Happy new year to everyone. I hope 2022 started well for you. In this post I like to share a few wishes for Microsoft Teams in 2022. The last wish list I wrote is from May 2019, so it’s time for new one, I’d say.
As we all know the pandemic is still holding most of us hostage and forcing us to reduce physical contact to a minimum in order to stay safe, healthy and do not spread the virus so that we hopefully can get back more normality then now. The pandemic started to drive digitalization in many businesses incredibly, in my opinion, especially communication and collaboration services which enabled people for working remotely. Microsoft Teams usages rocketed to remain productive remotely and keep business going. We have seen many capabilities – from small to big ones – being tirelessly developed and shipped to Microsoft Teams. Are we missing something? Well, I would say yes, but the feature wishes are different depending on the person’s perspective on Microsoft Teams as we all can see via the Microsoft Feedback Portal. There are many different requirements and needs. I think that’s also the huge challenge the people at Microsoft are facing regarding what’s important and how important is it for (further) development. I ignore this right now and list some of my personal Microsoft Teams wishes. If you think the wish could be interesting for you as well, feel free to vote it up and/or even tell others to vote it up at Microsoft’s Feedback Portal so that the need/request comes to Microsoft’s attention, if it is not yet a very popular wish or feature request. So what are my favourite wishes for 2022?
Improved Teams compact mode
A leaner Teams client on Windows with no frills or wasteful use of space, i.e. more content (contacts, text, buttons, …) on the same space compared to the as-is. Maybe a switch for full mode and compact/minimal mode mode would be very nice. Link to feedback portal item
Teams 2.0 Client
Does this require any explanation? We need a more resource-friendly Teams desktop (Windows) client which is fast and stable even on “slim” and lower PC hardware. This is on the way for Teams “for business” but might take some more time. On Windows 11 Teams 2.0 with personal accounts is available. Link to tweet from Rish Tandon about Teams 2.0 (2021-06-26) I could not find a record on the Microsoft 365 roadmap by now.
Use multiple Team accounts at the same time
… in case you need to use multiple accounts (no SSO, no Teams tenant switching) and don’t want to log off your primary account, login with your, let’s say, test account and and so on. Link to feedback portal item
Centralized address book and contacts management
A centralized or global address book would be pretty nice, wouldn’t it? I’m often ask how can we add contacts to the people’s contact list. I have seen that there are options with Graph API and PowerApps but that’s a workaround, in my opinion.
The central address book should contain all contact objects and data like first name, last name, title, phone numbers … (from AD, AAD, additionally adding a third-party address book via LDAPs/HTTPs would be marvelous). Each person should of course see all (!) contacts of her/his personal Exchange mailbox.
Admins should be able to control the address book, especially to scope it and assign only certain address book scopes to a group of users or devices (Teams IP Phone accounts, room system accounts). Similar to Exchange address book policies. Link to feedback portal item and/or another one (similar)
Enhancements of calls notifications (for missed and forwarded calls)
If somebody gets a call forwarded the person who has set up forwarding should directly see if the call was answered or missed by the person to whom the call was forwarded to. No matter if the target is a person or call group.
E.g. if I miss a call and let’s say user John answers the call it should display (in my call history) that John has answered the call. Link to feedback portal item
Better administration or cmdlets of Auto Attendants and Call Queues via PowerShell
Nowadays you can configure your Teams Auto Attendants (AA) and Call Queues (CQ) by using PowerShell. However, this seems to be not very reliable, to me over the last months plus it is very cumbersome. There are no simple cmdlets to quickly modify an Auto Attendant or Call Queue with Get-…/Set-… cmdlets. As of now it requires to construct an AA-/CQ-object to bring it to life and this is really notchy. If you have to modify an existing AA/CQ and you do this via script you better pray that it is applied. You don’t even get an error if it was not applied or an input is wrong. That’s really bad right now, in my honest opinion. I brought this up in a AMA session once but it seems to be a complex topic and there are not so many people wanting an improvement/simplification instead keep on working with the notchy version. Link to feedback portal item
Teams Direct Routing Number assignment via Teams Admin Center
If you deploy telephony with Microsoft Teams Direct Routing you can do somethings via Teams Admin Center but managing (assign, remove, edit) a phone number is only possible via PowerShell. Usually this is easy but it is not the quickest way. Many admins asking me often how they can change and manage their Direct Routing phone numbers directly in the Teams Admin Center? As of now, they can’t. It must be done via PowerShell. I’ve written a PowerShell-based tool but still you have to run something else to assign/remove a phone number from a user’s account. So this would be a nice feature for the Teams Admin Center. Link to feedback portal item
Conclusion, opinion and summary
That’s it for now. These are my favorite feature wishes for Microsoft Teams 2022.
What are yours? Always keep in mind to provide a feedback so that your ideas are visible for others and getting the chance of being seen and heard. It’s also a helpful if you search for existing proposals or search for something what’s in your mind to check if someone else already formulated a feedback which you can vote for to give the feedback more weight. Have a good time and good 2022.
erik365.blog 
One whish was fulfilled sooner as expected: https://erik365.blog/2022/01/13/assign-teams-direct-routing-phone-number-via-teams-admin-center-now-available/
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