Microsoft Teams Release Roundup: Spring 2024  

Introduction 

With over 320 million monthly active users, Microsoft Teams is one of the biggest apps on the planet.  

With an app that big comes plenty of new features and updates-and we’re here to share the biggest and best with our regular Teams Release Roundup. In this edition, we’ll take a look at some of the updates we think are worth knowing about in spring 2024-covering changes from late 2023 and the first few months of 2024. 

So, what are we waiting for? 

Chat with your Copilot anytime in Teams 

February’s tentpole feature was all about everybody’s favourite buzzword: AI.  

Microsoft has added a new Copilot app which is available at the top of the chat feed for users with supported licenses. As you’d expect, you can chat to Copilot in much the same way you would any AI bot-ask it to summarise your recent meetings, fill you in on what you missed, find out what’s going on in your channels, and more. The Copilot app will even give suggested prompts to help you make the most of it. 

Copilot in Teams is available now for anyone with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.  

New Copilot features added to Microsoft Teams 

You know AI is a big deal when we’ve had to include two different updates on the same thing.  

In addition to the new Copilot app, Microsoft has also added a range of other AI-powered features to Teams, including: 

• Assistance writing chat or channel messages. You’ll find a new “Rewrite” or “Adjust” option when composing messages either in chats or on channels in Teams, which will use AI to suggest potential changes to your post.  
• Ask Copilot to summarise chats or channels. Using the new Copilot button in the upper-right corner of a chat or a channel, you can ask Copilot to summarise what you’ve missed. 

As with the Copilot Chat feature above, you’ll need the appropriate Copilot for Microsoft 365 license to use these features.  

“Find In Chat” helps you find that one message from weeks ago 

Ever wanted to find a specific post or tidbit of info from one of your Teams channels, but don’t want to scroll back through weeks of activity?  

To solve this problem, Teams has added a new “Find in chat” option, which will allow you to search through the entire history of any channel. To use it, simply click the Open channel details button in the upper-right corner to open the info pane for the channel, then select Find in channel.  

Teams channels now support Microsoft Loop components 

If you’re not familiar with Microsoft Loop, you can think of it like a digital canvas which can be used for almost anything: databases, scratchpads, documents, whiteboarding-you name it.  

The cool thing about Loop is that Loop “components” can be embedded into other apps with changes reflected instantly in real time. With this update for Teams, Loop components can now be added to channels or chats.  

So, imagine you’re working on a project with a colleague and keeping it all in sync within a Loop Page-you wouldn’t even need to open up Loop, because you can simply work on the component without ever leaving Teams. Smart, eh? 

Take your meetings into the 3D world with Microsoft Mesh 

Microsoft Mesh is another nifty technology which enables collaboration and interaction via mixed reality. In short, it allows users to step into a virtual world-a bit like a video game-and collaborate with colleagues in real time. 

With this update, Microsoft has enabled Microsoft Mesh Immersive Spaces for Teams meetings. This means that anyone hosting a Teams meeting can use the ‘View’ menu to enable immersive spaces and choose from either the Lakehouse or Oasis theme. Attendees can then explore the 3D space using their mouse and keyboard, or with a Meta Quest VR headset if they have one to hand.   

Keep your audience in sight with Together Mode  

If you regularly attend or host meetings in Teams, you’ll know that one downside to presenting your screen is that you usually can’t see your team’s video feeds at the same time.  

But, of course, sometimes you want to see how people are reacting to what you’re showing-so Microsoft has a solution. With this update, you’ll be able to enable Together Mode while presenting, which will bring the video of other participants onto your screen just below what you’re sharing. To try this out, just click View > Together mode the next time you’re presenting on a call. 

If you’d like to know more about Teams, Teams Premium, or Copilot for Microsoft 365, speak to your Get Support account manager or call the team anytime on 01865 594 000.