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Tom's Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 News

March has been a busy month for me. I was over in Redmond for Microsoft MVP summit and next week, I am looking forward to speaking at Enterprise Connect.

There will be lots of Microsoft Teams news from Enterprise Connect; stay tuned to my LinkedIn for the news and videos from the show.

Many thanks to Ribbon, this month's sponsor. As usual, they will also be at Enterprise Connect, Booth 423, so make sure you check them out if you're there. Here's a sneak peek at what they'll be showing.

Check out my March news video briefing for a rundown of all the news and my thoughts. I went a bit long at 18 minutes! You can also grab the deck here.

Microsoft Teams news this month

The new Planner in Teams Public Preview combines To Do, Planner, and Project for the web and adds Microsoft Copilot into a simple, familiar, and unified experience, starting in Microsoft Teams. This includes new Premium licenced features, such as Copilot for Planner
3 New Premium Teams Features: Record watermarked meetings. Email ID is displayed as the watermark during the meeting recording playback, Forced Preset Organisational Backgrounds and Branded meetings: Meeting Join Launcher Screen with brand image and logo
New Teams features: Create Collaborative notes (Loop) before and after meetings; Archive channel will now be available for Teams users; an admin policy for enabling/disabling users to join external (outside of tenant/organisation) Teams meetings; In-app meeting options for Teams town halls and webinars
Operator Connect Updates: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Iceland, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, and Serbia are all new countries taking country coverage for Operator Connect to 94! 10 Operator Connect providers now supporting Shared Calling, all the details in our Power BI report here
Pure IP launched Mobile Connect for Microsoft Teams, powered by Tango Extend. It extends the Operator Connect fixed line as a second number on the mobile/cell (eSIM) via Teams SIP Gateway

Microsoft Teams Roadmap:

The Microsoft Teams meeting pre-join screen will now show information about the meeting, such as the meeting title, scheduled start time, scheduled end time, and the number of participants who have joined the call (387789 April 2024)
Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie support for Generic Wired Headsets on Android - As long as the generic headsets have buttons for play/pause or accept/decline calls, frontline workers can tap the button to start and stop transmissions on a Walkie Talkie. (369470 – February 2024)
Outlook feature In-Person Events (IPE), including attendees, RSVP in-person or online. Organisers can request in-person attendance via a new "in-person event" toggle when scheduling meetings. Only available on Outlook on the Web (OWA) and the new Outlook Desktop for Windows. (322590 – March)

Industry News

Audiocodes Voca was awarded Best Microsoft Teams Contact Center solution at the CX Awards 2024 and now offers Omnichannel
Kurmi has achieved ISO 27001:2022 certification for Kurmi Provisioning Suite’s cloud service delivery: Kurmi as a Service (KaaS)

Copilot and AI news

Microsoft and NVIDIA announce integrations to accelerate generative AI
Microsoft will invest €15 million in Mistral AI, a Paris-based AI startup that develops foundational models
Google DeepMind co-founder joins Microsoft as CEO of its new AI division
Microsoft Security Copilot GA April 1 as a capacity-based service
LeapXpert launched an AI Solution for Client-facing Employees, Maxen. It integrates with The LeapXpert Communications Platform, acting as an intelligent overlay that analyzes vast amounts of communication data across various channels, including Teams

New Empowering.Cloud Subject Matter Expert Briefings