Fresh from the Microsoft Insight Conference!

Like other industry events, Microsoft Inspire is going virtual this year, and some new Teams features are among the many announcements. But it’s not just Teams, of course. Microsoft has some other relevant announcements related to Microsoft 365 as well.

Some of these announcements include:

Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft will begin rolling out Lists to Microsoft 365 customers this month, and it will be integrated into Microsoft Teams in August.
Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory, and more using customizable views, rules, and comments to keep everyone in sync. Microsoft Lists Home (web app) is beginning to rollout with eight ready-made templates. A Lists app for iOS is also expected later this year.

Universal Print. Described as a simple print experience for commercial and educational customers moving to the cloud, Universal Print is a Microsoft software as a service (SaaS) solution that allows IT departments to view and manage printers through the cloud. This service is now available in public preview.
Microsoft states that printer manufacturers are working on native support for Universal Print. The feature does work with a Universal Print proxy application, but the best experience for the feature will be on devices on with native support.

Microsoft Teams Rooms. Microsoft Teams is gaining new hybrid meeting experiences with improved device management capabilities via Standard and Premium Microsoft Teams Rooms offerings.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium builds on the Standard capabilities by adding professional 24/7 management and monitoring of room operating system and software, providing insights to alerts and taking any actions needed (on-site and remote) on the customers behalf as permitted.

24/7 operations

Real-time monitoring
Automated update management
Real-time alerts
Proactive problem solving

Dedicated experts

Incident diagnosis and guidance on cause and actions required
Automated and support engineer assistance on troubleshooting
Single point escalation for all hardware vendors
Integration with ServiceNow

Enhanced insights

Reports and dashboards
Insights and recommendations on room usage and incident trend history
Full transparency on all operations taken on the customer’s behalf

Power BI app for Microsoft Teams. This new app gives people a single place for data visualizations and a way to find more data from across their organization. “The app provides a more streamlined experience for accessing Power BI reports in Teams and provides sample reports, training information and streamlined sharing functionality to help users incorporate data-driven decision-making into their work,” Microsoft notes. It will be available in Teams in August.

Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents chatbot improvements. Creators can now make, manage and use their apps and bots directly in Microsoft Teams through a new Teams native app experiences. The new features are powered by Microsoft DataFlex in Teams and provide enterprise relational datastores with rich data types to Microsoft 365 users. They are now included for free with select Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses that include Power Apps and Power Automate. New Power Apps features will be available in early August in public preview. Power Virtual Agents features will be available in late August in public preview.

More Teams features. Teams is also getting a new interactive Yammer app on mobile called Communities that lets employees participate in their Yammer communities, receive organizational announcements and critical updates, engage in company-wide discussions and join live events alongside their shifts, tasks and project work. Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie is also now in public preview. A new Teams feature in the Shifts scheduling module will soon make it easier for managers to create team schedules while alerting them to potential schedule conflicts. And Firstline Worker and Manager policy packages are now generally available, allowing IT pros to streamline policy assignment with pre-defined settings tailored for their entire Firstline Workforce.

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