Welcome, readers, to this month’s Microsoft Teams Tracker article, where each month, I round up some of the latest and greatest updates to the application. Whether you’re an MS Teams user or you integrate tech that works with Teams, this will be a perfect monthly article for you to find all the information you might need. I will simply highlight a few of what I consider to be the most important to our industry. However, if you’d like a full, comprehensive list of these, scroll down and flip through the deck below. All updates from last month are listed there.

Without further ado, here are the notable Microsoft Teams updates for April 2024:

Copilot O-Clock

Microsoft is really leaning into its conversational AI offering, Copilot. Gary just wrote a column all about how co-pilot is changing the game in Microsoft’s entire 365 suite. A notable change in April, however, is that Copilot now allows you to ask it for further details, clarifying questions and explanations after you ask it an initial question. There are also some improvements for permissions, such as the Teams admin center now allowing IT administrators to manage Copilot usage at an organization.

Here’s a short video that shares some of Copilot’s features for Microsoft Teams.

Voice Isolation

I mentioned this briefly last month. Microsoft began talking about a voice isolation feature within Microsoft Phone. This feature uses AI to remove background noise during calls. The company developed this feature to help us during the “Wild, Wild West” meeting environment we currently exist in. Are you meeting from a busy office? A coffee shop? Your car? This feature will hopefully help you to be heard a little easier. I haven’t tried it yet, so I obviously can’t speak to how well it works, but I am excited to try it out! Apparently, the feature is so advanced that it can be programmed to only recognize and transmit your voice across the call, eliminating other voices that may be in the background.

Live Translation Station

I also mentioned this in my last piece. Like I mentioned in our March update, town hall organizers can select up to six languages for live translated captions — and attendees can choose from these languages for a more inclusive experience. Also organizers who have a Teams Premium license can select up to 10 languages. This update was scheduled for April 2024.

4K

The last big update I really want to share is actually a couple of updates — Microsoft has really worked on taking its 4K offerings to the next level. So, that said, 4K-enabled displays (front-of-room and interactive flat panels) are now natively supported within the Teams Rooms experience. This means that the user interface will automatically scale for the best readability. However, this does not include support for 4K video/4K HDMI sharing.

Another 4K update is that Teams Rooms on Android now allows for 4K HDMI content sharing. So, you can project HDMI content in 4K to your front-of-room displays for Teams Rooms on Android devices that have this capability. According to Microsoft, you can do this content viewing experience even when sharing things outside of an online Teams meeting.

For the full list of updates for the past month, check out the deck below, courtesy of Microsoft.

Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out for next month’s MS Teams Tracker!