Microsoft is introducing several new Microsoft Teams Rooms products and features designed to improve the hybrid work experience, including Teams Connect shared channels, new Teams meeting layouts, new cameras, touch-enabled displays, whiteboarding and more.
The company’s announcement of these new products and features come simultaneously to Microsoft’s release of its second annual Work Trends Index report, “Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work.”
That unveils a disconnect between employees and leadership, including when it comes to returning to the office, with just 28% of leaders creating team agreements to define hybrid work norms despite 38% of employees citing knowing when and why to come into the office as their biggest challenge.
According to Microsoft, Shared Channels for Teams connect, designed for secure and easy-to-use collaboration across organizational boundaries, will become available in public preview at the end of the month. The company bills the feature as a way to enable collaboration with people both inside and outside of the organization from a shared workspace without having to leave their own Teams environment.
Microsoft is also releasing its Microsoft Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera that uses automatic framing technology to adjust Teams video feeds to provide remote team members with a dynamic view of in-room interactions. The company says the camera will reframe the room when someone leaves, when more people come in or when a person interacts with on-display content.
In addition, Microsoft is making it easier for users to brainstorm and make decisions without having to switch apps, with Loop components in Outlook mail and RSVPing for a meeting in Outlook.
The company also announced new touch-enabled solutions for Teams Rooms from Neat and Yealink are in the process of being certified for Teams Rooms on Android, helping to combine audio, video and touch display and compute in a single unit.
Designed to bridge the gap between digital and physical workspaces, Microsoft is releasing front row, a new meeting layout for hybrid Teams Rooms meetings that brings the video gallery to the eye level at the bottom of the screen so people in the meeting room can see remote colleagues in a more natural face-to-face interaction.
For more information, read the company’s blog and announcement.
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