Welcome to your monthly round-up of all the latest features and updates from Microsoft. This month we bring you Virtual Breakout Rooms, On-Demand Chat Translation, Increased File Size for SharePoint and Site Analytics. If you would like any further information or assistance with these updates, contact us today for support.

Microsoft Teams Updates

Virtual Breakout Rooms

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced Breakout Rooms allowing your meeting organiser to split Teams meeting attendees into small groups to enable brainstorming, learning and discussions. You can assign certain participants into a number of separate rooms – you can automatically direct individuals or prompt them to join. The organiser is able to go between meetings on their own or when your attendance is requested by a participant, they can also make announcements to the rooms or recall everyone back to the main meeting.

This is due for release in Autumn, so keep your eyes peeled.

Multi-Window for Meetings & Calling

In the coming months, you will have the ability to pop out Teams meetings and calling into a separate window to help optimise your workflow. These experiences can be turned on directly within Teams for PC and Mac clients

Attendee Limit Increase to 300 Participants

To help meet developing communication and meeting needs, Teams is increasing the limit of participants in any meeting to 300. The feature is available now.

Teams Mobile On-Demand Translation

Inline message translation ensures that no matter the language your colleagues speak, everyone has a voice. With a single click, individuals can communicate easily with one another by translating posts in channels or in chat. Whilst this feature has been made available on desktop and web, it will now be available on iOS.

Priority Notifications

Originally announced in June 2019, priority notifications for Teams gives users the ability to send notifications that repeat every two minutes for up 20 minutes on any message marked as urgent. Whilst originally only available as a promotion, this is now available to all Teams customers.

Sharepoint Updates:

Microsoft 365 Supports up to 100GB File Sizes on SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams

Microsoft and increasing the mix file size from 15 to 100GB. For best performance we recommend uploading any large files using OneDrive sync, this applies to content migration scenarios.

Enable the Communication Site Experience for Classic SharePoint Sites

This optional feature allows SharePoint admins and site owners to enable the modern communication site experience on any classic site that meets the requirements, including the root site. Learn more here.

A SharePoint communication site can be a great tool for keeping the entire business up to date by facilitating information sharing. Now, classic teams sites can enjoy the benefits of modern communication sites – modern home page, full-width pages with horizontal navigation and improved capabilities to share reports, statuses, news and other information in a visually compelling way.

Site Analytics – Cumulative Analytics for SharePoint Sites

SharePoint hub sites allow businesses to organise and collaborate based on project, department, region or division. This report provides site owners with insights on total visits, top sites, popular content and unique visitors. To view these reports, go to hub site, select “Site Usage Data”, by default you will see analytics for all sites within the hub or solely for the hub site if you apply relevant filters.

We hope you found these insights useful and hope they will enable your business to work more effectively and productively. If you are looking to make use of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint or would like to know how you can make the most of any of the new features mentioned, contact us for a no-obligation chat.