Teams - Summer summary

A lot of things have happened in world of Teams (and Skype for Business) over the summer. And here is a blogpost where I will try to catch the highlights of the past month.

Direct Routing for Office365

The "biggest" news early in July, was probably the release of Direct Routing for Teams for both the enterprise and the carrier (hosted) market. I've been participating in the TAP for this service, and will be looking at some in-depth material this fall. Read about this exciting feature here.

Teams for GCC

Teams was released for the US Government Community Cloud on July the 17th:

Auto Attendant and Call Queue

These features we already know from Skype for Business is now also available in Teams. This is part of the ongoing effort to bring Teams at par with SFBO.

Live events

Microsoft announced a new feature called "Live events" within Teams, bringing the capability of broadcasting meetings to a wide audience. The feature is now in public preview.

Free Teams version

Microsoft also announced a free version of Teams, suitable for smaller organizations who want to try out the application. Check out this comparison chart to see what you get with the different versions of Teams (Free, Essentials and Premium)

Client updates
Both desktop and mobile clients have been updated with features and fixes.

• List of desktop updates
• List of mobile updates

Microsoft posts on features

Microsoft published their monthly overview of updates at the techcommunity, and some of the features I have mentioned in my posts are covered in more detail in these posts.

• July Roundup
• August Roundup

Office 2019 Servers in Preview

The Office2019 servers are ready for public preview, and that includes Skype for Business 2019 

Microsoft Teams AMA on August 9th

Do you have questions about Microsoft Teams? Then mark your calendar for August 9th. The Teams AMA Group will be online between 9 and 10 am (PT) to take your questions. This is also a great opportunity to connect with the team or other peers.

You can find more details and a ics file at the techcommunity

Renewed MVP status 2018-2019

It's the first of July, and all the existing MVP's keep hitting refresh in their inboxes today. I've been checking mine for the last two to three hours. Although I haven't received any notification or warning indicating I wasn't up for renewal, I know I can't be sure until I actually see the award email in my inbox.

I am honored to receive this award for the fourth time. There is a lot of work behind this, and being recognized for all the time and energy spent on my passion for technology is really appreciated. It is not something I take for granted, and for every year I know I need to put in a little extra.

Thank you to the MVP team at Microsoft, and congratulations to all new and renewed MVP's