Tom Arbuthnot's Microsoft 365 Perspective

Many thanks to Landis, this month's Empowering Cloud Benefactor. Shannon Martin at Landis recently walked me through installing their Microsoft Teams Attendant Console in only 103 seconds.

Check out my last monthly update video of 2024! Everything you need to know, including the key Ignite announcements in 12 minutes. Deck here.

Hope to see you at Teams Fireside Chat On Wednesday, talking Teams Premium with Mansoor Malik, Principal Group Product Manager

Microsoft Teams News

• New for Android-based Teams devices, perform updates and configurations only when devices are idle. Rolling out in late February 2025 MC952889
• SMS coming natively to Microsoft Teams for Calling Plans in US and Canada.
• External USB-C Camera Support for Microsoft Teams in iPad
• New machine learning algorithm-based intelligent media quality classifiers in Quality of Experience Report (QER) 5.0
• Coming January, you will be able to dynamically resize Teams on Windows sizes and to resize left and right panes. MC947051
• Coming end of January, Teams will use meeting room invite data to intelligently associate BYOD peripherals to rooms in the the Pro management portal MC950888. Speaker recognition and attribution also coming to BYOD spaces (Teams Premium/M365 Copilot)
• For those using PowerShell, changes to Get-CsPhoneNumberAssignment and to Get-CsDialPlan, Get-CsOnlineUser, and Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment

Industry News

• It is interesting to see Anywhere365 has acquired Tendfor, another Teams certified contact center
• Alianza Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Metaswitch from Microsoft
• Operator Connect is now at 103 countries nd 104 providers with Canda being the first country to get a second Teams Phone Mobile Provider (Bell). Vodafone Business have also moved into the top 5, adding 9 countries. (Full Power BI report)
• Public Preview of ACS bidirectional audio streaming, this is what you saw in action in the Ignite keynote with the customer talking to a virtual agent.

Copilot and AI News

• Microsoft adds Vision to Copilot Consumer - Copilot Vision allows Microsoft’s AI companion to see what you see on an Edge webpage you’re browsing. You can then ask it questions about the text, images, and content you’re viewing or use it to assist you.

Latest Briefings

• Microsoft Places Deep Dive - Real-World Deployment, Features and Licensing with Nathan Chapman, Chief Technology Officer at Generation-e and Chris Fitzsimmons, Senior Solutions Architect at AVI-SPL
• Deploying Landis Microsoft Teams Attendant Console in 103 seconds with Shannon Martin, Account Executive at Landis
• 5 most common contact center asks from customers in their presales calls with Oli Lifely at Luware

Teams Insider Podcast

• Teams Phone Theme Parks and Attractions Globally - Paul Cornish, UC Architect at Merlin Entertainment
• Multicam and Multistream video - Henry Levak, Vice President of Product at Logitech for Business
• The Future of Event Management with Microsoft Teams - Preethi Ramarathinam, Head of Product - Microsoft Teams Virtual Event at Microsoft
• Jabra Enhance Value with Device Updates - Josh Blalock, Chief Video Evangelist at Jabra

On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube

Events

Online:

• Teams Fireside Chat: Microsoft Teams Premium with Mansoor Malik, Principal Group Product Manager - Microsoft Teams - December 12th
• Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything - December 17/18th
• Copilot Fireside Chat December - December 18th

In-Person:

• ISE - 4-7 February, Barcelona
• Microsoft UC User Group London - February 26th, London
• Enterprise Connect - 17-20 March, Florida

I read all email replies. What is useful? What is not? What would you like to hear more about? Let me know.

Thanks

Tom

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