Microsoft Teams introduces new communication tools

The new tools will make it possible to reach up to 20,000 participants using the Teams platform. For now, to provide more control and ease the way large scale meetings are managed, Microsoft has limited interactive meetings to 1,000 participants.

Teams modernizes 1:1 calling with a cloud-based phone system in the same Teams app that keeps users in the communications flow. 

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Communication systems across the world are evolving to support customers’ changing needs.  As the customers are mastering using Teams for group meetings, they want to increase their reach, and use the same familiar tool to deliver online meetings and events at a much broader scale. Naturally, this scale requires both structure and admin control, to achieve a more professional, seamless, compliant experience. 

Scale Teams meeting up to 20,000 participants. Reach larger audiences to stay connected with employees, customers, and partners. When building this capability, they were focused on customers’ meeting experience, making sure that even as the meeting scales it is still easy to manage and listen to the speakers.  Therefore, they limited the size of interactive meetings to 1,000 participants, with a seamless shift to a ‘view only’ mode after the limit is met.

Enhanced admin control. Use new capabilities and insert more structure to meetings, by adding company’s branding to meetings for a professional look and feel. Start out with branded meeting lobby, launching in the coming months, and extend branding to the core meeting experience coming later. Connect with business applications to manage at scale and automate workflows. Work with Teams certified solution partners and help your organization address business needs by setting up compliance recording policy or bringing in collaboration to customer engagement workflows. 

The company also realizes that being able to use existing hardware can provide important cost savings when moving to a new phone system. They have announced extended support for Skype for Business (3PIP) phones beyond 2023, so users can continue to use existing Skype for Business phones as they move to Teams. Additionally, they will be supporting core calling features on SIP phones from Cisco, Yealink, Polycom, and others with Teams. Support for SIP phones will be available in the first half of 2021. 

For customers looking to modernize their phones, they are bringing a new line of Microsoft Teams phones with physical buttons, high-quality audio, and core calling features at an affordable price. These phones are designed for common areas and basic information worker scenarios, with options available from AudioCodes, Poly, Yealink starting early 2021.

They are also expanding their portfolio to deliver new USB peripherals that have dial pads and a modern Teams user interface for heavy call users. These USB phones work out of the box, featuring a Teams button, and will connect to both a PC and Mac to bring a high-quality Teams audio experience. These will be available in late 2020 and the first of which will be shipped with Yealink.