It's the end of another month, which means that it's time yet again to discuss all the new features that Microsoft added to Teams in the past four weeks, just like we do every month. We recently covered all that's new in Excel and Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Redmond's popular online communication and collaboration tool is the only major tool left in terms of our monthly roundups, so let's dive right in!

Better ways to chat and collaborate

Starting off with the main consumer-facing section of this roundup, we have improvements for chat and collaboration. OneDrive navigation has been enhanced in Teams so that if you are switching contexts within the application, OneDrive will remember your last location, which is a boon for multitasking. Moreover, Mac users can now choose custom download locations for files downloaded via Teams, just like you do on Windows. Additionally, links to lists will now unfurl automatically, which will offer more context at a glance.

Other improvements in this section include the ability to forward messages with app cards, filter Tag mentions in your Activity feed, and a wider area for drop zones in the chat view as you are dragging and dropping files. The last feature in the aforementioned list will also be coming to channels at a later date.

What's new in meetings, webinars, and Teams Phone?

IT admins with a Teams Premium license will be pleased to know that they can now upload up to five themes for branded meetings, and even disable the option for meeting participants to send messages before and after the meeting through expanded controls in the Teams admin center. Other functionalities include the ability to edit your display name during a meeting and having the ability to host information barrier meetings along with other participants who may even have conflicting policies, as long as a moderator is present.

Microsoft will now also prompt you in your Activity feed as soon as an intelligent meeting recap is ready. In the same vein, you now have the option to integrate your chat notification preferences with your RSVP status for meetings. Some other capabilities include bidirectional synchronization of the calendars present in Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace (currently exclusive to Teams Essentials customers), access to AI insights in Teams meetings through Graph APIs, Digital Video Recording (DVR) support in Town halls, and the ability to reply to and post questions in the Q&A experience as an "organizer", rather than having your name displayed.

On the Teams Phone side of the fence, we have extensibility for Microsoft 365 Dynamics Contact Center, a new capability in the Queues app for team leads to supervise agents more efficiently, and a SIP Ladder utility in the Teams admin center that empowers admins to troubleshoot Direct Routing calls effectively.

There are other, relatively smaller, enhancements in tow too. You can catch a summary of these below:

• Teams Rooms and Places
  • Book an individual desk by plugging into a peripheral
  • Live transcription and controls on Teams Rooms on Windows
  • Live captions translation in Teams Rooms on Windows
  • Updates to gallery view in Teams Rooms on Windows
  • Occupancy status on Teams panels
• Security and Fundamentals
  • Admins can choose automatic or manual adjustment of meeting sensitivity based on the sensitivity level of shared files in Teams meetings (Teams Premium)
  • Brand impersonation phishing protection for GCC, GCC-H and DoD
  • Background blur, virtual and user uploaded backgrounds the new VDI solution
  • AVD Screen Capture Protection and Microsoft Teams compatibility
  • Cross cloud support for the new optimizations for VDI
  • Manage location sharing in Teams
  • Monitor Teams client updates in Teams admin center
  • Teams client health dashboards in Teams admin center
  • Remote contact management for Teams Phone devices in Teams admin center
• Frontline worker solutions
  • Wired headset support to Walkie Talkie on iOS
  • Storyline in Teams
  • Engage in Teams mobile
  • Flexible membership for deploying Teams at scale

You can find out more details about the aforementioned features by heading over to Microsoft's dedicated blog post here.