Tag: Breakout Rooms

Microsoft 365 Updates – Summer 2024

This blog article rounds up a number of recently announced or released updates during the Summer of 2024.

 

Teams Breakout Rooms – choose your room

Planned for release by late October – Meeting Organisers using Breakout Rooms will be able to choose whether participants are assigned to specific breakout rooms in advance or whether they can choose which breakout room to join.  This will prove useful for meeting participants where organisers wish to allow participants a choice.

Meeting organisers should look for the new feature in the breakout rooms panel when setting up the breakout rooms.

 

Screenshot showing organiser view of breakout rooms and how to set to allow attendees to choose the room they join
Organiser view of breakout room setup for attendee choice

 

Screenshot of attendee experience when breakout room choice is available
Attendee view of breakout room choice

Available late October 2024

 

OneNote for Windows 10

As previously advised, Microsoft are ending support for the OneNote for Windows 10 application at the end of October 2025.

You are recommended to use the OneNote Windows application which is bundled with the Office 365 download.

OneNote for Windows now supports the option to move the navigation bar to the left side of the app providing a consistent navigation experience across all OneNote apps.

 

Support ends October 2025

 

Microsoft Teams – Rename the General channel

From mid-September 2024, Team owners will be able to rename the General channel to something more meaningful for their team.

If you rename the General channel you cannot rename it back to General at a later date.

When changed the channel will appear in alphabetical order amongst any other channels created.

The renamed channel cannot be archived or deleted.

 

Available mid September 2024

 

Microsoft Teams – New skin tone settings and reactions

From late October 2024, new skin tone settings will be enabled to allow users to choose a preferred skin tone for relevant emojis and reactions across chats, channels and meetings on all Teams platforms (Teams for Desktop, Teams for web, Teams for Mac and Teams Mobile).

 

Screenshot showing how to set the skintone within the Settings in MS Teams
Set your skintone via the settings in MS Teams

 

Screenshot showing how to set skintone within the emojis element of Teams reactions
Set skintone via the emojis element in MS Teams reactions

 

Available late October 2024

 

Microsoft Teams – Notify when available

You can now get notified when a colleague’s status changes to available.

You can subscribe to the notifications by doing the following

Right click (or tap on the “…”) on a person in the chat list view and choose “Notify when available”

Screenshot showing how to set the "notify when available" option in MS Teams.
How to set “Notify when available”

 

Available now

 

MS Teams – Calendar Notifications

You will now see calendar notifications in Teams through the Activity Feed.  You will also be able to accept or reject calendar invitations through this activity feed view.

You can change this through the “Notifications and activity” section of Teams settings.

This is one by default in your activity feed.

Screenshot showing how to edit the calendar notifications in the activity feed
How to change the calendar notifications for the Activity Feed

Available now

 

MS Teams – Emojis, GIFs and Stickers in One Picker

Microsoft have simplified the selection of emojis, gifs and stickers, bringing all elements into one unified picker in MS Teams.

Screenshot showing the simplified emjoi, GIF and sticker picker now available in MS Teams
Screenshot of the simplified emjoi, GIF and sticker picker.

 

Available now

New Features and Updates in Microsoft 365 – December 2022 and January 2023

A number of new features and updates have been announced affecting several Microsoft 365 apps and services.

 

Viva Insights

Viva Insights brings you a daily email briefing before you start your day, helping to ensure that you have the right information in advance of your meetings and reminders which are pertinent to you.  The Viva Insight briefing email is personal to you and cannot be seen by anyone else.

 

In January 2023, Microsoft will be pausing the briefing emails while they implement improvements and additional personalisation.  The current update states that briefings should return at the end of February following the “make over”.

During the period when there are no emails, you can still view your personal insights by using the Outlook add-in or adding the Viva Insights app to Microsoft Teams.

 

Microsoft Teams Updates

Everyone Mention

Commencing in late January 2023, a new feature will roll out allowing Teams users to mention everyone in a group chat or meeting chat in one simple way.  Currently you can @ mention each person individually, which is fine in a small group chat or meeting chat, but if you have a large meeting chat or group chat running and want to alert everyone there is currently no simple way to do this.

 

Once the new feature is live you will be able to type @everyone and then everyone in the chat will receive a notification just like they do when they are individually @ mentioned at the moment.

 

Breakout Rooms

From late December ’22 or early January ’23 depending on roll out, Teams Breakout Rooms will support co-organiser management.  So if you create a meeting and set a “co organiser” on the meeting then the co-organiser will have full management rights over Breakout Rooms.

 

More Reactions in Teams

A greatly expanded set of reactions are currently rolling out in Teams for use in Chat and Team conversations.  The reactions for meetings remain limited for simplicity, but for chat and threaded conversations there are now over 800 “emojis” to choose from.  These are available from December 2022.

 

Multi Factor Authentication Improvements

Commencing at the end of February 2023, Microsoft will begin roll out of enhanced Multi Factor Authentication replacing the push notifications with number matching.  Many organisations are seeing an increase in attacks due to MFA fatigue due to users just hitting approve without thinking about what they are approving.

Number matching requires the up to date Microsoft Authenticator app to be installed from either the iOS App store or Google Play store fro Android devices.  If you have been approving MFA requests via an Apple watch then you should uninstall the apple watch app and approve all authentication requests via the phone – the watch app does NOT support number matching.

Number matching works by displaying a number following successful username and password verification.  The authenticator app will then provide information on what app is being accessed and the location of the access request (including a map display) and require the user to enter the number as displayed on the login screen of the app.

Screenshot of number matching at login

Number matching display during login

 

Screenshot of Authenticator app during number matching

Number matching on Authenticator App

Microsoft Teams – Breakout Room Enhancements

Microsoft have released a number of Breakout Room enhancements into Public Preview in Microsoft Teams.

 

To use these features in advance of General Availability, you will need to enable the Public Preview mode (see this blog post on how to do this).

 

Pre-Meeting Breakout Room Configuration

You can now set up breakout rooms in advance of your meeting and, if you wish, pre-populate the attendees, either manually or automatically.

 

Creating Rooms

To do this, create your meeting and then double click on the meeting entry in the Teams calendar.  You’ll find a new “Breakout Rooms” tab.

Screenshot of breakout rooms tab in meeting controls

 

When you first go into this tab you will see an option to create rooms …

 

Screenshot of breakout rooms tab - create rooms

 

Clicking on the create rooms button then brings up a dialogue box which will allow you to set up an initial number of breakout rooms.  You can create between 1 and 50 rooms.

 

Screenshot of create initial rooms dialogue

Clicking on the “Add rooms” button adds the required number of rooms to the meeting.

 

Assigning Participants

Once the rooms are created you can assign participants to a room.  Click on the “Add Participants” button on the breakout room page to set automated or manual assignment of users to rooms and then as appropriate choose participants.

Assign participants button

 

automatic or manual participant assignment

 

dialogue shoing manual assignment of particpants

Edit the Room Settings

Once the rooms are created you can edit the rooms to give each room a name, and you can edit the meeting room settings for each room (so you can set presenters for a breakout room).

To edit the name of the room click on the elipsis on the room and choose Edit

Edit rooms settings and name

 

Set the name for the room

 

Screenshot of dialogue shoing room name change

 

Use the settings to set specific meeting options for a breakout room

 

Meeting Options for a breakout room

 

Adjusting General Breakout Room Settings

Click on the cog wheel on the top right of the Breakout Rooms tab

Editing General Breakout Rooms settings

 

In the settings you can assign other presenteres to manage breakout rooms – wehn you do this only one person can manage the breakout rooms at any one time so you might just want to add a single co-organiser to the manage rooms function.

 

You can also set time limits for your breakout rooms, turn on or off the automatic movement of people to rooms when you “open” the breakout rooms from your meeting and you can enable an option that allows people to manually return to the main meeting.

Setting co-orgainisers and other general breakout room settings

 

 

Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms Managers

During September Breakout Rooms Managers will become available as a feature in Microsoft Teams.

 

Meeting Organisers can assign the role of Breakout Rooms Manager to one or more presenters in a meeting, either before or during the meeting.  Only ONE person with the correct rights can manage breakout rooms at any one time.  If Person A organises the meeting and assigns Presenter B and Presenter C with the Breakout Rooms Manager role then either Person A (the organiser), Presenter B or Presenter C can take control and run the breakout rooms.

This feature will ONLY work in Desktop versions of Microsoft Teams.

 

What will the experience look like?

Organizers who will configure and manage Breakout Rooms on a Teams desktop client will have access to appoint Presenters as Breakout Room managers. Currently, only users who are named presenters from the same tenant are supported to become Breakout rooms managers.

When Breakout rooms managers join the meeting, they will see the Breakout rooms icon in toolbar.

Breakout rooms managers will have to take control to manage rooms. (Only one manager can manage rooms at the same time).

Once in control, Breakout rooms managers can perform operations to manage Breakout rooms, such as:

  • assign users to rooms
  • add/delete rooms
  • open/close rooms
  • re-assign users to rooms
  • send announcements
  • recreate rooms
  • set timer
  • adjust other Breakout rooms settings

 

When rooms are started, all Breakout room managers (also those not in control) can join opened Breakout Rooms by clicking on the … menu next to each room and selecting Join room.

 

Timing

This functionality will roll out during the second half of September 2021 and will be available by the end of September at the latest.

 

Enhancements to Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms

During September 2021, Microsoft will add some much anticipated enhancements to the Breakout Rooms functionality in Microsoft Teams.

Once live, organisers will be able to configure Breakout Rooms ahead of the actual meeting using an additional tab within the meeting.  From this tab it will be possible to create and rename rooms and organise participants in advance of the meeting.   The full set of features to be enabled are as follows:

 

  • Bulk creating / deleting rooms
  • Adding / deleting / renaming individual rooms
  • Configuring meeting options for each room
  • Adjusting settings for breakout rooms session (timer, selecting breakout rooms managers and more)
  • Pre-assigning participants via both manual and automatic assignment options

 

The “Breakout Room Manager” is a new role which the organiser will be able to assign.  This user will then be able to run breakout rooms even if the organiser of the meeting is not present.  The Breakout Room Manager will also be able to control and update breakout rooms, start and stop them and set features such as the room timer, and room meeting options.

 

The new features are expected to be live by the end of September but may be available earlier in the month depending on delivery to the Imperial Office 365 tenant.

NOTE this functionality will only be available in the Teams Desktop client initially.

 

For more information on Breakout Rooms and settings (this document will be further updated when Microsoft release the new features) see this link.