Microsoft Teams continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of collaboration and digital workplaces. At this year’s Enterprise Connect conference, several new features and improvements were presented, especially for organizations using Teams and SharePoint. Below, we summarize the most important updates that may be relevant for your organization.
Enhanced Chat and Collaboration Experience in Teams
A new chat and channel experience will become available in early 2025. The aim is to make it easier to follow important conversations and collaborate in a more structured way. With new filters, the ability to create personal sections, and improved overviews, it will be easier to organize and find the right information. Threaded conversations will also become more accessible, making it smoother to follow and respond to specific discussions.
For those working in close physical proximity, the new @nearby feature allows you to see which colleagues are onsite and quickly start spontaneous conversations. Teams will also support customization of windows and panels as needed, which can facilitate workdays for those juggling many parallel activities.
In Teams channels, a shared workspace via Loop is now available, providing better support for collaborative idea development and organization of work materials. This feature follows the same governance and compliance as applies to underlying Microsoft 365 Groups.
Meetings, Events, and Hybrid Work
New features for meetings and events in Teams are designed to strengthen both digital and hybrid meetings. These include intelligent meeting feedback, AI-generated notes, and the ability to quickly navigate between chat, Copilot, and meeting notes. For larger events, the participant limit for Teams town halls has been raised to 50,000, with improved stability for large meetings. Additionally, meeting invitations now offer clearer differentiation between participants and organizer groups, as well as enhanced control over recording and transcription.
Teams Rooms is receiving several updates, such as the ability to book rooms directly via recommendations in Teams, automatic presence updates via Wi-Fi, and improved AI features for note-taking and action tracking. On the hardware side, support for Teams Rooms is being expanded for both Windows and Android, including better speech recognition and real-time translation.
Smoother Telephony and New Integration Opportunities
Teams Phone is gaining expanded functionality, including better integration with Dynamics 365 Contact Center and solutions from external providers. The new Copilot feature in Teams Phone can be used without the need to record or transcribe calls, which may be relevant for conversations requiring higher privacy. There are also improved features for call transfer and support for SMS in certain countries. For those working in larger teams and contact centers, new options for supervisors to monitor and support calls in real time are also being introduced.
Security, Administration, and SharePoint Integration
On the security front, automatic meeting protection based on sensitivity labeling of shared files is being introduced, along with improved detection of sensitive information during screen sharing. Teams is also receiving enhanced protection against malicious links and files in messages, integrated with Microsoft Defender for Office. Administrators will now be able to manage Teams Rooms and associated equipment in a unified portal, making oversight and troubleshooting easier.
Integrations between Teams and SharePoint are being strengthened through improved workspaces for collaboration in Teams channels, where both document management and real-time collaboration will have a clearer connection to SharePoint and Microsoft 365.
Summary
The latest developments in Teams and SharePoint focus on facilitating both daily collaboration and more advanced needs around meetings, telephony, and security. Many of the updates aim to create a more flexible and user-friendly platform, regardless of whether the workplace is physical, digital, or hybrid.
Read more about the new features in Teams and Teams Rooms on Microsoft’s website.
