Welcome, readers, to this June 2024 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 June 2024.

First of all, we have to talk about the “meet now in group chat” functionality. This allows you to quickly and easily start ad hoc meetings with whatever team you’re collaborating with at the time. I find this will be a useful and heavily used option as opposed to scheduled, formal meetings. After all, how many times during a project do we quickly need to collaborate with the others on our team? I’d say pretty often.

Teams now also offers a “Copilot for Sales” plug-in that integrates Copilot’s sales functionality into your meetings. This will be useful to quickly pull in insights, metrics and other things for efficient sales meetings and “better outcomes.”

As for some functionality that’s rolling out right now (and began last month), meeting organizers can control attendee access to recordings, transcripts and AI insights. Access can include everyone, organizers/co-organizers or specific people. This became available to Copilot for 365 users first and is expected to be available to Teams Premium users next quarter.

Also, in a simple yet quite exciting update, meeting presenters now have a movable presenter toolbar during presentations. There is truly nothing more annoying than the toolbar being in your way when you are attempting to present and I know this will be a very welcome update for all users. Another simple, yet very awesome update is the ability to mute yourself on a Teams call from the Windows taskbar. If you’re a multitasker, being able to do this from the taskbar that’s pretty much just always there will be a welcome change.

Now, let’s talk about Microsoft Mesh for a second. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a cloud-based platform for collaboration in mixed reality. People in different locations, using different devices can leverage Microsoft 365 to collaborate in a shared immersive space. Microsoft began to roll this out to Mac users in June. Some of the functionality in Mesh is available by public preview, including a new space for workshops, brainstorming sessions and employee orientations. There are plenty of more updates to come, but for now you can get an avatar by taking or uploading a photo of yourself and allowing the tech to craft one for you. (Let me go try that and report back on how well it works.)

For Teams Rooms, the AI-powered speaking recognition technology has expanded to all Teams Rooms on Windows devices, regardless of microphone type. There is also new functionality allowing communication across touch panels for conference rooms with multiple. The information is synchronized across all panels so that the information is always accurate.

Coming Soon?

I’m excited about this. A functionality for digital signage in Teams Rooms will allow your Teams Rooms on Windows to become spaces where you can share content and dynamic information. This will allow you to extend Teams communication across all meeting spaces even when those meeting devices are not in use.

As always, this is by no means an exhaustive list of June’s updates. For the full list, check out the slide deck below.