Welcome to your monthly round-up of all the latest features and updates from Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This month we bring you, presenter spotlight, real-time presence, a new Tasks App, updates to Whiteboard, and SharePoint usage reports in Excel.
New in Teams
Spotlight
Presenters and meeting organisers will now be able to lock their video as the main view for all participants. This allows the presenter to control the main video feed that a participant will be able to see during the meeting. This is different from the “pin participant”, which only allows the viewer to pin a video as the main view for themselves. Spotlight should be available within the next couple of months.
Real-time presence
Stay focused throughout the day by updating your real-time presence. Whether you are free for a quick chat or presenting in the meeting, real-time presence increases the accuracy of your status, so others know when, or when not to reach out.
Stay on top of tasks, without leaving Teams
Managing tasks can be difficult if they span across different tools or platforms. The new Tasks app in Teams takes the headache out of managing tasks. It provides a unified view of tasks assignments, from Planner, Outlook, and Microsoft To-Do meaning you can consolidate and prioritize your tasks. They have also added a new List view, so you can edit multiple tasks at once. The new experience will be rolling out to desktop users. To get started download the Planner app (the name will later change to “Tasks”) to your Teams client or add it as a tab at the top of a channel.
Brainstorm and empower collaboration with updates to Whiteboards in Teams
Whilst we aren’t physically together, our businesses still require brainstorming and creative thinking sessions. Microsoft added new features to improve the creative process. You can quickly add sticky notes to a canvas, making it easy to contribute if you have a digital pen. They also added the ability to move and re-order objects on the canvas and finally, they have improved user experience by increasing the speed of the program.
New in Sharepoint
Sharepoint Lists and Libraries – image column
Microsoft has made it much easier to work with images in lists and libraries. Once an image column is added to a list or a library, users can add an image using the list or library form. They can view, replace or remove the image when they are viewing the item in the form. When users are browsing on mobile, they will be able to upload an image.
Download SharePoint site and usage data in Excel
Site owners, from the Site usage page, will be able to export their site’s 90-day usage data in an Excel report. From there you can build out a process that works for your preferences and governance requirements to download the report on a recurring basis, and build out the analysis in either Excel or visualise the data in Power BI.
Updating the list and list item sharing experience
Site owners, members, and even visitors will now see a Share command when they are viewing a list, even when they do not have a specific list item selected. Site owners will be able to grant other users access to the list and specify whether they are to receive View-only, Edit, or Full Control permissions to the list. Other users cannot directly grant other users access to the list, but they can request access be provided by site owners if the site is set up to allow access requests.
This update also brings sharing links to list items. When a user selects a list item and clicks Share, they will see the same send link sharing dialog that exists today but updated with the new options.
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.