Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 64 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week we focus on all the stuff we (I) found intertesting from Microsoft Ignite 2024 in Chicago. I happened to be there this year for the first time which was awesome. I do hope to go again in the future. Microsoft published blog posts on new things for Teams and Copilot announced at Ignite What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2024 Introducing the AI-Powered Workplace: Technology solutions for flexible work | Microsoft Community Hub Microsoft Ignite 2024 | Microsoft 365 Copilot Innovation in Your Go-To Apps Introducing Copilot Actions, new agents, and tools to empower IT teams Ignite 2024 – What’s new for Microsoft 365 and Copilot admins There were a lot of great sessions, but only a couple focused on Microsoft Teams, and in particular, devices. This is one I refer to a lot in this podcast episode. Presented by Ilya Bukshteyn, Pete Daderko and Kerry Perez Heffernan at Microsoft. I attended this live in person. But there is a recording Unlock smart collaboration with Microsoft Teams Other notewoprthy Teams Sessions Connect & Collaborate: New in Microsoft Teams A new AI powered calendar for flexible workspaces Enhance collaboration with Teams and Surface Hub 3 Unlock the Value of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio Capitalize on Microsoft 365 Copilot partner opportunity in Enterprise Microsoft Teams: new chat and channels experience Here’s the list Copilot Copilot Actions: A new AI agent feature called Copilot Actions was introduced, allowing users to automate repetitive tasks within Microsoft 365 Copilot. New AI Administrator Role: A new role called AI administrator was announced, specifically for managing and overseeing AI and Copilot administration in organizations. Copilot in Microsoft 365 Admin Centers: Copilot will be available in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Teams admin center, and SharePoint admin center, with general availability targeted for January 2025. This feature will help optimize routine tasks, generate insights, and enhance decision-making for IT professionals. Copilot in Teams admin center Copilot in Pro Management Portal New Agents and Tools: New agents in Microsoft 365 were introduced to unlock SharePoint knowledge, provide real-time language interpretation in Microsoft Teams meetings, and automate employee self-service. Copilot Agents: Agents can automate and execute business processes, ranging from simple prompt and response tasks to more advanced and fully autonomous agents. Copilot Control System help IT professionals confidently manage Copilot and agents securely. Copilot file summary – upload a file to Teams and let Copilot summarise the contents Copilot in Teams can analyze content shared on-screen Places Places is now Generally Available Recommended in-office days with Copilot Managed Booking with Copilot Places Finder Workplace Presence space analytics with Copilot team guidance quick book Now a detour talking about licensing. How to decide who needs what license or feature from a specific license, and how to manage it once you do. Random Teams News Storyline integrated in Teams New chat and channel experience Loop workspaces in a channel Name pronunciation in profile cards Skin tone setting for emojis and reactions Live transcription in Teams meetings support for multiple spoken languages Intelligent recap for calls from chat and ‘Meet now’ meetings Disable copying of live captions, transcripts, and recap for meetings Translated intelligent meeting recap Active meeting protection notifications of sensitive screenshared content Meeting sensitivity upgrade notification based on shared file A meeting sensitivity upgrade can now be triggered when an attendee shares a file in a Teams meeting chat or during a live share that has a higher sensitivity setting. The meeting’s settings can be upgraded either automatically or via a recommendation to the organizer, to inherit the same sensitivity setting as the file shared in the meeting. Moderated meetings in Teams Moderated meetings gives organizations with Information Barrier (IB) tenants the option to allow users with conflicting policies to join the same meeting in the presence of an approved moderator Email verification for external participants to join Teams meetings Brand impersonation phishing protection personal block Block malicious users from your organization admins can block specific people for a list of users New admin policy to prevent bots from joining Teams meetings Support for SMS text notifications to attendees in Microsoft Bookings app New calendar experience in Microsoft Teams Enhancements to iPad Teams calendar New expanded gallery view for minimized meeting window Navigate meetings and messages hands-free, with the power of AI in the driver’s seat [iOS]: Available now in public preview Town Halls & Webinars Support for 50k attendees DVR Capability Event Chat Watermarking in Webinars Out of the box experience for eCDN Embed support Teams Rooms and Devices Speaker recognition: Generally available for Teams BYOD rooms in early 2025 Auto-association of peripherals in BYOD rooms Speaker attribution in BYOD rooms Automatically set presence in BYOD rooms Dual display enhancements on Teams Rooms on Android – up to 18 video tiles on dual screen MTRs (3×3 on each display) Cloud IntelliFrame video feeds on Teams Rooms on Android and mobile devices Usage reports for bookable desks in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal Copilot in Teams Admin Centre AI assistant in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal Teams Phone Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) can now support outages for up to 7 days: Generally available now Delayed simultaneous ring settings Queues app available on Teams phone devices Callback for Call Queues Speed dial support on line keys Collaborative call delegation on Teams phone devices Teams phone device users will soon be able to share access to their phone line with a specific group of users, without a structured delegation system. This enables group members to receive and initiate calls on behalf of others, enabling a simple and collaborative communication experience. Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 63 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week was again a random list of stuff I found interesting in the Message centre and roadmap for Teams. Here’s the list New Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Call Hold Synchronization Queues App is now GA SBA Enhancements SBA survivability window now increased from 24 hours to 7 days Microsoft user and phone auth tokens last up to 24 hours. Previously expired tokens are supported by the SBA for up to 7 days The SBA supports Windows and Mac desktop client and Teams Phones. eams phone devices Speed dial customization using line keys for non-touch phones and sidecars New policy for voice and face enrollment. Set to on by default Before this rollout, the current policy csTeamsMeetingPolicy has a single setting, EnrollUserOverride, that allows the administrator to enable or disable the enrollment of both face and voice profile of users. After this rollout, the new csTeamsAIPolicy will replace the existing enrollment setting in csTeamsMeetingPolicy. The new csTeamsAIPolicy has two settings, EnrollFace and EnrollVoice, that will be set to Enabled by default. New Teams Combined Chat and Channel experience rolling out now Digital Signage on MTR on Windows now GA Use a correctly formatted URL, Appspace or Xogo Blogs and videos coming soon Pexip Connect for Teams Rooms is now GA This enables you to forward an invite with a SIP join URL to your MTR email address to get a one touch join button. Rather than joining over Direct Guest Join it joins using the Pexip CVI. This means you get a more native join experience for any 3rd party meeting and more features including dual screen join and content ingest. Blogs and videos coming soon Cloud Intelliframe new admin controls. Admins can turn off “require supported camera” to expand the camera support. E.g. cameras that can optically zoom to group frame before Microsoft applies the digital cropping for Cloud IntelliFrame BYOD enhancements Enhanced shared display mode with room audio auto-detect in a BYOD room Automatically set workplace presence in a BYOD room Participant roster grouping in Teams BYOD rooms Start/stop recording on MTRoW Multi camera view on MTRoW – MTRoW will allow you to create a view from up to 4 single stream cameras and send that as the default video feed from the room. Users will also be able to switch between the cameras and choose the view they want Native PTZ controls on MTRoW TAC configured custom display name on Teams Panels (rather than in the Exchange mailbox) Behind the scenes sneak peak I thought you might find this interesting. This is the Copilot recap of the Teams meeting we used to record the episode. It shows a decent summary and a speech track of the three of us and who talked when. Once we finish talking about Teams we start talking about tea. Coming from an American living in the UK for almost 30 years, America can’t make tea right. Proper tea recipe boil your kettle get a good teabag and put it in a cup pour over the boiled water start a timer for 3 minutes and 30 seconds stir to move the bag around a little Once the timer ends stir the bag around remove the teabag with a spoon and squeeze the bag against the spoon to release all the remaining water and flavour from the bag add a splash of milk (if you like that) and suger or sweetener if you want A final stir enjoy Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 62 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week was a random list of stuff I found interesting in the Message centre and roadmap for Teams. Here’s the list Operator Connect hits 100 operators and 100 countries covered. The scale of coverage goes from a single country by one or more operators to a tie at 66 countries covered by two operators. We discuss Operator Connect at length update your Teams devices to avoid disruption. Microsoft has multiple posts begging you to install updates on your Teams devices so nothing bad happens one day. This includes Teams phones, Teams panel and Teams Rooms. Now you’re going to say that Microsoft auto updates devices now and you can only delay it by 90 days. It seems many customers out there are on such old versions of the Teams app that they don’t have the ability to be auto updated by Microsoft TAC. Here’s one MC post. So get updating your devices please Teams Display support ending 2025 Microsoft extended support for a bunch of old Teams phones that should have end of lifed At this point the Teams client decided it didn’t like the audio setup I was using. For reference, Focusrite Scarlett and Logi Yeti Studio mic and Logi Zone wired earbuds. Since it was mic and speakers that failed I am blaming Teams and the Focusrite USB interface. But what a fail. Fortunately I have backup devices and could just change it on the fly. I cut out about 2 minutes of Mark and Shawn laughing at me to spare you. But thought I would leave in the rest as an example of how any component could just fail. The rest of the list voice isolation is now available on Mac Participant grouping on MTR and BYOD rooms when joining the same meeting in the room or for proximity join Users will have exclusive control over their voice and video enrollment data – for Intelligent audio/video IntelliFrame video feeds now available on Teams mobile Unified view of teams and channels Ability to Start and stop recording on MTR on Windows Multi-camera view on MTR on Windows PTZ control on MTR on Windows Ability to change between framing modes on MTR on Windows Ability to rename the general channel becomes no general channel for newly created teams Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Voice expert Mark Vale and tech enthusiast Shawn Harry discuss the latest Microsoft Places features, Dynamics 365 contact center integration, new Teams Rooms updates, and configurability enhancements in Teams. They also dive into breakout rooms in education, Microsoft's ecosystem management, and trade-offs in security and functionality for MTR on Android.

Mark Vale and Shawn Harry talk about Team Copilot, intelligent speaker attribution, multi-camera streaming, BYOD, bookable desks, digital signage in MTR, Autopilot for MTR, enhanced SIP join with Pexip, custom emojis, Intelligent Recap, and Places in public preview in this entertaining podcast episode.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 59 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). Following on from the recent Enterprise Connect show in Orlando there was a ton of Teams news announced. Live on Stage during the keynote and on tthe Microsoft stand. The result was something like 8 or 9 Microsoft blog posts. Including one on everything, another just on Teams rooms and devices. And several expanding on specific features. The list I drew up from all of that was so big (and because part 1 took an hour to record) that I decided to split it in half. This is part 2. Here’s the list New operator partners for Teams Phone Mobile – UK has BT now and adding Vodaphone and Virgin mobile/O2 Business – picking this one up from part 1 Then we switched to Teams rooms and devices Teams Rooms Join Meetings on MTR on Windows and Android using a QR code – use for meet now, join an existing meeting and casting User reported events go to PMP Ultrasound proximity join for MTR on Windows Auto camera switching for IntelliFrame – using any MTR camera, and any camera of a person joined on a laptop Multiple Camera view selection – in a room with multiple cameras, this lets attendees switch between them. They can choose between different cameras or a view from all cameras in a single composite video tile. Teams Panel will get multi-panel check-in capability Teams Rooms on Windows updates New Teams on MTRoW – i.e. Teams 2.1 Change the language User Interface Meeting Chat is shown by default UI improvements for Join with ID – Teams and Zoom Auto update check on initial setup – both Windows and app updates Autopilot for MTR on Windows – Nicole Herskowitz demonstrated this live on stage on a Surface Hub and it took around 10 minutes 4K display and UI scaling on MTR on Windows Any device can be an intelligent speaker in a Microsoft Teams Room – these devices can be used for transcription and attribution for individuals who have enrolled their voice in Teams. This enhances the intelligent recap and Copilot by identifying who said what, and who had all the actions, even in a meeting room. Teams Rooms on Android updates Home screen refresh – will look exactly like MTRoW Ability to give feedback – ie report a problem Require meeting ID and passcode to join meetings Join Meetings on MTR on Windows and Android using a QR code – use for meet now, join an existing meeting and casting MDEP – Microsoft’s version of Android for Teams devices – several device makers are making new Android 13 devices built on MDEP including Jabra and Yealink. Microsoft will support specific SoCs from Qualcomm, MediaTek and Rockchip Device Administrator to AOSP migration Devices BYOD Shared display mode for BYOD – lets you start a meeting and put the share stage on the connected display BYOD admin experience – space management from discovered devices and reporting Shared bookable desks plug in and let it discover and reserve the desk for the day. Asset management and reporting. Sort of like BYOD, but for desks instead of rooms Here’s a list of the Microsoft blog posts that came out after Enterprise Connect What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Enterprise Connect 2024 Edition Enhancing Screen Sharing with AV1 in Microsoft Teams Enhance collaboration with Microsoft Teams Premium Voice isolation in Microsoft Teams enables personalized noise suppression for calls and meetings Teams Rooms and Devices: Enterprise Connect 2024 Introducing the Queues app: Enabling customer engagement in Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams: Building a Foundation for the Future Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 58 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). Following on from the recent Enterprise Connect show in Orlando there was a ton of Teams news announced. Live on Stage during the keynote and on tthe Microsoft stand. The result was something like 8 or 9 Microsoft blog posts. Including one on everything, another just on Teams rooms and devices. And several expanding on specific features. The list I drew up from all of that was so big (and because part 1 took an hour to record) that I decided to split it in half. This is part 1. Here’s the list Voice Isolation – this requries a user to enrol their voice in Teams, then the app focuses on that users voice only. Eleminating background noise Copilot stuff Compose Intelligent Recap for VoIP and PSTN calls Intelligent Recap on mobile Copilot in Meeting Chat Teams Phone 99.999% uptime – financially backed SLA Queues App – massive upgrade vs Voice Enabled Channels – requires Teams Premium https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/introducing-the-queues-app-enabling-customer-engagement-in/ba-p/4095971 Unified Teams app – one app for Teams work, school and consumer Create collaborative notes before and after meetings – including the agenda, notes and follow up tasks. Uses Loop Shared call history for call delegation Call rounting settings for external calls UI Improvements for Teams Phone devices – new call handling capabilities, better multi-call handling, contact handling including reordering and external contacts Teams Phone Device admin improvements Remotely manage phone device contacts: admins will be able to remotely prepopulate internal contacts (via search) or external PSTN contacts (via csv file upload) on multiple phone devices at once. Enforce phone device lock: admins can require users to set or reset the phone lock PIN on the device. Cancel scheduled operations: admins will be able to cancel scheduled updates. Remove or unassign a configuration profile: admins can unassign configuration profiles assigned to a phone device. Device level settings for Android devices: admins can remotely manage the settings of a device or group of devices. With two-way sync between the Teams admin center and devices, admins will be able to monitor the settings on any device at any point of time. We’re hoping this means what we think it means and that it will come to all Teams devices, including rooms. NEW SBA capabilities – Next quarter, we’ll add support for call transfer, forwarding, and the ability to manage call routing settings for calls to a call queue or auto attendant. Also partnering with AudioCodes on survivability support for devices compatible with SIP Gateway. New operator partners for Teams Phone Mobile – UK has BT now and adding Vodaphone and Virgin mobile/O2 Business (we’ll probably pick up on this one again next time) Thanks for listening! Stay tuned (and subscribe) for part 2. Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Revelations from a live fireside chat at ISE 2024 with Ilya Bukshteyn, Caroline Stanford, Jimmy Vaughan, and Michel Bouman. Topics include Windows Autopilot support for MTRoW, BYOD admin and user experience, Microsoft Teams Rooms growth, and upcoming features like intelligent speakers and custom backgrounds. Roadmap updates include breakout room support, zero-touch provisioning, language settings, and improved admin controls for Teams Rooms.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 56 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week we finally do our Ignite special. A bit late but we had to move the recording 4 times to get here. Better late than never. And we think some of the news after Ignite added colour to what was announced. You’ll see (hear) when you listen. Here’s the list Ignite news Copilot. That’s 99% of what was announced at Ignite related to Teams We talk about Copilot for 20 minutes The rest… AI in Teams Voice isolation decorate your background Rooms expansion of speaker recognition. Now supports non intelligent speakers BYOD QR code reservations for bookable desks – Logi Dock Flex Shared display mode easier meeting join for BYOD including QR codes and ultrasound proximity bookable desk discovery Mesh immersive spaces. Join using yoru avatar and participate using mouse and keyboard or wearing AI goggles build customized immersive spaces using teh Mesh editor more Copilots There are Copilots for virtually everything in M365 The new Teams app is GA and will be the defult from March. Also available in Edge and Chrome Other news since Ignite Copilot now available to all no longer 300 seat or M365 Esub requirement Copilot Pro £20 pupm and Copilot M365 £30 pupm and includes Teams Copilot New or enhanced meeting experience https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/new-year-new-meeting-enhancements-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/4034799 New Gallery Simplified meeting invite including a shorter URL Audio and video controls in the main UI How to Deploy Teams Phone Devices – 3 easy steps https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/how-to-deploy-teams-phone-devices/ba-p/3994979 New Teams app is now GA on VDI Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.

Hello Readers, I hope you’re well. Welcome to Episode 55 of the UCStatus Podcast. This episode features me (@randychapman), Mark Vale (@markvale83) and Shawn Harry (@shawnharry). This week we chat about the latest Teams news from the Message Centre and Roadmap. Here’s the list Copilot is GA – we couldn’t not talk about it Teams Live Event Retirement 30 Sept 2024 Introducing Town Halls (replacing TLE) Cloud IntelliFrame on MTR on Windows Cloud IntelliFrame now available on the new Teams desktop client New Teams Desktop is now GA Teams Panels are now displayed in the Pro Portal One Time Passcode (OTP) for simplified setup of Teams Rooms on Windows – 4.19 Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows All-in-one experience For devices such as Surface Hub. Surface Hub 3 will be launched with MTR on Windows starting in version 4.19 Automatic Updates for the Teams app on Android-based Teams Devices Including update phases (like rings) in TAC only https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC679738 Bring-Your-Own-Device IT Admin Experience in Teams Pro Management Portal Rolling out Late November Teams Panel QR code support rolling out mid-November Support Joining a Teams Live Event as Attendee for Teams Rooms on Windows mid November to late December Front Row Enhancement: Active video speaker promotion for Teams Rooms on Windows mid November to late December Nightly Reboot Window for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android New Gallery in Teams Meetings https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC686281 Private Lines coming in December Use the shared device license on a mobile device Improved view switcher for MTR on Android pop up menu with all the available views. With tick boxe to show or hide chat. Similar to that on Windows. Coming in MTRoA update 3, early January Then we started talking about Copilot again Be sure to catch Microsoft Ignite starting next week. There will be loads of announcements coming as usual. And stay tuned for our Ignite special shortly after. Thanks for listening! Catch you next time. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below. You can listen in-line in this post, or if you prefer, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, TuneIn or iHeartRadio. The links are below. If you’ve enjoyed this or any other episodes of the UCStatus Podcast, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share. Sign Up We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for future episodes so why not leave a comment.