Can't wait to work with others live again? Solutions you use to work online are not enough for you? Whether or not you answered yes, Microsoft is constantly working on solutions to improve hybrid work. It is important that new ways of connecting are found regardless of the place of stay (office, house, travel). Microsoft believes that hybrid work is the future, and that to succeed, we need to transform your organization with new operating models.
A new, hybrid, natural reality
Ever since COVID-19 forced us to close offices and work from home, Microsoft Teams has combined chat, phone calls, meetings, and business process automation. Microsoft is entering into a hybrid reality of trying to develop a new experience in Teams so that everyone is "heard," meaning that people who can't be in the conference room at the moment can attend the meeting equally with those in the room.
During the epidemic, it was noticed that remote work adversely affects our health. We are tired of constant meetings in virtual reality and digital overload, we cannot effectively separate work from home, from private activities, and our well-being is not good. Microsoft is coming to the rescue and introduced Microsoft Viva, an integrated employee experience platform for Teams, where employees can find a way to control their working time.
Protecting time and keeping you feeling good
In response to increased stress, difficulty focusing on remote work, Microsoft has decided to support users by presenting Headspace solutions in The Viva Details app in Teams. It can help improve fitness and reduce stress. Relaxation, setting working hours, or conscious start of the day are the results that you will be able to achieve, among other things, thanks to a set of guided meditations or consciousness exercises. In addition, timers or mute time to help increase the importance and protection of private time.
Participation on an equal, flexible basis – at home, at the office and on the go
A new improvement to the hybrid meeting environments in Microsoft Teams Rooms will be the new room layout with the video gallery at the bottom, so that participants in the room will have better contact with those remote and everyone will feel that they have their place at the table. To actively participate in a meeting, the contents of the window will be surrounded by a meeting plan, tasks, and notes. People in the conference room will have access to the chat and will be able to respond to comments in the conference room.
Teams Rooms will enlarge the video area and new layouts available to make remote participants' images larger and more realistic. What's more, there will be more features from the desktop app such as dynamic responses, highlighting, pinning chat messages, video streams, and replying to a specific message to preserve the context of the conversation. Automatically add notes, schedule, and meeting tasks to your new OneNote home page to the icing on the cake.
Jabra, Logitech, Poly, and Neat use advanced camera technology to make everyone in the room visible for hybrid meetings. Teams Smart Speakers from EPOS and Yealink, which are designed for Teams Rooms, are now available to the general public. They recognize the voice and assign notes to the speaker so others can focus on the conversation instead of the notes. And absentees can become familiar with the register at a later date.
The new Teams Rooms is also available for Surface Hub, which includes the most popular desktop meeting and control features, such as an upgraded meeting scene, Total mode, and PowerPoint Live. Microsoft Whiteboars is also expected to be available on Surface Hub in the fall so everyone can draw and write on the same digital canvas.
Whiteboard has created a new environment that allows remote participants to easily run whiteboard sessions where ideas can be developed faster and content added to contributors' processing. "Brainstorming", from today it is possible not only in live meetings.
To make a hybrid meeting effective and anyone can present and receive a presentation in an attractive way, PowerPoint Live has new features. Among other things, translating slides so that everyone can view the presentation in the selected language. The ink environment allows you to take notes on slides during a presentation, and a laser pointer lets you pay attention to the most important things. These latest features are also available in the Teams mobile app.
You can also use flexible components in Outlook — email and calendar — to help you manage time, plan, notes, and tasks in your apps.