Bookmarks (38)

Earlier this year we learnt about Microsoft Teams Operator connect with the public preview rolling out in May. This week at Enterprise Connect, as well as announcing 5 new calling plan countries, Microsoft announced Operator Connect would be generally available this week. Operator Connect is another option, alongside Calling plans and Direct routing, for Public […]

Today at Enterprise Connect Nicole Herskowitz made a number of announcements; Operator Connect is generally available this week, but also that Microsoft Teams Calling Plans is expanding into 5 new markets – Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia. That brings the total countries covered by calling plans up to 33 (31 from Microsoft directly and […]

Today Facebook announced the Portal Go, a battery-powered 10-inch portal smart screen as well as a new version of the Portal+, with a  14-inch tiltable display However, most interesting for me, beginning in December, Facebook is adding support for Microsoft Teams for all Portal touch-based devices including Portal Go and Portal+. This will be alongside […]

I’m excited to be speaking at UC Expo 2021, at ExcCel London, October 6th and 7th 2021. It’s always a great event and I’m particularly excited that it’s going to be in person. The event is co-located with Digital Transformation Expo Be sure to get registered here As well as doing some sessions I will […]

Enterprise connect focuses on the issues central to enterprise communications and collaboration. Due to continuing world events, it’s all virtual and free to attend this year. Highlights include: Five industry keynotes from Microsoft, Cisco, Zoom, RingCentral, and AWS Thought-leading General Sessions featuring enterprise communications decision-makers, contact center technology leaders, and strategic visionaries in the industry […]

I like keeping an eye on Azure Communication Services, Microsoft’s CPaaS that is also the underpinning of Microsoft Teams Two Interesting customers have recently come up. Firstly LinkedIn (a Microsoft company) are using ACS to allow users to quickly set up and join video meetings within LinkedIn’s messaging environment without needing to sign in anywhere […]

There is never a dull moment in the UC and collaboration world. This week, Five9 Cloud Contact Center was officially added to the  Microsoft Teams certified contact center list. Having previously been on the pending list. The Teams integration is via the “connect model”, using Microsoft certified SBCs and Direct Routing to connect the contact […]

Normally the summer things quiet down, but still, a lot going on in the Microsoft Teams space. This month in the UC Today news podcast we talk about: Microsoft 365 price increases and Microsoft adding unlimited Microsoft Teams Meeting PSTN dial-in to enterprise, business, frontline, and government licences – https://tomtalks.blog/2021/08/microso... Microsoft hires former Uber exec […]

In a blog today Microsoft announced some coming price increases for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans Office 365 E1 from $8 to $10 per user per month Office 365 E3 from $20 to $23 per user per month Office 365 E5 from $35 to $38 per user per month Microsoft 365 Business Basic from […]

In a Microsoft blog post today from Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, giving a heads up of coming Microsoft 365/Office 365 price rises, Microsoft also announced something really exciting for Microsoft Teams. “And today, we are announcing that we will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, […]

Teams panels are outside of the meeting room touch screen displays that have colour-coded indicators for space availability status, view location and meeting details and reserve available meeting spaces directly from the panel. They are available from Crestron and Yealink. Microsoft has just added a great new ability to add your own custom line of […]

On the 20th July Microsoft announced and released a preview of SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. Some highlights from the announcement: “With SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, you’ll end the cycle of long and costly major version upgrades to get new features and remain in support. Microsoft will deliver our latest innovations to customers through updates that […]

Check it out on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Microsoft Teams Update, August 2021 – YouTube This month on the UC Today Microsoft Teams Update podcast we talk about: Big Microsoft numbers announced – but do they stack up Preview Microsoft Teams 2.0 consumer on Windows 11 rolls out Microsoft Teams Client […]

Interesting news in the Microsoft Teams space, Microsoft has acquired Peer5, a WebRTC-based eCDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) solution that runs in-browser. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Peer5 has powered large live events with as many as 2 million concurrent users) and our product has been used over the years by more than […]

Microsoft just announced an impressive 250 Million Monthly Active Users. What is interesting is that number is not just Office 365 users, which would include Office 365 business, education and government users or what Microsoft would call “commercial”, it also includes Home or consumer users using Teams. The numbers also include any users currently in […]

We recently saw the MS-740: Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams being released and the recent Microsoft Inspire partner conference gave us confirmation of another coming Teams exam, the MS-740 Teams Voice Engineer exam. From the Ignite session Microsoft Teams, Grow your Business with the Hybrid workplace at 27:08 We can now see the complete lineup of Microsoft […]

An interesting development in Microsoft Teams Rooms. For some time, we have had certified solutions to add external physical “Audio Conferencing Processors” or DSPs which both process and enhance audio (for example automatic mic mixing, reducing echo, noise, or distortion), and these have relied on a USB connection to the Teams meeting room PC appliance […]

Microsoft Teams news from Microsoft’s Q4 FY21 earnings announcement on 27th July. Previously Microsoft reported *daily* active users, with the last report being 145 million Daily Active Users (DAU) in April 2021, in this earnings call Microsoft switched to Monthly Active users, so the numbers are not directly comparable, Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, said […]

I reported a few weeks ago that RTMP streaming was coming for Microsoft Teams, and now we have it in the form of an open-source Teams Broadcast Development Kit (BDK) that runs on an Azure VM. The Teams Broadcast Development Kit allows Audio/video in and out via SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) Audio/video in and out […]

A few weeks ago I blogged about the new “Teams 2.0” client which is initially coming for Teams personal (consumer) bundled in with Windows 11. This week Microsoft rolled out the Teams 2.0 client to select Windows 11 preview users (on the Windows Insider preview program). This is only for consumer accounts (e.g outlook.com type […]

Previously Microsoft dealt with Microsoft provided PSTN number porting and number provision issues via some specific email addresses (like ptneu@microsoft and gcstnmsd@microsoft). As of July 22, 2021, the email system has been retired and replaced with a new dedicated portal. The portal is at https://pstnsd.powerappsportals.com/ but can also be reached via the Teams Admin center: […]

One good session from Inspire 2021 was on partners growing their Teams practice and the opportunity around Teams Phone. The session included a Teams Calling roadmap update. Image from The Year of Teams Phone – Grow Your Practice Most of this was already known about, but something public for the first time is “Client SDK […]

One of the big announcements from Microsoft Inspire last week was the integration between Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Microsoft is “launching” the same news multiple times these days, as it was also announced at Ignite, the customer conference in March 2021. Tom […]

Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo allows Office 365 tenants to a primary central location and one or more specific satellite locations for their data. This can be helpful to meet data residency requirements for multi-national organizations. For example, needing to keep German users data in Germany. or EU users data within the EU. Multi-Geo was initially launched […]

A few days ago I posted about the new MS-740: Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams (beta) exam. Skills measured Troubleshoot Microsoft Teams voice issues (15-20%) Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft Teams meetings and live events (20-25%) Troubleshoot federation issues (10-15%) Troubleshoot issues signing into Microsoft Teams (15-20%) Troubleshoot teams and channels (10-15%) Troubleshoot issues with files (15-20%) Full […]

Microsoft Teams is going to get support to sending a RTMP stream to third-party platforms like YouTube, Restream and Twitch. Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) was initially a proprietary protocol developed by Macromedia for streaming audio, video and data over the Internet but is now released for public use. A popular scenario for this might be […]

Something I’m personally really excited about, Microsoft Teams is getting an option to set your sound to high fidelity. This can be used to reproduce music in high quality for things like online exercise classes, music classes or live music performances, but also to join teams meetings with more high-end microphones and not have teams […]

Exciting news on the Azure Communication Services Front, you can now connect your own PSTN carrier or interop with an existing PBX via a variant of the same Direct Routing Microsoft Teams For those not familiar with ACS, it’s Microsoft’s CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) platform that is also the platform that powers Microsoft […]

Another big month for Microsoft Teams news, I can’t believe we’re in the second half of the year and the start of Microsoft’s new financial year already! This month on the UC Today Microsoft Teams podcast we talk about: Windows 11 will tightly integrate with new Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams 2.0 will use half the […]

Thanks to Vlad Catrinescu for the heads up on this one. Microsoft has quietly released Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Support Engineer Associate certification It’s a one exam certification, requiring you to pass the new Exam MS-740: Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams exam, going into beta on 8th July 2021 This exam measures your ability to troubleshoot the […]

Today at the Windows 11 launch event, Microsoft showed some new Microsoft Teams experiences integrated into Windows 11. Chat from Microsoft Teams will be integrated into the taskbar, you will also be able to mute and unmute, or start presenting directly from the taskbar. Even though this was the windows 11 event, Microsoft Teams got […]

Keep forgetting to press the record button? This new feature will allow meeting organisers to set the meeting to automatically start recording in the meeting options. This option can be enabled for a single meeting occurrence or for a series, not as a default for all meetings X person schedules. The meeting initiator (first to […]

As many organisations move to “hybrid working” we are seeing a massive uptick in video use by people in the office, way higher than pre-pandemic for the same user counts. This seems to be mainly due to using video being more embedded as a default habit for users and also working hybrid means more video […]

This is the new Microsoft Teams experience for Surface Hub, now rolling out in preview with some big improvements to Teams on Surface Hub. Some new features for the Surface Hub Teams experience Automatic full screen on join Reactions Large Gallery View Together mode Chat bubbles Share applications (not just full screen) Share system audio […]

Credit to Brad Sams for first reporting on this, Alongside the Windows 11 announcement today, Rish Tandon, the CVP Engineering for Microsoft Teams, posted on Twitter about changes coming to Microsoft Teams architecture. It gave a lot of useful insight into what is coming. Microsoft Teams is moving away from Electron to Edge Webview2 Angular […]

Cisco Webex Calling is Cisco’s cloud-based phone system integrated into Webex. Webex calling has 3 PSTN connectivity options Cisco Calling plans, direct from Cisco Calling plans from 30 Webex Calling service providers worldwide Bring your own Carrier via Local Gateway There is a specific Webex Calling app for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows Desktop specifically for […]

Microsoft Teams is a constantly evolving cloud product, with many new features being added over time. Microsoft added over 300 features between April 2020 and April 2021. The Teams web app is updated weekly. Teams desktop client updates are released every two weeks. Client updates usually happen quietly in the background. Not every update brings […]

Exciting news from AudioCodes, they have released their Direct Routing Survivable Branch Virtual Appliance for deployment on VMware and Hyper-V platforms in a customers DC. This allows a customer to virtually deploy Teams PSTN Voice survivability in the event that the site loses connection to the internet/Microsoft Teams Service. For example, if the customer site […]