This article is part of a series that aims to provide an easy to consume roundup of Ignite 2020 announcements. I’ll be covering anything from the Microsoft 365 stack that I personally think will have the biggest impact on users. I won’t be covering Azure or much on any Microsoft 365 admin controls. If I spotted a release date, I have added that in brackets. Release dates are estimates only and could of course change.
Articles in the series:
- Microsoft Teams Meetings (this one)
- Microsoft Teams Calling
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Meetings
Together Mode (2020)
- New scenes to choose from
- Smarter edge detection for that perfect cardboard cut-out 😉
- Automatic scaling and centering of meeting participants in their virtual seats
Custom Layouts (2020)
- Better control of what participants see, like:
- Pin the presenter for all participants
- Overlay your video on top of your PowerPoint presentation
Breakout Rooms (Oct 2020)
- Split your meeting into multiple break out ‘rooms’ for focused brainstorming or workgroup discussions
- Presenters can:
- Hop between breakout rooms
- Make announcement to breakout rooms
- Close the breakout rooms and return everyone to the main meeting
Meetings Recap (2020)
- Makes all the valuable information captured during (and before) a meeting easy to access in the Microsoft Teams meeting details:
- Meeting recording
- Transcript
- Chat
- Shared files
- Meetings Recap will also be available in the Outlook meeting event
Webinars (end of 2020)
New features to support effective Microsoft Teams webinars:
- Attendee registration
- Automated registration emails
- Reporting dashboard to help understand attendee engagement
- Reporting data will be available via API, so customers could bring this data into their CRM and marketing apps
- Licence add-on will be required
Scalability – 20,000 participants (2020)
- Support for 1000 full experience users
- Scale to 20,000 in a view-only mode
- Requires ‘Advanced Communications’ license
Meeting Room Panels
- Out of room display panel
- Provides scheduling and occupancy information
- Crestron and Yealink are the first partners to market
Other enhancements
- Touchless meetings capabilities with:
- Room remote app
- Teams casting
- Voice assistance with Microsoft Cortana (US only currently)
- Surface Hub 2S 85-inch model availability beginning in January 2021
- Windows 10 Team 2020 Update for Surface Hub 2S
- Reactions in meetings (2020)
More Info
- Check out the Microsoft Ignite Book of News for more details about all announcements
- Microsoft Teams Ignite 2020 news
