Tagged: Teams

What’s new in Microsoft Teams in October 2019?

In this post I like to highlight some new and planned features for Microsoft Teams based on the latest roadmap updates by Microsoft. The last few days many updates were made to the Microsoft Teams roadmap. So exciting times and Ignite is still ahead!

Source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/landscape-hill-sky-clouds-hilly-922581/

So, what’s new or what planned? It’s a lot and that not all, just a few new and planned features I like to highlight:

  • Teams Delegation Enhancements: Other delegates can add/remove other delegates of a user and/or change a users call forwarding. | Launched | Oct 2019
  • Teams Music on Hold: Default music is played if an incoming PSTN caller is on hold. Applies for PSTN-2-Teams and PSTN-2-CallQueueAgent calls. | Launched | Oct 2019
  • Teams Audio Calling for the Chrome Browser: Calling via Chrome Browser | Launched | Oct 2019
  • Teams Phone System Administration Enhancements | Development | ~ Nov 2019
    • Better admin experience for managing Calling Plan, especially phone number management for Calling Plan users via WebUI
    • Custom dial plans via WebUI
    • Dynamic Emergency Calling via WebUI
    • Auto Attendants and Call Queues config enhancements via WebUI
  • Teams Direct Routing (TDR) Enhancements | Wow, this is a set of things which add new capabilities and/or improve TDR | Development | ~ Nov 2019
    • Media Relay Override
    • Missed Call Message Surpression
    • SIP Tester
    • Ringback Bot
    • PSTN Reporting
  • Pin apps to Teams left navigation rail: User can directly pin an app to the Teams navigation bar | Development |~ Nov 2019
  • Teams teams auto-renewal: In case expiration policy is set to a Team, already a “visit” of member instead of an owner avoids that the Team expires and so gets “renewed” | Development | ~ Nov 2019
  • Teams Presenter and Attendee roles for Meetings: Presenters have full control in meetings and attendees permissions are limited. | Development | ~ Nov 2019
  • Teams Manage discovery of private teams: Admin and owners can disable/enable this per Team to make a Team appear in the discoverable. … |Rolling out | ~ Nov 2019

Conclusion, summary and opinion

The amount of features which were/are and going to be released is massive. This is pretty impressiv because this indicates the efforts and investments which Microsoft puts into Teams and that the listen to their customers and don’t stop to make Teams (and all other services) better to finally help all to achieve more, be more productivity because you can do what you need to do.

Additional resources

Microsoft Teams Voicemail User Settings Walk-through [DE]

In Microsoft Teams sind die vergangenen Tage ein paar sehr praktische Neuerungen im Hinblick auf Voicemail live gegangen, die ich in diesem Beitrag zeigen möchte. Voicemail steht seit einer Weile allen Teams Usern zur Verfügung, also nicht nur bei (PSTN) Telefonie.

Was ist neu dazu gekommen?

In den Teams Einstellungen sind ein paar sehr praktische Funktionen und Einstellungsoptionen hinzugekommen, so dass jeder Anwender einfach seinen persönlichen Anrufbeantworter bzw. Voicemail konfigurieren kann. Ich habe das mal exemplarisch folgendermaßen eingestellt, womit auch die Einstellungsmöglichkeiten ersichtlich werden.

Teams \ Einstellungen \ Anrufe –> Punkt 4

Grundsätzlich kann ich in den obigen Einstellungen meine Voicemail auf mein Bedürfnis anpassen. Dazu muss die Voicemail in Teams auf O365 aktiviert sein, was mittlerweile die Standardeinstellung sein sollte.

Voicemail Einstellungen –> eigene Ansage aufnehmen (5) und Aktion bzw. Regel auswählen (6)
Voicemail Einstellungen –> Sprache der Begrüßung (7), eigene Begrüßung (8) als Text und Begrüßung bei Abwesenheit (9) gemäß Einstellungen bei den “Abwesenheitsnachrichte[n]”
Voicemail Einstellungen –> Abwesenheitsnachricht –> Definition, wann die benutzerdef. Abwesenheitsansage abgespielt werden soll

Zusätzliche Ressourcen

Speaking at abtis IT Symposium 2019

Soon, I’ll get a chance to speak at the abtis IT Symposium in Pforzheim (11/10/2019). The event and speakers cover different topics about the “digital future readiness” (DE: “Bereit für die digitale Zukunft”).

I’ll talk about getting rid of legacy PBX infrastructure and legacy telephony services by embracing modern communication and collaboration with Microsoft Teams as an hub for modern teamwork. Telephony is just one of many features, although it’s very important for our daily business. My session “Vom Festnetztelefon zur integrierten Microsoft Telefonie” is about telephony with Microsoft Teams. I’ll describe which options you have to migrate your telephony workloads partially or completely to Teams and how it the user experience looks like.

Source: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/09/15/13/28/trainer-3679422_960_720.jpg

Additional Ressources

SFB Online external access settings move to Teams Admin Center

I received a change notification via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. It says that the Skype for Business Online external access settings are retired.

In other words external access will vanish in the SFBO Admin Center. So, the external access settings can only be managed within the Teams Admin Center or via PowerShell.

In the Teams Admin Center you find the external access settings as follows: Org-wide settings\External access”

Source: Microsoft Teams Admin Center

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I welcome this change because if you modify external access settings in SFBO or Teams Admin Center it’s reflected, so there’s no need to have two settings pages in different Admin Centers plus PowerShell.

Additional resources

Anrufe in Microsoft Teams klingeln bald auch auf zweitem Gerät

[DE] In diesem Beitrag geht es um ein neues Features für Microsoft Teams, welches im September 2019 ausgerollt wird. Microsoft Teams erhält ab diesem Monat ein sehnsüchtig erwartetes Feature, den “Secondary Ringer”, oder “Sekundärer Rufton” (DE).

Der “Sekundäre Rufton” erlaubt das Klingeln bei einem Anruf auf zwei Geräten. Das ist sehr praktisch, wenn ich das Headset auf dem Schreibtisch liegen habe und mich jemand anruft. So kann ich einstellen, dass es sowohl auf meinem Headset und auf dem Lautsprecher meines PCs klingelt.

Bislang sehe ich bei abgesetztem Headset nur eine visuelle Benachrichtigung für eingehende Anrufe. Somit kommt mit dem “Sekundären Rufton” ein zweites auswählbares Ausgabegerät hinzu.

Quelle: Screenshot Teams Einstellungen \ Geräte \ Sekundärer Rufton
Source: Microsoft Teams – Secondary Ringer [Microsoft 365 roadmap update item 51089]

Zusätzliche Ressourcen

BitTitan White Paper – Migrate Microsoft Teams Tenant-to-Tenant

In a previous post I wrote about how you can migrate Microsoft Teams from one (source) Office 365 tenant to another (target) Office 365 tenant by using third party (3P) tools to ease and automate the migration process. BitTitan is one of the tools which can be used.

BitTitan published a White Paper regarding “Top Migration Considerations for Cross-Tenant Teams Migrations” which you can request and download to avoid typical pitfalls and get awareness on what limitations there might be. You can find the link to request the download of the White Paper at the bottom of this post.

[erik365] Migrate Office 365 Tenant-to-Tenant

Additional resources

Location Based Routing (LBR) in Microsoft Teams

This post is about LBR – a planned feature – for calling or telephony with Microsoft Teams which might be released and available in Q4 2019.

Location Based Routing (LBR) allows basically to route and control voice calls depending on the location. In my opinion, this is very useful for deployments with roaming users especially regarding emergency calls or call restrictions.

Source: https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/netzwerk-erde-blockchain-globus-3537401/

Why LBR?

There are some reasons to use LBR for managing and controlling your voice call flows:

  • Egress calls: Enforce outgoing calls to egress via local PSTN gateway, prevent PSTN toll bypass
  • Ingress calls: Prevent incoming PSTN calls via a NON-local PSTN gateway
  • Undefined location: Prevent PSTN calls to and from users in undefined locations

Let me describe a small (fictive) scenario where LBR could help:
Erik works for a special machinery engineering company.
Still, the company has decentralized PSTN connectivity.
Each location and site has a dedicated PSTN link and SBC.
Erik is a Teams user including calling capabilities.
He’s located and “homed” in Stuttgart, Germany.

Erik travels to another company site.
Erik needs to place an (emergency) call while being in another office in Berlin, Germany.

By default this (emergency) call would be routed via Stuttgart to the local emergency service answering point. However, that would be a very bad routing and in case of an emergency were every second counts this is not acceptable.It would be ok if Erik was really in Stuttgart and not Berlin.

By using LBR this (emergency) call would be routed locally and breakout to PSTN via the SBC in Berlin and land at the emergency service answering point in Berlin instead of Stuttgart. If Erik would have to call for emergency in the company site in Hamburg, Germany the call would be routed locally and breakout to PSTN via the SBC in Hamburg as well.

How does LBR work?

Usually you’ll have to define and save some of your network parameters (IP address ranges per site …) to define sites in the phone system. Afterwards you’ll have to define (LBR) voice routing for each site (e.g. LBR policies, voice route/s, policies …) so that calls are routed according to the location requirements and its configuration.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

This is subject to change or might be implemented different to what’s described above. This is just my personal assumption how it might look like. I’ve just assumed that it might be like that because of the approach which can be found in Skype for Business Server.

Additional resources

Microsoft Teams interop screen sharing with SFB

Microsoft announced the roll out of (interop) screen sharing between a Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business user during a chat or voice call for September 2019.

Source: Microsoft Teams – Screen sharing in Teams/Skype for Business interop [Microsoft 365 roadmap update item 53934]

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I’m looking forward to this update however I’m not sure what this means in detail right now. Why? Because with Microsoft Teams we need to differentiate between “interop” and “federation“!

Teams Interop (in conjunction with SFB) usually means intra-tenant interop, e.g. how can a Microsoft Teams and a Skype for Business users within the same Office 365 tenant communicate and collaborate with each other.

Teams Federation usually means external [to your Office 365 tenant] federated communication and collaboration with other users from other companies with Teams, Skype for Business Online or Skype for Business Server. For example, how can a Microsoft Teams user from company X communicate and collaborate with a Microsoft Teams/Skype for Business user from company Y.

So, if this capability is only intended for “Teams Interop” this would imply that screen sharing between Skype for Business and Team users within the same Office 365 tenant is added. Finally, you’d benefit of this as long as you are during a migration and transition phase within your Office 365 tenant from Skype for Business Online to Microsoft Teams and you will still have users on Skype for Business (Online).

Additional resources

Automate tasks in Microsoft Teams code free

In this post I like to cross reference a video from the Microsoft Mechanics which shows how to start to automate tasks code free in Microsoft Teams in conjunction with Microsoft’s PowerPlatform services Flow and PowerApps.

Source: Microsoft Teams: Code free ways to optimize your experience

Conclusion, opinion and summary

Microsoft Teams as a hub for teamwork let’s you integrate many other apps and services of the Office 365 stack like Flow and PowerApps. This enables you to automate certain (recurring) tasks and focus on more relevant tasks. The most impressiv aspect is that you do not need to be a developer, you can start to automate processes and tasks code free within little time.

For instance, if you get certain data delivered by your project team mates and you might collect and insert it in a Excel sheet or else. You might change this either starting small with sharing the Excel sheet to allow your team mates to added there data directly or you might want to build a PowerApp for the data input, insert it in the Team as tab, ad flow to get notified of new data inputs and maybe visualize the data via PowerBI…

There are infinite use cases and options which you could automate code free to focus on more relevant things at work. By adding Flows and PowerApps to your Teams you don’t even need to switch to another app.

Additional resources

Microsoft Teams gets private channels

Microsoft plans to gradually roll out private channel in Microsoft Teams in September late October (till early November) 2019. This is one of the most requested features in Teams. [UPDATED 17.09.2019]

Finally, this enables to manage and control access to channels in Teams. So only defined users can access a Teams channel within a specific Team.

Source: https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/MessageCenter [UPDATED]
Source: https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/MessageCenter [AUGUST 2019, obsolete]

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I’m looking forward to this feature update because this brings more manageability for team owners within a [Teams] team, if required. Especially, if you have a project team with external guests you might want to have an internal project-related conversation or data exchange, too. So, by secure private channels you have [soon] the option to define such “internal” channels for a project team within a [Teams] team. There’ll be no need to create an extra Team for this use case, just as one possible use case, e.g. you do not need to create two project Teams for [internal] and [external] collaboration. Instead you can utilize secure private channels and avoid creating duplicate Teams due to access-control needs for project contents and collaboration.

Right now ( 8th August 2019) I’m not aware of plans if the feature will come to existing [Teams] teams or only to newly created ones. I hope that it will apply to existing [Teams] teams but we’ll see in September October/November 2019. [UPDATED 17.09.2019]

Additional resources