Microsoft Teams Feature Digest

One of my passions is for Microsoft teams and so this will be the first blog post in an update of features current availible for the Microsoft Teams platform.

In this post I'll be rounding up some of the cool new features availible in teams that have come out this last 3-6 months and well as an update on the state of teams.

I'll be posting more about teams as it grows but also follow the offical blog https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/bg-p/MicrosoftTeamsBlog

Shifts

A feature that I really like that's been added is the fact you can manage shifts and extra time such as holidays, non paid and areas. You can create shift schedules and publish them, allow for approval or create a collaborative calendar everyone can edit.

Shifts for managing team time

Annoucements

Posts in channels are a core part of the Teams experience however nothing really stood out from the crowd. Now we have the ability to mark a post as an announcement to highlight it from the crowd which you can do by clicking on the "collapse compose button" on the left underneath a the message box when creating a message followed by selecting it from the top left

Accouncement Option

Suggested usages could be highlighting new starters, company news and other such items.

Message Importance

Sometimes it can be quite important to make sure someone has seen your message and there's 3 levels of importance when sending a message to a user or group chat. This can be applied by clicking the exclamation mark in under the messsage box when creating a message in a PM or group chat.

• Standard - A message as standard with no importance
• Important - A message you would like someone to take note of
• Urgent - An urget message. If the user does not open this message and view it the user will get a new notification ever 2 minutes for 20 minutes.

Urgent seems like a cool feature but be wary to not spam someone.

Teams for Education

Teams for education is a version of Teams that's been built for the education sector. It comes with a new UI update and has time saves for communicating with students as well as grading. More here

Praise

Now built in to Teams for both channels and messages is the ability to add praise. This is a simple feature allowing you to praise a team member when they have done good work.

Approval for a great developer

Azure Pipelines

To go with the Azure Devops connector we now have a new application that can be added in when working with Pipelines created in Azure Devops.

Once added and configured in the apps area for a team it allows for connecting to a pipeline by the name.

One of the greatest enhancements to the notification system with the Azure Devops connector is the ability to apporovate parts of the pipeline direct from teams.

Azure Pipelines Approval 

That's all from me, these are the features that's most peaked by attention recently in teams. I'll continue to post about it when new areas come out.