with a ton of new Teams for Education features that … weren’t … new … it was a great list, but we’ve talked about everything in it, and didn’t want to simple repeat ourselves.

Where’s the fun in that?

So, This Week in Teams is different. After 8 episodes we’ve come to realize that having enough new content every week will be hard, so instead, we’re going to supplement with content about using the tool itself. Every few episodes, when we have a lull in the technology releases, we’re going to bring to you real-world examples of how to get the most out of Teams. Use cases backed by Microsoft customer stories.

This Week (in Teams, I couldn’t resist) we talk about Teams Live and how to get the most out of producing video content for broadcast. Teams Live, in contrast to Teams Meetings, gives producers a one-way broadcast capability for education events, town halls, and other events where sending out audio, video, and screen sharing is of value, but it makes more sense to have few content creators and many listeners. Up to 20,000 per meeting in fact. Check out these post-event details to see how they did this MASSIVE event.

To start, our examples focus on the Microsoft community itself. Well known for our Microsoft/Azure/Office365/SharePoint User Groups and (SPS) Saturday events, like much of the world, the community has found itself canceling events and moving online. The big sample is a 36-hour event with nearly 400 presentations and over 20,000 attendees — the Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon was an impressive feat and a spotlight of our Teams Live use case.

Lest we not forget to announce the third panel in our video, we are joined by the Cloud Talk Show (cloudtalkshow.com) co-host, Software Architect, and self-proclaimed Microsoft Aficionado, Ralph Rivas.

After Microsoft Build, last week, there wasn’t much news for Microsoft Teams, but we found enough to have a short conversation: 7UP (49 people in a 7×7 video grid) is official, but no release date was mentioned; Free Teams now get Meetings; Slack and AWS are going to partner to compete with Microsoft’s enterprise voice and video capabilities; and Jay shares a new User Voice series on LinkedIn by Sven Seidenberg out of Germany.

And. Most importantly. Black Lives Matter.

This Week in Teams, Episode 7. Recorded June 5, 2020.

This Week in Teams brings you updates from Microsoft Build! Everything from the GraphAPI to Power Automate, from SSO and and Template Management to end user improvements like more pop outs, contextual search, Lists, HIPAA compliant bookings apps and more broadcast capabilities. SO MUCH HAPPENING!!!! This week in Teams!

This Week in Teams, Episode 6. Recorded May 29, 2020

This Week in Teams we saw a bug appear with the latest iOS release (with a very quick update to the Teams app to resolve it), and enhancements across Office 365 that effect Teams like updates to the SharePoint admin portal, Stream recordings for training videos, advanced eDiscovery, and General Availability of Sensitivity Labels. We also got to hear a little about how Microsoft and the NFL handled this year’s virtual Draft.

This Week in Teams, Episode 5. Recorded May 15, 2020.

Change Management is a vast topic, and no one in Information Technology is ever given the time, money, or respect that Change Management deserves, yet it remains an integral part of any Digital Transformation. During this episode, Hunter and Jay dig into the importance of Change Management and provide some tips for gaining buy-in and money as well as some quick tips to roll out the starting line.

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Teams adoption is up nearly 100% in 4 weeks, while Zoom is backtracking its stats (and rapidly attempting to patch its flaws). Microsoft has pushed a LOT of features out in that time period (3×3 video, raised hands, background effects, and much more) and patched a previously unknown vulnerability. Also, Facebook and Google are trying to creep into the suddenly crowded video conferencing space. And Oracle chooses Zoom.

This Week in Teams, Episode 4, May 1, 2020

Craig and Jay breakdown new meetings features, multi-window Chat support, Teams Communities (aka Yammer integration), some GDPR conversations, and discuss a few new OTSQT videos that we’ll put out next week.

This Week in Teams, Episode 3. Recorded April 23, 2020

This week Craig and Jay discuss custom backgrounds, breakout rooms, the Brady Bunch view of videos, how the NFL and NBA are partnering with Microsoft, the DOD’s new O365 tenant for Teams, and Google’s attempt at the virtual meeting space with Google Meet.

Recorded April 17, 2020.

This Week in Teams, Episode 2, April 17, 2020