Microsoft Ignite 2022 took place recently, and with it came plenty of new announcements, several of which look to change the scope of Microsoft 365. None more so than the new Microsoft 365 app. 

This will house everything that allows you to be productive at work, Teams, Word, Excel PowerPoint, Outlook, alongside new releases, such as the Microsoft Loop app. With this also comes the opportunity to add any other third-party apps you wish to use.  

 

Here, you can bring together documents, files, meetings and more in a secure, personalised space. 

 

Teams Premium Announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2022

This was a big announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2022 and is bringing many new features to Microsoft Teams, and one of those is the opportunity for more personalisation.  

Meeting Guides

With Meeting Guides, you can create an experience that is appropriate for you and the purposes of your meeting. You can set and select guides, such as help desk call or client call, streamlining the process of setting up meetings. 

Customised Meeting Branding

You will also be able to customise Microsoft Teams and create backgrounds and together modes for employees to keep a strong brand identity.  

 

Intelligence and AI is heavily featured in the Microsoft Teams Premium announcement to improve productivity and the effectiveness of its features. 

 

Intelligent Recap

One main feature of Teams Premium is Intelligent Recap, a new AI-powered tool that operates as a virtual assistant within your meetings – sharing personalised highlights and creating tasks from meeting recordings.  

 

It can create smart recordings after meetings with auto-generated chapters and insights, like when your name was mentioned, allowing you to catch up with information quickly. 

 

Live Translations for Captions

Alongside this, Teams Premium also offers live translations for captions. Again, AI-powered, this provides real-time translations from forty languages meaning everyone can follow along with meetings as they happen. 

 

Security within Teams meetings has also been addressed by Microsoft Teams Premium. 

 

Advanced Meeting Protection

This feature makes it possible to safeguard confidential meetings. New meeting options are available, including watermarking and the option to limit those able to record.  

 

For Microsoft 365 E5 customers, more advanced security requirements are addressed with the chance to leverage existing Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels to apply relevant meeting options.  

 

Teams Premium wants to expand the Teams experience and create more of a relationship between you and your customers, Advance Virtual Appointments being one such way of doing so. 

 

Advanced Virtual Appointments

This feature includes customer text reminders about meetings and allows them to join custom branded virtual appointments through their mobile device. This is possible, even without them having Teams downloaded. 

Appointment Queuing

Scheduling and appointment management can all be done in one place using features like appointment queuing. Users can set up and manage scheduled or on-demand virtual appointments through Teams Premium to keep everything clear and organised. 

Staff-, Department-, and Organisation-level Analytics 

These are all offered by Microsoft Teams Premium to provide insight into appointment experiences, and track information such as usage trends. 

 

Building on the webinar functionality accessible in Office 365 and Microsoft 365, Microsoft Ignite 2022 bought with it the announcement that Teams Premium also provides Advanced Webinars. 

 

Microsoft Ignite 2022

Advanced Webinars Announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2022

This takes the previous webinar features and adds to them, providing new host and event management controls, making connections with any audience easier. 

 

Registration Waitlist and Manual Approval 

Along with this, Microsoft Teams Premium now allows you to keep webinar registration open beyond the event reaching capacity. With this, more people can register and will be added to a waitlist, to be automatically moved to the pending approval state as new slots open.  

 

Customisable registration start and end times will also be available as part of the webinar features, meaning it will be possible to specify when you want registration to begin and end. This will make event planning and management less complicated. 

 

Automated Reminder Emails 

These will be possible to send ahead of an event to attract attendees and to every confirmed registrant on the day of the event. These emails will include a custom-branded header, webinar details, and a link to join the event. 

Customisable Experiences

As the organiser or presenter of a Teams Premium Webinar, you will now also have the opportunity to utilise the virtual green room feature. This operates in much the same way as a physical one, allowing a space for prep and socialising prior to an event. 

 

It will also be possible to curate the attendees’ view and manage what they see in order to maintain their engagement and avoid distraction. 

 

New Partnership Announcement at Microsoft Ignite 2022 – Cisco and Microsoft

Microsoft Ignite 2022 also saw them announce a partnership with Cisco. This will see users able to run Teams meetings natively across Cisco devices and configure it as the default for meetings moving forward. 

Microsoft Places

The introduction of Microsoft Places allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the office, especially as hybrid work becomes more prevalent. Embracing the new category of technology solutions, Connected Workplace, Places aims to “…reimagine hybrid and in-person work.” 

 

It offers hybrid scheduling and intelligent booking to coordinate where work takes place. 

 

Hybrid Scheduling

This collates information from Outlook and Teams so you can see the upcoming week and who is going to be in, meaning you can adjust your schedule to make it more efficient and beneficial for all involved. 

Intelligent Booking

With Intelligent Booking you can discover what spaces are available for meetings, for both in-person or remote participants, to best suit your needs.  

 

It will also offer commute recommendations and timing updates to help you attend on time.  

 

Microsoft Places also looks to use intelligent technology to update the office, offering Wayfinding, Hot Desk Booking and Serendipitous Meetups. 

 

Wayfinding

Wayfinding offers access to maps on your mobile devices, showing you your meeting place or room’s exact location. 

Hot Desk Booking

This feature lets you see where your colleagues are sitting and choose an appropriate desk. Microsoft Teams Rooms facilitates further participation, allowing you to join in, no matter your location.  

Serendipitous Meetups

Microsoft Places offers this to give you an opportunity to create impromptu meetups and collaborate with other people in the office. 

Microsoft Ignite 2022

Space Insights and Optimisation 

With the importance of managing space, Places provides space insights aimed at leading dynamic space adjustments, day to day, in the office. 

 

With this knowledge, space optimisation becomes easier. Leaders can reduce the floors available on quieter days to save energy and money. 

 

Microsoft Places will be integrated with Microsoft 365 solutions, bringing together enhanced data on Microsoft Graph, and making it accessible and understandable to the leaders who can utilise it. 

 

Collaboration

An interesting area of the Microsoft Ignite 2022 announcements surrounded collaboration in Teams and Microsoft 365. The first of which is Excel Live. 

Excel Live

Coming in November of this year, Excel Live provides more opportunities for members to collaborate in meetings. Each person can live-edit Excel files in Teams without having to open the file themselves.  

Teams Live Share

Taking this further, Teams Live Share means any app shared in Teams can become a multi-user collaboration in which people can interact, annotate and so on in the meeting window.  

Together Mode

Together Mode also opens collaborative possibilities with meeting organisers being able to assign seats to those attending the meeting. From this they can pin the Together Mode view to the meeting, providing everyone with the same view of the group.  

Hours and Location

This new feature is accessible on Teams and Outlook and means you can set up in-person meetings more easily as it allows people to adjust whether they are in or out of the office, hour by hour.  

Teams Channels and Chat

Teams Channels

Expanding on the collaborative focus, Teams Channels positions your most recent posts at the top, so they are easily visible to others, opening them up to discussion and conversation. Taking this further, Channels now features new post types, such as announcements, and a customisable channel header. 

Teams Chat

Microsoft has also made Teams Chat more expressive with up to eight hundred reaction emojis now available. Video Clips have also been introduced meaning people can record, send, and view video in chat for a more personal connection.  

Loop App

The Microsoft Loop app features workspaces, pages, and components that sync across Microsoft 365. You can also insert a Loop component into a dynamics 365 record while in Teams chat via the Dynamic 365 integration within Teams. 

Edge Workspaces

Edge Workspaces is being introduced in the Edge browser, so if you are working on a group project, everyone can see the same sites and files as a shared set of browser tabs. This aims to save time by having everyone working off the same material, whilst showing their presence so you can identify who is on what tab at any one time. 

 

These Edge Workspaces are customisable meaning you can change the name and colour of the space, along with adding shared favourite and access to the workspace history.  

Creativity

Like with the focus on collaboration, the Microsoft Ignite 2022 announcements unveiled more opportunities for creativity within Microsoft 365. 

Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a new app that helps to create posts, invitations, and graphics via text prompts or other content by utilising AI technology, including DALL-E 2.  

Microsoft Create

Microsoft Create features thousands of creative templates to inspire and advance skills in video, graphic design, presentations and more. Beyond templates, Create also features curated articles and videos from others who have come from a similar place. It brings together the Microsoft 365 apps you already know with new creative apps, all in one place. 

Microsoft Clipchamp

Microsoft Clipchamp is the first free Microsoft video editor in the 365 suite of apps. Microsoft 365 subscribers will have access to premium Clipchamp features, at no extra cost.