What’s New in Microsoft Teams?

By now you will likely be using the ‘new’ Microsoft Teams. At first glance you might only spot a few superficial differences compared to ‘classic’ Teams, which most of the Faculty and the wider University adopted en-mass during the Pandemic. However, the desktop application has been completely rebuilt and does offer some significant enhancements. Microsoft will be beginning a phased retirement of Classic Teams from 31st March 2024, so it’s a good time to take a look at the new features.

Why the changes?
• To improve efficiency. The New Teams is claimed to be 2x faster and uses 50% less memory used, saving battery power and with faster start up.
• To simplify and streamline. The new Teams offers a toned-down appearance and other subtle changes make it look more like a native Windows 11 app (though there still remain differences in Web, PC Desktop, Mac, PWA and mobile versions of Teams).
• To be AI ready – Teams will be supporting proprietary AI features from other Microsoft Apps (many of these are behind paywalls, so not available for everyone, if your organisation hasn’t paid extra for the licence).

Teams and Chat
Teams, Chat and Activity, remain the familiar main “apps” in Microsoft Teams in addition to video calls/meetings. Up to now, finding stuff on Teams has been challenging, but the new version has search within Teams Channels and within Chats.

Search in a Teams Channel
Search in a chat

One useful change in Teams (but sadly not Chat) is that new posts automatically open in the rich format editor – meaning less embarrassing part messages sent, when you accidentally hit return! There is also the option to change the order for viewing posts in a channel – newest at the top or newest at the bottom.

Switching between a “Post” or “Announcement” is a little easier in the new Teams. Announcements have a coloured header and headline. After you start a post, there is a small button to change the post type. Including an image in the announcement heading is currently broken, and in future this might be AI generated.

Posting an Announcement

Forwarding messages in Chat is also easier (right click on the message and use Forward from the … options). In the desktop version you can now “Pop out” a chat into a new Window. Also, you can now delete a chat (as well as Hide) but this deletes it for you only (not others in the chat) and you may need to delete files in the message separately.

Forwarding a chat message

If you are the owner of a team, there is a new option to Archive the team. At that point members can still view, but can’t start new chats/reply etc., but you can still add/remove members. You can also unarchive if needed.

Three Dot-tastic! …
The horizontal three dots (…) are used even more extensively in the new Teams, signifying a “more options” menu. In some views there are up to 6 of the three dots in different places around the screen! Not a major issue, but a bit of a nightmare if you are writing instructions, or if you are offering Help Desk advice; “just click on the three dots…” Oh, and sometimes it’s referred to as the “meatballs menu”.

Common menu icons

Other Changes
Settings have all been moved into one place (via the top right …menu), which simplifies things. The Presence (status) has been made more reliable, but you may still appear “Away” whist busy working in other applications. You can also now set your status (Available, Do Not Disturb etc) for a specific duration. Work location (Office or Remote) can be set for the current day.

Some of the “Apps” within Teams have changed. “Files” is now “One Drive”. “Tasks” is currently “Tasks by Planner and To Do”. Calendar has a new agenda view. There are some new apps too – you can add People, Meet and Co-Pilot (if paid for by your organisation) via the three dot menu in the left-hand App pane. Calendar, Meet and People have a lot of overlap with other Microsoft products but may be worth a look, depending on your preferences. “People” gives you a place to manage NU and external contacts in one place. It was automatically populated for me with contacts from over 20 years from Outlook, but many had long since left the University. You can categorise contacts, but the big limitation is that you can’t share contacts with your team (presumably Microsoft don’t want you to miss out on the opportunity of paying for an expensive CRM solution!). “Meet” is intended to let you see all your meetings in one place. You can add new people and have a pre-meet chat. AI is used to identify if you are working on a doc with people involved in the meeting. There are also recordings of meeting calls (if available). There are a growing number of third party apps that you can add – Microsoft appear to be encouraging an ecosystem similar to Android and Apple’s App Stores, around Teams. Presumably they are accelerating this strategy as competition to develop marketplaces for new AI apps intensifies.

Add Apps

Some people may belong to multiple organisations and have different accounts on Teams (we have “Tenancy” on NU Sharepoint; some within FMS also have accounts with NHS organisations, research councils, or other partners). The new Teams makes it easier to switch and notifications and activity is easier to see in other Tenancies, without switching accounts. But don’t switch tenancy mid call, or you risk being kicked off your call!

Be Aware!
• Teams has been rebuilt from the ground up – so there are some initial bugs. For example, spell checking is intermittently broken; currently US English only (at 1st March 2024)
• Some people at NU are reporting fewer notifications than expected; some may have been lost on migration from Classic teams – so it is worth reviewing your notification settings for each Team you are in.
• Updates to Teams are happening frequently – so update to the latest version regularly (at least ensure automatic updates are enabled). Since writing this article, in the space of a week, “CoPilot” had disappeared as a distinct native app in Teams, but there are several CoPilot-based specialist apps and more third party apps are appearing.

Acknowledgements and Further Information
This article draws on a Webinar by Jo Robinson-Lamb & Lucy Bolt from the NUIT Digital Adoption Team and information about changes to Teams on the Microsoft Website. Opinions given here are entirely personal to the author.

Spring Clean your Digital Clutter

The FMS TEL team were recently discussing the amount of teams and chats we end up belonging to after working at the University for a while. As a team we decided to attempt a spring clean of our teams areas.

The digital intensity of our workday is increasing, and we need to be thoughtful about how we help manage it

Kate Maxwell, Microsoft Industry Blogs

👨‍👨‍👦‍👦 Teams

I spent 5 minutes reviewing the chats I was a part of. Below are a few things I considered:

  • Is this conversation still on going?
  • Do I talk to this person/group regularly?

If I answered no to both questions then the chat can be removed from my list. There are a few ways to do this:

  • Hide – This is my preferred option, the chat is removed from my list but the conversation history is easily restored by searching for the conversation and clicking “Show hidden chat history”. The other members of the chat are unaware that I have hidden the conversation and if the conversation starts again the thread will reappear in my list and I will be notified.
  • Delete – This is a more permanent option but does have its uses. Perhaps you are in a group chat and your contribution is complete, however the conversation is still ongoing. By deleting the chat you leave the conversation and are no longer able to see any future posts. Other members of the chat will be made aware that you have left and can re-invite you if you are needed again.

I now review my chats on a more regular basis, my aim is to remove the scroll bar to ensure the colleagues I chat with on a regular basis are easily accessible without having to scroll through the clutter.

Next I looked at the “Teams” I was a member of. Some teams had been started with all the best intentions but had never gotten any traction or the teams were used during a project which is now complete, so I decided to leave those teams. Other teams which were active but were not currently offering value I decided to “hide”. This way they do not clutter up my teams window or send me notifications but I can still pop in an read any updates if I need to.

📁 OneDrive

After decluttering my teams (which didnt take as long as I thought it would) I felt invigorated to do more decluttering so I moved onto my OneDrive.

I have to admit I am guilty of saving and keeping everything, so my OneDrive was very full and quite messy. I knew this was going to be a big task so I set myself a timer for 10 minutes and I would do as much as I could and call it a win.

I started at the top level and decided any loose files needed to be sorted into folders. I then went through the folders I had for teaching materials and anything I knew I had uploaded to Canvas I deleted.

This task is still on going, anytime a meeting finishes early or I am waiting for a meeting to start I use that time to review a few more folders.

Resources

Downloading from Teams: Is it done yet?

How to manage and track your downloads from Microsoft Teams.

Video content created for the e-learning modules in FMS is often shared between colleagues in Teams. A problem I have come across is the lack of a progress bar within Teams for downloads.

When downloading a small file, such as an image or a document, it is not really a problem. You get a pop up notification of the download starting and shortly after a similar pop up notification saying the download is complete.

Screenshot of teams download notifications

If you are downloading a larger file such as 1 hour+ videos, which may take a while to download, you are left in limbo for how long it will take and if you move away from your screen you may miss the pop up notification entirely.

One solution is to keep an eye on the files icon on the teams navigation pane. It will be blank by default, show a downward arrow when downloading and briefly show a green tick when downloads are complete.

Teams File Icons

A second solution is to download the file from SharePoint instead. If you right click the file you should see an option to Open in SharePoint (this only works in teams areas, not chats). From SharePoint, select your file and click download. Your download will be controlled by your chosen browser.

In Chrome the progress bar displays the size and time limit left and the icon on the task bar turns into a progress bar as well. With this method I can get on with other tasks while the file downloads and be aware of its progress as well. I can also cancel the download if I need to.

Progress notifications in Chrome

Running an Online Event via Teams – Northern and Yorkshire Rheumatology Meeting 2021

Janet Herdman, Marc Bennett, Eleanor Gordon

This case study covers the running of The Northern and Yorkshire Rheumatology Meeting 2021 (NYRM) using Microsoft Teams. The 170 attendees included a wide range of healthcare providers and students involved in Musculo-Skeletal disease specialisms. These included academics, clinical academics, PhD students, Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHPs) such as podiatrists, nurses and physiotherapists, and other Healthcare Professionals (HCPs), as well as corporate sponsors. The following discusses how the event was set up and run, as well as sharing reflections on the process. Technical guides for the setup are available at the end of the text.

Building Skills, Confidence and Resilience

This event has allowed for the development of skills in IT generally and specifically with running a Team and meetings. Though the initial setup may be a little technical if requirements are complex, after that it is simple to keep things running on the day.

It may seem intimidating to run this type of event as things go wrong sometimes, but this is true for live in-person events as well, it’s just that the solutions are different. It definitely helped that there was an extra pair of eyes to help manage the busier periods when a lot of people were joining sessions.

As with many things, sometimes it’s easiest just to jump in and get started! Though it was a bit of a baptism of fire running such a large and important event as a first try, with the support beforehand and the time to test, the running of the event on the day wasn’t too difficult. Time to practice with the tools and knowing who to ask for help was key in getting confidence to try out the process. Presenters and attendees were patient with the snags, and this is almost always what we find when trying something new. Confidence and resilience have now been developed, and lessons were learned that can be applied to future events.

From Offline to Online

Normally this meeting is held in York as a face-to face conference and it has been running annually since 1994. Attendees can gain CPD points from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) for attending. As with the offline event, a registration process is undertaken to ascertain who will be joining. While this may seem less important for an online meeting, it is relevant to how roles are set up, and confidentiality.

Requirements for the Conference

Key requirements for the event were:

  • Persistent online space for chatting and housing resources prior to, and for 2 weeks after the event (RCP requirement)
  • Recording attendance (RCP requirement)
  • Session recording and sharing (RCP requirement)
  • Ability to adequately control access to and the flow of restricted information (sponsors’ requirement)
  • Multiple presenters in one call
  • Multiple simultaneous sessions
  • Ability to handle internal and external attendees and speakers

A Single Access Point

The requirement to have an online space outside of the meetings themselves meant that using Teams made more sense. While it would have been possible to run the live sessions via Zoom and have other information on Teams, keeping this all within one app meant the experience was smoother for both attendees and hosts, as they only needed to worry about one login. This is key for our partners in NHS trusts who may not have Zoom on their work computers and may also be dealing with multiple guest logins on multiple services. Attendees with different feature sets available were still able to access everything, as only the basic features of Teams were used. Teams also allows for attendance and session recording built into each meeting, so this requirement could be satisfied without adding Zoom.

Confidential Information

One key aspect of the conference is that the sponsors’ information needed to be kept private to HCPs only, and not be downloadable. In an online setting, access to non-contextualised information in an unmonitored fashion could quickly lead to misunderstanding. To facilitate sponsor participation, a separate SharePoint document library was created, and access was only granted to those who needed it using a SharePoint permissions group. The only people who could download any of the files were the Team owners.

Setup and Testing

The first stage was to set up a ‘sandbox’ or testing area to trial the settings and see how things would work in practice. Various solutions were trialled, including the confidential area and test meetings to try out the software. This was especially important as Janet did not have prior experience of running Teams meetings. Once the setup was decided upon, Marc and Janet built the real Team, ready to invite attendees.

Team Space

Links to individual sessions were posted in their respective areas and sent to participants via email. There was also an overview post with the full day’s agenda available in the ‘General’ channel for all attendees to see.

A test meeting with presenters was run, in which Teams features were tested out with the speakers. This allowed them to become familiar with the software, and also allowed Janet to try using the features ‘live’ – doing simple tasks such as changing speakers’ roles from guest to presenter and managing the lobby.

On the Day

The bulk of work was at session changeovers, particularly at the start of each session. While there was a short handover time to allow for people to take a quick break and join the next call, having more staggered start times for simultaneous sessions would have taken the pressure off, even if this was just 5 minutes or so of difference. It’s worth noting that while Eleanor is experienced with Teams no technical solutions were needed on the day – it was more a case of directing people and sharing links in the right places – anyone could do this with a practice run beforehand.

Some attendees didn’t log in to the meetings with their invited accounts, which meant their presenter settings hadn’t carried over. Thankfully, this could be quickly changed in the meeting itself by updating the meeting options. It’s also worth noting that people do not need to be elevated to presenter in order to respond to questions – the main difference is that presenters can share their screen. Sometimes when people entered the lobby, all of the presenters would get a notification to allow them in – making them seem to disappear from the waiting list because they had already been admitted by someone else. This caused a little confusion for us but didn’t affect the attendees’ experience. In future instances it may be easier to allow everyone into the meeting (managed by one host) and elevate the required speakers’ permissions after the bulk of attendees have entered – this is a good backstop should issues arise with logins too.

After the Event

Meeting recordings were stored automatically to Stream, and then downloaded and uploaded moved to the SharePoint space. This is currently the smoothest way for guest access to video, though Microsoft are making changes to this process for 2022.

Because the meetings were automatically recorded, there was no risk of forgetting to press record. However, because anyone entering the meeting room was able to effectively ‘start’ the meeting, a lot of meeting instances and therefore recordings and attendance lists, were created. Once this was understood, it was easy to find the correct recordings and attendance lists and download them. Next time, meeting settings could be adjusted to only allow few people to start. There is always a debate between auto and manual recording – generally auto minimises risk, but if you do want to use manual recordings, try including a “the meeting will be recorded; recording will begin now” message on an early housekeeping slide to serve as a reminder to yourself to press the record button.

Feedback and Reflections

Generally, feedback for the online event was very good. Speakers’ presentations were praised, and attendees overwhelmingly found the event useful and informative. Though many people did say they prefer to meet face-to-face, having the sessions online meant that some people were able to join when they may not have been able to travel, and some attendees mentioned this as a positive in their feedback. Some attendees did mention that a downside of the online format was the lack of networking opportunities usually associated with the meeting. On reflection, having a social lobby area didn’t quite work, as some attendees weren’t sure of its function – perhaps the online environment makes us feel that we need to have a specific ‘goal’ to join a session, rather than the more casual bumping into one another during break time at a face-to-face event. Some attendees also stayed in the social lobby for a while instead of joining their session. This was alleviated by interventions by Eleanor and Janet. As it was not well-used, and didn’t seem to add to the experience, next time this social area would be left out.

Though the meeting was running through teams, some people found it more convenient to receive email links to the meetings as they were starting. This can be set up in advance by scheduling delivery in Outlook.

As with all innovations, now that the meeting has been run once, it would be less difficult to follow the same format again as hosts and attendees have more familiarity with the process and the software and have gained skills and confidence.

If you are interested in running a similar event, you can find a range of guidance below, and contact FMS Enquiries for further advice.

Resources and Guides