It’s a new year and Microsoft continues innovating and updating Microsoft Teams. We like to take a moment each month to go over some highlights that might benefit your company or team. Let’s take a look at what’s new in Microsoft Teams for January.

Meetings

Press to Unmute

Stay muted to avoid unwanted background noise during a meeting and rapidly respond when called upon. You can now use a shortcut to unmute by holding down the Ctrl+Space keys (Windows) or Option+Space keys (macOS), then release the keys to go back to muted state again. This feature is on by default. To disable, go to your Teams Settings > Privacy section and uncheck Keyboard shortcut to unmute.

Custom background on web
Custom backgrounds are now available to web users. You can blur your background or select from Microsoft-provided backgrounds during your video meeting or call, making your meetings more fun and personal. Note that blurring or replacing your background may not prevent sensitive information from being visible to other people in the meeting.

Teams meeting recordings

Recording meetings in Teams allows you to review what you may have missed and helps others who could not attend catch up on their own time. Over the past year, we've shifted to saving new Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint to provide better control and sharing options. We’ve also added a number of improvements including:

• Multi-speed playback – Now you can watch recordings at slower and faster speeds (0.5x up to 2x)

• High-quality transcripts – Transcripts now have speaker attribution for meetings that have Teams Live Transcription turned on

• Indexed recordings – Recorded meetings are indexed into easier-to-consume segments based on slide transitions

• Auto-recording – Meeting owners can set meetings to automatically start recording

• Auto-expiration – Coming soon, admins will be able to set a default number of days after which newly created Teams meeting recordings will be sent to the recycle bin.

Chat and Collaboration

Add description to images in chat

Make your Teams messages more accessible to people with disabilities by adding alternative text to images. Similar to adding alternative text in Outlook, you now can add descriptions to images in Teams chat messages by right-clicking on the image and selecting “Add alt text.” This enables people who use screen readers to understand the full content of your message, even if they can’t see the image.

Every Keystroke Counts

As I like to remind people, every keystroke costs money. But how do you know which new features in Microsoft will really help you and your team down the road? When you’re paired with the right Certified Microsoft Trainer for your team, they stay on top of that for you. Connect with us today so we can help you find the right trainer for your team, and start saving your company time and money.