New releases, and more from the world of Teams - November

It's time to try to gather some of the highlights from the world of teams this month. The Teams team have been very busy, and they keep coming with updates and new features. Here are some of the highlights I think worth mentioning.

First off a reminder of the deprecation of weaker TLS. Here is an updated article on the topic TLS deprecation support article

If you want the official walk-though of all the new features in Teams, I encourage you to take a look at the tech community blog post earlier this month: What’s new in Microsoft Teams – November round up

As mentioned at Ignite, Microsoft has now officially announced Oracle as a new certified partner for Direct Routing.In addition to Audiocodes and Ribbon, there are now three solid vendors to choose from. I had the pleasure of talking to the Oracle team at Ignite, and they seemed eager and committed.

I was trying to collect a lot of blogposts and articles on user adoption of Teams, but it seems Microsoft beat me to it, and I would just have you read this post NEW! Teams Adoption Hub - Enhanced guidance for user adoptionprojects and then head over to https://aka.ms/TeamsAdoption.

November also brought us some technical releases of interest.

• Teams PowerShell Module
• SFB MSI 2016 Client update
• SFB Mac version 16.23
• Surface HUB
• Skype for Business Server 2019 now GA!
• UCMA SDK
• Unified Communications Managed API Runtime
• Management Pack and Watcher Node'
• Key Health Indicators
• Real-Time Statistics Manager
• Debugging Tools
• Capacity Calculator
• Call Quality Dashboard

Also worth mentioning is the release of the new AAD Connect tool, with some new features: Version 1.2.65.0

And finally, last night, Microsoft announced a new evolving icon set for Office 365:

Announcement Blog post

New releases, and more from the world of Teams - October

Ignite

It's been almost a month since Microsoft Ignite, and although there were plenty of news regarding Teams, the Teams team have been working hard to bring us even more the past few weeks. Here is a recap of the last month.

First of all, if you haven't caught up with all the news from Ignite, take a look at this collection of breakout sessions: Unleash productivity with these Microsoft Teams breakout sessions at Microsoft Ignite

If you want to get the highlight of a few, but important sessions, take a look at what the Teams MVP's have been blogging about: Microsoft Teams Events Blog

Just after Ignite, Microsoft published the following "what's new in Teams": September 28

Administration and Training

Microsoft has been publishing a lot of training videos for admins and end-users. You can also sign up for instructor led courses right here: Instructor-led training for Microsoft Teams

If you are planning on an upgrade from Skype to Teams, here is a couple of videos to get you started:

Microsoft Teams Upgrade from Skype for Business - Basic Part 1

Microsoft Teams Upgrade from Skype for Business - Basic Part 2

For those who worry about rights required to manage teams within O365, here are some news on the new administrative roles: Use Microsoft Teams admin roles to manage Teams

Software updates

All desktop clients and the IOS mobile client have been updated, and the related information can be found on the following pages:

Skype for Business Room Systems

Skype Room Systems v2 4.0.27.0 update released October 1

Skype for Business MSI Desktop Client October 2018 Update

Skype for Business 2015

Skype for Business 2016

Skype for Business for Mac

Version 16.22

Teams for iOS

Microsoft Teams for iOS - version 1.0.56

Important note on TLS

As announced earlier, the official support for older TLS versions ends on October 31st. TLS 1.0 and 1.1 won't be turned off, but may stop working as parts of the infrastructure gets updated. If you happen to use LPE (Lync phone edition) devices, there will be no support if problem arises. It's time to upgrade to newer models or just phase them out.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4057306/preparing-for-tls-1-2-in-office-365

Take a look at the officially supported devices going forward: https://office.com/teamsdevices

Office server 2019 releases

Microsoft announced the release of the 2019 servers this week:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-2019-servers-available-for-commercial-customers/ba-p/275879

Just published a recap of session BRK3169 at Ignite

Check out my summary and recap of a great session on Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Call Quality.

As a MVP at Microsoft Ignite, I was asked if I would like to attend and write a few words about one of the last sessions on Friday. And here is a recap of BRK3169: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Events-Blog/Ignite-MVP-Session-Live-BRK3169-Understanding-calling-usage-and/ba-p/264299

Siunie Sutjahjo and Sharanya Vemu gave us a great walk through of the why and how to use CQD to improve on user experience throughout the enterprise.