Teams Adds Explicit Consent for Recorded Meetings

In January, Microsoft released a post talking about the road map for Microsoft Teams to include explicit recording consent for Teams meetings. This appears to be a policy that needs to be applied.

The Teams’ meeting window will then request an explicit consent of all participants to be recorded. Before a user gives consent the user’s audio, video and screenshare/consent- share won't be captured in the meeting recording.

The new feature is a computer-enforced version with some added intelligence. This will help to provide a more consistent experience for your company’s meetings.

This can’t be done through the Teams admin center today, so you’ll need to update Teams meeting policies with PowerShell. The policy setting is per-user and applies to the meeting organizer. After the setting is enabled in a meeting policy, any meeting organized by accounts assigned to the policy will use explicit consent for recorded meetings.

For more information on how to do this take a look at this article by Tony Redmond of Office 365 IT Pros.

Introducing PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams

PowerPoint Live transforms your presenting experience - only in Microsoft Teams 

PowerPoint is used around the world to share compelling stories—from personal to professional. As the world shifted to working remotely, we all faced new challenges presenting without a live audience. Reading the room, seeing people’s expressions, and natural interactions all became more difficult to do from behind a screen.  

We created an entirely new remote presenting experience with PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams. This exclusive and unique experience benefits both presenters and audience members, offering the rich presenting capabilities of PowerPoint and the collaboration of Microsoft Teams. 

 see more

250 GB file size support in Microsoft teams

We have now increased the upload file size limit for Microsoft Teams from 100 GB to 250 GB. This also applies to all other Microsoft 365, services including SharePoint and OneDrive. You are now able to easily share large files like a 3D model of a new building, a client commercial shot in 8K video, a large dataset for a vaccine trial or research projects or large videos for educational projects. Learn more

New file sharing experience in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft is updating the file sharing and access control experience in Microsoft Teams to make it similar to the experience with other Microsoft 365 apps. We had announced this feature last fall but delayed the rollout to ensure the best customer experience. We apologize for any inconvenience that this delay may have caused.

Key points

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 51230 
• Timing: mid-March through mid-April 2021
• Roll-out: tenant level
• Control type: admin control
• Action: review and assess

How this will affect your organization

With this update, when users share a file from within Teams (desktop/web), they will have the option to create sharing links that provide access to:

• anyone
• people with existing access
• people within your organization
• specific people, including those in a 1:1 chat, group chat, or channels.

Before users share a file in a chat and channels, they will be notified if recipients don't have permission to view the file. The user can change permissions before they share the file (if they have permission to do so).

What you need to do to prepare

Teams honors the sharing controls defined in SharePoint. For example, if external sharing is disabled in SharePoint, then it is disabled in Teams as well.

The default file link permission in Teams will be the same that is set at tenant level, unless that setting has been overridden at the respective SharePoint site level.

Review your file sharing options in the SharePoint admin portal to ensure that they align with the requirements in your tenant.

Learn more

• Manage sharing settings in SharePoint and OneDrive
• Sharing files in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Dynamic View Feature coming in March

At a theater near you, just kidding. Thursday I highlighted the new December release from Microsoft with the Microsoft Teams Feature of Breakout Rooms. Today, I am looking towards the future release of a new Teams feature that allows you to dispaly content side by side with your participant's windows do be able to see content at the same time you are talking to your meeting participants. 

This new feature provides more control over your display view during meetings to enhance the entire experience. Microsoft's intent is to make meeting feel more connected and create better engagement during the meeting. 

In July, Microsoft posted an update of new feature updates and if you want to see the entire list jump over to this posting.

Microsoft Teams for Android will be getting a Walkie Talkie Feature

MC216749, Stay Informed, Published date: Jun 18, 2020

Updated July 24, 2020: We have updated this post with Additional Information to provide clarity on how to get started with Walkie Talkie.

Walkie Talkie, which provides instant push-to-talk communication, will soon be available in Public Preview on Teams for Android.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57157.

When this will happen

We will begin the rollout in mid-July and expect to be complete by end of July.

How this will affect your organization

During Public Preview, you need to enable Walkie Talkie using the Teams Admin Center to provide access to people in your organization. Once enabled, Walkie Talkie will become available on the Android app within 48 hours. Walkie Talkie allows users to connect with their team using the same underlying channels they are members of. Only users who connect to Walkie Talkie in a channel become participants and can communicate with each other using push-to-talk. 

The Planner app in Teams will be renamed with an updated experience powered by Planner and To Do

The Planner app in Teams will become the Tasks app. Users will now be able see their individual tasks and team tasks in a single app. We’re also introducing both a list view and a new mobile tasks experience within the Teams app for mobile devices. The Planner app will be renamed after the rollout is complete, as described below.

We will begin roll-out in May or June and expect to be complete by mid-July.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57213

[How does this affect me?]

Users will see personal tasks powered by To Do (which also powers Outlook tasks) and team tasks powered by Planner. Existing Planner tabs will behave the same as they do today but will show an additional list view. Users will be able to add new Tasks tabs to the channels in teams they belong to. Users can also access the Tasks app in the same ways they previously accessed the Planner app.

Renaming the Planner app in Teams to Tasks and enabling a mobile experience in Teams 

We’re planning to rename the Planner app to Tasks. The new Tasks experience will contain individual tasks and team and channel tasks, similar to how Files encompasses a user's personal files in their own OneDrive for Business as well as their team and channel files.  We’ll make this adjustment in two steps. 

Once we’ve made the new tasks experience broadly available to all public cloud organizations, we’ll enable the Tasks in Teams mobile experience and complete a logo update and an interim rename of the Planner app. Its interim name will be Tasks by Planner and To Do. This will help ensure the app can be found when searching for Planner while adding a tab or searching for the app in the app catalog.

A few months after the interim name change, the app name on desktop will be shortened to Tasks. 

This name change applies only to the Planner app in Teams. All other Planner clients and To Do clients will keep their existing names, and users can continue to use those clients to manage tasks just as they do today. 

The upgrade will also include task publishing functionality.

Note - Government tenants will see the name change when it rolls out but will not see the additional user experience changes until a later date. We will communicate via Message center once these are available.

[What do I need to do to prepare for this change?] 

Your organization’s internal training or documentation may need to be updated to reflect the name change and updated experience.