This month, we are continuing to build on our recent announcements, from making Windows 365 available to everyone to introducing new features in Microsoft Teams and across Microsoft 365 designed to empower your people to work from anywhere.

Let’s dive into the details.

Be productive from anywhere with Windows 365

At Inspire, we announced Windows 365, a cloud service that introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when available). Now generally available, Windows 365 gives everyone, from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers, the agency to connect to their apps, data, and settings from any device. With Windows 365, you can begin working on a laptop at the kitchen table, pick up where you left off on a tablet in the car between appointments, and finish up on your desktop when you get to the office. Windows 365 is always ready for you to jump back in—even when you switch devices—and makes it easier for organizations to scale to meet annual busy periods by eliminating the logistical complexity and security challenges of issuing new hardware to seasonal workers.

Learn more about Windows 365 or sign up for your plan today.

Work together and personalize your Microsoft Teams meeting experience

This month, we’re introducing additional collaborative apps from our partners, a new Q&A app for Microsoft Teams, a new Communities app, and more.

Take notes and edit records right within Teams with new partner apps—Last month, we announced the general availability of new collaborative apps from our partners. Confluence Cloud by Atlassian in Teams is designed to enable more effective meetings where users can take notes with a Confluence notes panel inside a Teams meeting. Confluence makes team notes digestible and action-oriented and allows users to format notes such as action items, decisions, code snippets, mentions, and tables. These notes are then formatted and automatically shared in a Teams channel.

Salesforce for Teams is also now generally available. With this collaborative app, sales and service teams using Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud can bring account data and records into their Teams workspace for better collaboration and decision making. With the Salesforce for Teams app, users can pin Salesforce records to channels, chats, and calendar meetings to easily keep access to them—with an expanded set of supported Salesforce records, including Custom Objects.

Simplify virtual health workflows for your frontline healthcare workers—To help healthcare workers schedule and manage virtual appointments more effectively, we have added Microsoft Bookings with Microsoft Teams in all Microsoft 365 for frontline workers product licenses. For example, with the Bookings app in Microsoft Teams, healthcare workers can easily schedule, manage, and conduct virtual visits for simple telehealth workflows. Microsoft 365 for frontline workers provides an attractive, low-cost licensing option for healthcare providers that are interested in using Teams to support virtual health and care team collaboration.

Add open or moderated Q&As to any Teams meeting—To help provide a more structured question and answer experience during larger meetings, we introduced the new Q&A app that enables attendees to ask and reply to questions before and during a meeting. Organizers and designated presenters can mark best answers, filter responses, moderate and dismiss questions, and pin posts. Responses to questions are threaded in a conversation with the original question. Designated presenters can act as co-moderators to help screen questions. The Q&A app will be generally available in September. To add Q&A to a meeting, simply add the app during the scheduling process.

Experience the new Communities app in Teams and Outlook for web—The Communities app for Microsoft Teams brings a full-fidelity community experience, powered by Yammer, into Microsoft Teams. In the coming weeks, we’re updating the app’s design, bringing enhancements to notifications and deep-linking, and adding new capabilities like suggested communities, which uses AI to recommend valuable communities to join.

We also announced the new Communities app for Outlook for the web. Starting next month, you will be able to engage in communities, participate in conversations and live events, and share knowledge openly with your peers without leaving the Outlook web app.

Build in breaks and stay on top of what’s most important

Research has shown that small breaks throughout the day make a big difference in employee wellbeing. This month, we are introducing new features in Outlook and Yammer to help ensure you can plan breaks as needed throughout your day and help you keep track of important messages and critical tasks.

Get a break with speedy events—With increased online meetings and many of us being more sedentary than we would like, it is important to take breaks throughout the day and stretch our legs. In April, we introduced speedy events, which automatically sets events to start “late” or end “early,” helping people carve out essential breaks between back-to-backs meetings. This month, we are expanding support to the new Outlook for Mac.

Pin your most important messages at the top of your inbox—With large inboxes and busy days, finding a specific email you read earlier can be tedious and disruptive to your workflow. We’ve added the ability to pin a message, moving it to the top of your inbox so it’s easy to find later. Pinned messages is now generally available to all users in Outlook for the web, Mac, and mobile.

Get reminders to take action on email messages you might have missed—Message reminders in Outlook on the web help you stay on top of things by bringing messages you might have missed to the top of your inbox so you can easily take action on it. Don’t worry, we don’t want to clutter your inbox so Outlook will only remind you of one message at a time. Log in to Outlook on the web to try it out.

Post on behalf of in Yammer—We also announced that users can now post on behalf of another user in Yammer. Once approval is granted, internal communicators to share news and updates as well as reply to comments on behalf of leaders and their teams. To get started, leaders and teams will first need to setup their delegate in their Yammer settings.

Increase productivity with new features in your favorite apps

This month, we introduced suggested attachments in Microsoft Planner and the ability to create shapes in Visio for the web.

Find your files more effectively with suggested attachments—Planner now supports suggested attachments in tasks. Now, when you want to add attachments to a task, Planner will show you a list of related files for you to select from. No more hunting through your folders, servers, or cloud storage to find the right file to attach. Suggested attachments in Planner automatically recommends files that you might want to attach to the plan, saving you time. To experience the new capability, within a task in Planner for the web, scroll down to the bottom of the task to find the Suggested attachments section and select Add next to the file you’d like to attach.

Create shapes in your diagrams in Visio for the web—Currently, when you select a shape to add to your diagram from the available shape sets, the shape is added with predetermined dimensions. You then have to resize the shape based on their requirements. To help, we’ve added the Draw Shape tool, enabling you to draw shapes, including rectangles, squares, lines, circles, and ellipses, at the size and location you prefer. To create a shape in your diagram from the Insert tab, select the Draw Shape drop-down, select the shape you want, click anywhere in the canvas, and then drag to draw the shape.

Tools for the future of hybrid work

Hybrid work is here. As organizations across the globe navigate the increased complexities of this once-in-a-generation shift in the way we work, we will continue to deliver innovation that enables people to be productive and feel included in this new world of work. 

From Windows 365, which enables people to stream all of their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device, to the Q&A app for Teams, all of these capabilities are designed to empower people in this new world of work. And this is all just the beginning. Stay tuned for more. 

The post From Windows 365 to Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

A note to developers before we begin: Whether building your own apps or solutions that are designed to be used in Microsoft Teams or Outlook, we have a whole host of new innovations for you. At Build this week, we’re announcing many new capabilities that you can use to make your apps more integrated, powerful, and intuitive. We’re also introducing new developer and management tools that make creating and discoverability even easier. Find out more about all of the new opportunities for developers using the Microsoft 365 platform announced at Build. Let’s get to it!

News from Build 2020

Microsoft Teams

Teams is the hub for teamwork combining meetings, calls, chat, and collaboration into a single tool that preserves context and keeps everyone up to speed.

Productivity

From customized templates to new tasking capabilities, we’re introducing fresh ways to stay productive in Teams.

Create teams quickly with customizable templates—When creating a new team, you’ll soon be able to pick from a variety of customizable templates. Choose from common business scenarios, like event management and crisis response, as well as industry-specific templates, like a hospital ward or bank branch. Each template comes with pre-defined channels, apps, and guidance. Admins will also be able to create new custom templates and templatize existing teams in their organization, allowing them to standardize team structures, surface relevant apps, and scale best practices. Templates in Teams will roll out in the next few months and appear automatically.

Automation

We’re excited to announce enhancements to the Power Platform that make it easier to integrate and scale with Teams.

Easily create and manage chatbots in Teams—Integrating with Teams is also easier than ever: Just select the bot you want to use and then click Add to Teams. For additional convenience, Power Virtual Agents now supports single sign-on (SSO), so users will no longer have to reauthenticate when using Teams for the first time.

Quickly add custom apps and automated workflows to Teams—Developers and admins will soon be able to add their custom applications from Power Apps to Teams with a single click of the Add to Teams button. To get started, open make.powerapps.com, click “…“ next to the canvas app you’d like to publish, and select Add to Teams.

Meanwhile, new Power Automate business process templates for Teams will allow creators to streamline workflows using pre-built templates, or as a base to customize their own. Finally, new Teams-specific triggers and actions will enable you to create custom message extensions, automate @mentioning and message posting to channels, and customize bot names. These features are coming soon.

Share Power BI reports in Teams—Power BI users can now share reports, or specific charts in reports, to Teams with the new Share to Teams button. Senders can also direct the recipient’s attention to a specific chart in a report or share to an entire team. To get started, select Send to Teams from the Power BI portal and type in the team name you’d like to share with.

Meetings and events

Across time zones and social-distancing scenarios, organizations need to connect and collaborate in gatherings large and small. New Teams capabilities help you design the best experience for every occasion.

Schedule virtual appointments via Bookings in Teams—Organizations will now be able to schedule, manage, and conduct business-to-consumer virtual appointments through the new Bookings app integration in Microsoft Teams. With a single scheduling experience, you can manage multiple departments or locations and securely host everything from candidate interviews and student office hours to financial consultations and medical visits. Teams support HIPAA compliance and is HITRUST certified. In healthcare alone, there were more than 34 million Teams meetings in the past month, including virtual visits. Today, you can learn how Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare will make it easier for healthcare organizations to remain agile and focus on what they do best – delivering better experiences, insights, and care.

Broadcast events and create studio productions from a virtual stage in Teams—With so many organizations working remotely, and travel at a record low, how do you recreate the magic of an in-person presentation or interview for an all-remote audience? Introducing new Network Device Interface (NDI) support and Skype TX interoperability for Teams. It offers a more advanced set of production options for both public and private, customized, high-scale broadcasts.

Coming soon, NDI for Microsoft Teams will transform a Teams meeting into a virtual stage by converting each participant’s video into a discrete video source that can be used in the production tool of your choice: OBS, Wirecast, Xsplit, StreamLabs, and many more. This functionality enables you to use Teams meetings in other ways, including hosting a professional broadcast.

Secure and remote scheduling

Shifts lets Firstline Workers and their managers use mobile devices to manage schedules and keep in touch.

Extend the Shifts app in Teams—New capabilities in the Shifts app extends functionality and enables integration with existing systems. First, the Graph APIs for Shifts are now generally available, so can you integrate them with any other external workforce management tool, including custom workforce management systems. Plus, new Power Automate actions enable developers to take information from Shifts and create customized workflows with other apps or perform operations at scale. Finally, new triggers and templates will help support a variety of timesaving and process-optimization scenarios, like enabling auto-approvals for shift requests in scenarios where a manager’s approval is not needed.

Fluid Framework

At Ignite 2019, we announced the public preview of Microsoft Fluid Framework, our new technology and set of experiences designed to make collaboration seamless by breaking down barriers between apps.

Collaborate with Fluid components and workspaces in Outlook and Office.com—The Fluid Framework is on a journey to make work more adaptable and focused. The first Fluid Framework integrations in Microsoft 365, coming to Outlook and Office.com, will enable you to collaborate on dynamic content and create connected components that can be shared simultaneously and seamlessly across apps. Tables, charts, and task lists can be easily inserted in Outlook for the web, so your sales numbers, project tasks, and research reports are always up to date. Within Office.com, Fluid workspaces can be created and managed, including within your document activity feed, Recommended list, and @mentions—or search for them across Office.com. And, because Fluid Framework components are lightweight, edits are instantaneous, empowering work to be fast and flexible. These experiences will be available to those with a Microsoft 365 enterprise license in the next few months.

Use key infrastructure from Fluid Framework—now open source—in your applications—The web-based framework of Fluid can be used to instantly make your apps collaborative. It includes data structures that perform low-latency synchronization and a relay service to connect endpoints. If you replace your static data structures with Fluid data structures, your app instantly supports real-time collaboration.

Discovering the full potential of the Fluid Framework can only be accomplished through creating a diverse, open, and vibrant developer community. For this reason, Microsoft will be making the Fluid Framework open source, allowing developers and creators to use key infrastructure from Fluid Framework in their own applications. Along with the release of additional developer documentation and tooling, this is an invitation for developers to work alongside Microsoft as Fluid Framework is built and released.

Project Cortex

We introduced Project Cortex at Ignite 2019 and are happy to announce it will be generally available in early summer 2020. This powerful new service applies artificial intelligence (AI) and the Microsoft Graph to create a knowledge network that connects your content in Microsoft 365, along with external sources, to organize content and expertise across systems and teams. You can then manage your information and streamline processes with advanced security and compliance controls, along with automated workflows.

Work with new developer tools now in private preview—Today, we are introducing new developer APIs for Project Cortex and Managed Metadata Services (MMS) in Microsoft Graph, along with new integration with Language Understanding services in Azure. Currently, our private preview program has expanded to include more than 75 organizations delivering knowledge from millions of documents and videos, including Unilever, Arla Foods, and Siemens Healthineers. We will keep you all informed as new milestones are achieved.

Outlook

Around the world, our customers rely on Outlook to help organize their days and stay in touch. New capabilities let them do more within the app to be more productive.

Save keystrokes in Outlook—Now, Outlook on the web can help compose email messages with text predictions. Using intelligent technology to infer meaning and intention, Outlook can help you compose faster, avoid typos, and craft polished email messages.

Keep up with Yammer in Outlook—Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook mobile users can now view and reply to Yammer conversations, polls, questions, and praise without leaving their inbox. This feature will automatically become available for users who have email notifications from Yammer turned on.

Microsoft Edge

This year at Build, we’re announcing several new capabilities in Microsoft Edge that add customization options and improved tooling for web developers.

Quickly explore relevant Pinterest collections—Pinterest can now deliver suggestions at the bottom of your collection, making it easier to find additional similar content. Clicking on a suggestion will open a board of similar, trending Pins so you can quickly find and add ideas relevant to you. Collections will also soon support “Send to OneNote,” making it easy to export collections to OneNote pages.

Save time while searching—We’re also introducing sidebar search so you can search for things without opening a new window or tab. And for those who use Microsoft Edge for both work and personal use, we’re excited to introduce Automatic Profile Switching, which will detect that the link you’re trying to open needs work credentials, and then switch you to your authenticated work profile.

Check out expanded developer options during preview—Because we love developers, we’re expanding the preview with new options for .NET and UWP (WinUI 3.0) development, enabling you to embed a Chromium-based Edge WebView in WinForms, WPF, and UWP/Win UI 3.0 applications. We’ve also added a 3D View in DevTools. Check out our documentation and Getting Started guide, or simply open Visual Studio and download the WebView2 package to get started.

Microsoft Lists

Microsoft Lists is your smart information tracking app across Microsoft 365. With Lists, you can easily track data and information to stay updated on the latest status.

Track information with Microsoft Lists—Now, you can create, share, and track data and information—like issue tracking and status reporting—directly within Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and the soon-to-be-released Lists mobile app. Lists are easy for anyone to create and customize with templates, color coding, If/Then workflows, and more. Learn more about Microsoft Lists.

At a time of unprecedented change, we are all rapidly adjusting to a new era of work. From software developers to healthcare workers, government first responders to multinational c-suites, everyone is finding new ways to stay productive and connected, whether they are working together or apart. The features and enhancements we announced today are all designed to support the incredible achievements of our customers around the world. We are committed to continuing to build the tools that keep the world’s work moving, through this crisis and beyond.

The post From Microsoft Teams to Fluid Framework—here’s what’s new and coming soon to Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

This month, we have new features and capabilities designed to help keep your business moving during COVID-19 and beyond. New capabilities in Microsoft Teams, for instance, help you host more effective, inclusive, and focused online meetings and offer virtual solutions for one-on-one consultations. A crisis management site in SharePoint helps your organization quickly share information during emergencies. And an improved search experience in Outlook allows you to quickly find what you need in your email and calendar.

Below, we will get into all the Microsoft 365 news this month. But before we do, I want to once again point you to the monthly Modern Workplace podcast. This time, host Alex Bradley and I chat about what we’ve learned about remote work, both from our experiences at Microsoft and the experiences of our customers. Have a listen.

Host more inclusive, focused, online meetings

This month, we announced a host of new Teams capabilities that reflect our commitment to two things: building the very best online meeting experience for our customers, and bringing technological solutions to Firstline Workers and healthcare employees.

We’ve all been in a remote meeting when a participant is loudly typing on their keyboard, or someone is sitting near a vacuum running in the background. Real-time noise suppression minimizes distracting background noise, allowing you to hear what’s being said.

In large meetings, it can sometimes be difficult for remote participants to chime in. The raise hand feature lets anyone in the meeting send a visual signal that they have something to say.

Industrial workers need to communicate and collaborate effectively while staying safe. Through a new integration between Teams and RealWear head-mounted devices, Firstline Workers will be able to access information and communicate hands-free with remote experts from their job site.

Conducting virtual meetings is a common requirement for situations such as healthcare patient consults, client meetings, or job candidate interviews. Announced earlier this month, the Bookings app in Teams makes it easy to schedule, manage, and conduct virtual appointments.

Teams will soon enable you to pop out chats into a separate window to help you streamline your workflow and navigate more easily between ongoing conversations.

Offline and low-bandwidth support lets you read chat messages and write responses, even without an internet connection, making it easier for you to move things forward no matter where you are.

We’re also adding new devices certified for Teams. The Yealink VC210, now generally available, delivers a meeting experience for smaller conference rooms that’s simple to install and manage. In addition, the Bose Noise Cancelling headphones 700 UC will be available for purchase in late spring.

Finally, Microsoft 365 Business Voice in Teams is now available in the U.S., enabling small and mid-sized businesses to make and receive phone calls from anywhere. We also have a new Microsoft 365 Enterprise plan lineup that includes additional licensing options for Firstline Workers.

Check out new Microsoft 365 offerings for small and medium-sized businesses

This month, we debuted Microsoft 365 Personal and Family, an evolution from our Office 365 for individuals and families offering. We also announced named changes to several of our small and medium-sized business and Enterprise offerings. Office 365 Business Essentials is now Microsoft 365 Business Basic; Office 365 Business Premium is now Microsoft 365 Business Standard; and Microsoft 365 Business is now Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Meanwhile, Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will be called Microsoft 365 Apps. While today this is a change in name only, we’re excited about the new apps and services we’ve added to our subscriptions over the last few years and the new innovations we’ll be adding in the coming months. These changes reflect our ambition to continue to drive innovation in Microsoft 365 that goes well beyond what customers traditionally think of as Office.

Respond to emergency events

Quickly build an emergency management site to connect people and information—Unexpected events like COVID-19 highlight the importance of establishing and keeping the lines of communication open. A new crisis management site in SharePoint enables your organization to consolidate news, related resources, and topical Q&A in response to emergency events in under two hours. Just head to your SharePoint start page and select Create site > Communication site to start configuring news, links, Q&As, site navigation, highlighted people, and more.

Connect and collaborate with new app updates

We’re announcing new app updates to help streamline conversations, create professional content, and maximize productivity.

Engage with Yammer conversations directly within your inbox—The new interactive Yammer emails in Outlook on the web enable users to interact with Yammer conversations, polls, and questions, and deliver praise. Now you can see the full Yammer thread and reply, like, vote, attach files, share GIFs, and even watch videos right from your inbox. These features are now available to all Enterprise tenants with releases in Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook for iOS and Android coming next quarter.

Create professional-looking content more easily with Office mobile—You can now view and edit data in Excel in a simple, digestible card format, eliminating the need to span across columns that extend beyond the limits of the screen. Also new to Office mobile, PowerPoint Designer helps you create professional presentations with design, formatting, and iconography ideas for your content. These features will be available in the next few months in the Office app for Android and iOS.

Collaborate on documents and assign tasks—Now, users can easily assign tasks to document collaborators in Word and Excel for the web. Simply @mention your teammates in the comments of your online Word or Excel document, check the box to assign it, and they’ll receive an email letting them know a task was assigned to them with a link directly to the document. This feature will be available in April with Tasks in PowerPoint for the web coming in June.

Enjoy a new connection experience in Visio for the web—A new feature in Visio for the web lets users move the connection point on a shape for better alignment. Users can also easily add multiple arrows between shapes to distinctively represent to-and-from relationships, and more. To get started, hover over the edge of the shape until green circles highlight the possible connection points, then click on the desired point and drag the connector to the desired destination point. This feature is now available to all Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2 users.

Search your email and calendar more easily

We are announcing new innovations in Microsoft Search that recognize natural language as a helpful way to find what you need in Outlook for iOS and Android. Simply find your emails, calendar events, contact information, and files faster and easier by using everyday language to narrow your search. You can either speak it or type it. Learn more in this blog.

Streamline common IT tasks

This month, we’re announcing two new services to help streamline common resources for IT.

Modernize your print infrastructure with a cloud-based print solution—We’re announcing the private preview of Universal Print, a new cloud-based print infrastructure that creates a simple, secure print experience. Now, organizations no longer need to maintain on-premises print servers or install printer drivers on devices, reducing the time and effort needed by IT to maintain the print environment. And users get a straightforward print experience that makes it easy to discover and print to nearby printers. Customers can register for participation in the private preview.

Seamlessly move your cloud files into OneDrive and SharePoint—We’re pleased to announce that Mover, a cloud-to-cloud file migration tool, is now available to Microsoft 365 customers worldwide. Mover supports migration from over a dozen cloud service providers—including Box, Dropbox, Egnyte, and Google Drive—into OneDrive and SharePoint, enabling seamless file collaboration across Microsoft 365 apps and services. Mover makes it easy and inexpensive (it’s free!) to manage files that currently exist outside of Microsoft 365 in other cloud service provider offerings. To get started, sign in with your Office 365 credentials and follow the prompts.

From new meetings capabilities in Teams to updates that make storing files on the cloud easier, the announcements above reflect our ongoing commitment to continuing to improve and evolve the tools you rely on. But we also want to be here for you at this critical moment when so many organizations are adjusting to full-time remote work. In addition to these monthly updates, we are using this blog as a space to exchange remote-work tips, information, and customer stories, so check back here for frequent updates.

The post Improve virtual meetings and bring consultations online—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 in March appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

But first I want to talk to you about the moment we all find ourselves in. And I want to recognize the organizations, employees, and students across the globe who have been thrown into remote work and remote learning in an effort to keep themselves and the people around them healthy and safe.

Adjusting to remote work and learning

Around the world, millions of people have been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. It has affected how we work, how we socialize, our family life, and our community life. Here in the Puget Sound, we’ve asked about 50,000 Microsoft employees not to commute to work, and they are joined by tens of thousands of Microsoft employees worldwide who are now working remotely. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it’s been downright disorienting. But our team is still connecting. Still collaborating. Still getting our work done.

In the face of COVID-19, there are countless stories from customers who are using Teams to connect and thrive in inspiring ways. A professor at University of Bologna in Italy shared on Twitter how the school moved 90 percent of courses online to Teams within four days, which is definitely a first in the university’s 900-plus year history. Doctors at St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania will use Teams for videoconferencing with patients, especially those who are most vulnerable to coronavirus, as a way to protect both patients and healthcare providers. And the City of Osaka in Japan is using Teams to conduct orientations and trainings for hundreds of new incoming employees in April.

Stories like these are playing out in countries the world over. We believe that this sudden, globe-spanning move to remote work will be a turning point in how we work and learn. Already, we are seeing how solutions that enable remote work and learning across chat, video, and file collaboration have become central to the way we work. We have seen an unprecedented spike in Teams usage, and now have more than 44 million daily users,* a figure that has grown by 12 million in just the last seven days. And those users have generated over 900 million meeting and calling minutes on Teams each day this week.

It’s very clear that enabling remote work is more important than ever, and that it will continue to have lasting value beyond the COVID-19 outbreak. We are committed to building the tools that help organizations, teams, and individuals stay productive and connected even when they need to work apart.

Transforming the way people work

Over the last three years, thousands of organizations, small and large—including 93 of the Fortune 100—have discovered how Teams can be their hub for teamwork, helping them to stay connected and engaged. Industry leading organizations are rolling out Teams enterprise-wide. In fact, 20 customers have more than 100,000 employees actively using Teams, including Ernst & Young, SAP, Pfizer, and Continental AG, as well as Accenture, which has 440,000 employees actively using Teams.

What’s new in Teams

We continue to invest in experiences that will make it easier for teams to communicate and collaborate. The new capabilities we are announcing today reflect our commitment to two things: building the very best online meeting experience for our customers; and bringing technological solutions to traditionally underserved professionals, including Firstline and healthcare workers.

• We’ve all been in a remote meeting when a participant is loudly typing on their keyboard, or someone is sitting near a vacuum running in the background. Real-time noise suppression helps to minimize distracting background noise, allowing you to hear what’s being said.
• In large meetings, it can sometimes be difficult for remote participants to chime in when they have something to say. The raise hand feature lets anyone in the meeting send a visual signal that they have something to say.

• Industrial workers need to communicate and collaborate effectively while staying safe. Through a new integration between Teams and RealWear head-mounted devices, Firstline Workers will be able to access information and communicate hands-free with remote experts from their job site.

• Conducting B2C virtual appointments is a common requirement for situations like healthcare patient visits, client meetings, or job candidate interviews. Announced earlier this month, the Bookings app in Teams makes it easy to schedule, manage, and conduct virtual appointments.
• Teams will soon enable you to pop out chats into a separate window to help you streamline your workflow and move more easily between ongoing conversations.
• Offline and low-bandwidth support lets you read chat messages and write responses, even without an internet connection, making it easier for you to move things forward no matter where you are.
• We are also expanding the Teams devices ecosystem, with new devices certified for Teams. The Yealink VC210, now generally available, is the first collaboration bar certified for Teams, and brings together speakers, microphones, a camera, and a native Teams experience to deliver a meeting experience for smaller conference rooms that is simple to install and easy to manage. In addition, the Bose Noise Cancelling headphone 700 UC is available for purchase in late spring.
• We’re pleased to introduce Microsoft 365 Business Voice in the U.S., a new offering for small-and mid-sized businesses that makes Teams a complete phone system, as well as a new Microsoft 365 Enterprise plan lineup that will include additional licensing options for Firstline Workers.
  

Unless otherwise stated above, the new capabilities will be available later this year.

Since we launched Teams three years ago, it has evolved to become the hub for teamwork—a place where you can meet, chat, call, and collaborate all in one place. We will continue to improve and expand experiences for all workers to be as productive and connected as possible. As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to push people everywhere into remote work and learning, enabling remote work and remote learning has never felt more important, and we are grateful for the opportunity to stand by our customers at such an extraordinary time.

*We define daily active usage as the maximum daily users performing an intentional action in a 24-hour period across the desktop client, mobile client, and web client. Intentional actions include sending or replying to a chat, joining a meeting, or opening a file in Teams. Passive actions like auto boot, minimizing a screen, or closing the app are not included.

The post Microsoft Teams at 3: Everything you need to connect with your teammates and be more productive appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

• • Microsoft Connections—A simple-to-use email marketing service.
  • Microsoft Listings—An easy way to publish your business information on top sites.

• Microsoft Invoicing—A new way to create professional invoices and get paid fast.

We’re also introducing the Office 365 Business center, a central place where you can manage these business apps and get an end-to-end view of your business. In addition, we’re adding MileIQ, the leading mileage tracking app, as an Office 365 Business Premium subscription benefit. These new services—along with the recently added Microsoft Bookings and Outlook Customer Manager—help you win customers and manage your business.

Connections, Listings, Invoicing and the Business center are rolling out in preview over the next few weeks to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, starting with those in the First Release program. MileIQ Premium is available to all Business Premium subscribers in the U.S, U.K. and Canada effective today.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these products.

Microsoft Connections—Drive more sales with simple email marketing tools

Email marketing can accelerate sales, but getting started can be overwhelming. With Microsoft Connections, you can easily create professional-looking email marketing campaigns with pre-designed templates for newsletters, announcements or customer referrals. You can also provide simple ways for people to join your mailing list or unsubscribe.

As your mailing list grows, you can manage your subscribers by creating segments to efficiently target specific groups of customers. Performance charts and subscriber activity updates track open rate, clicks, new sign-ups, new customers, offer redemptions and unsubscribed numbers for each email campaign, so you can see what is and is not working.

Microsoft Connections is available on the web, and on mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Microsoft Listings—Get your business discovered online by new customers

Getting your business listed online is a great way to be discovered by prospective customers, but it can be time consuming to set up your online presence, keep information like business hours up-to-date and monitor performance across sites. Microsoft Listings makes it easy to publish and manage your business listing on Facebook, Google, Bing and Yelp.

Microsoft Listings includes a web dashboard that lets you easily monitor ratings and reviews.

When you update your business profile in Microsoft Listings, the changes automatically populate across Facebook, Google and Bing. And what’s more, you can monitor online views and reviews of your listings across sites from a single dashboard. This makes it easier to understand feedback from your customers and strengthen your online reputation.

Microsoft Invoicing—Get paid fast with hassle-free invoices and online payments

Getting estimates and invoices out on time, tracking pending payments and processing payments quickly are critical to keep things running smoothly. But it can tedious and confusing to keep track of information in different systems of record or even on paper. Microsoft Invoicing helps you quickly create professional-looking estimates and invoices, so you get paid quickly.

Microsoft Invoicing is available on the web, and on mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Microsoft Invoicing works with PayPal, so you can accept credit and debit cards online. A connector to QuickBooks lets you sync customer and catalogue data, and transfer invoicing information to your accountant.

Manage from one place with the new Office 365 Business center

The Office 365 Business center brings Bookings, Connections, Listings and Invoicing together in a central location—so you have easy access to your business apps and data. It features a unified dashboard where you can view key metrics from all the business apps, including total outstanding invoices, the number of appointments scheduled, the impressions across Facebook, Google, Bing and Yelp, and the number of new subscribers and sent campaigns.

Office 365 Business center lets you access via the web.

The Business center includes an activity feed, so you can see the details of what’s happening within each of the apps—making it easy to keep up-to-date on new customer appointments, invoices and payments being created or updated by the employees in your business. The activity feed also provides suggestions on what actions to take next, such as alerting you that a payment is overdue and it’s time to resend an invoice.

Because the new business apps are built to work together, you don’t waste valuable time setting up connectors or transferring data manually. A contact in one business app is automatically recognized in another, so you don’t have to input data multiple times. As a business owner, you also have full control over who on your team gets access to which business apps and related information.

MileIQ—The smarter way to track your miles comes to Office 365 Business Premium

If you drive a personal car for work purposes such as customer sales visits, partner meetings or trade conferences, you know that tracking and reporting your miles for tax deduction or expense reimbursement can be a hassle. That’s why we’re pleased to add MileIQ—the leading mileage tracking app on iOS and Android—as a benefit of your Office 365 Business Premium subscription.

MileIQ offers a simple, smarter way to track your miles—with automatic drive detection and mileage logging, easy one-swipe classification as business or personal, and comprehensive reporting. MileIQ has already helped over four million customers save time and money—saving customers $6,900 on average per year in deductions or reimbursements, and 2 hours a week of time spent logging drives. You can log unlimited drives every month with the MileIQ Premium subscription that you get with Office 365 Business Premium. MileIQ is currently available to subscribers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

Try the new services and let us know what you think

We are excited to get your feedback as you use these new services in your Office 365 Business Premium subscription. Here’s how to get started:

• Connections, Listings, Invoicing and the Business center—These are rolling out in preview over the next few weeks to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers in U.S., U.K. and Canada. Once they are activated in your account, you’ll see a Business center icon on the welcome screen after you sign in. Just click the icon to get started. If you want early access, please visit our support page to learn how to join the Office 365 First Release program. As you use the apps, let us know what you think by providing feedback in our feedback forum.

An icon introducing the new business apps will appear when you have signed in to Office 365.

• MileIQ—To activate the MileIQ benefit of your Office 365 Business Premium subscription in the U.S., U.K. or Canada, visit www.mileiq.com/office365. We’re eager to hear from you—please share your feedback and suggestions about MileIQ at feedback@mileiq.com.

Frequently asked questions

Q. When will Connections, Listings, Invoicing and the Business center be available outside of the preview?

A. We expect these to be generally available before the end of the year.

Q. Will all users in my organization, who have Business Premium subscriptions, get access to Connections, Listings and Invoicing by default?

A. The Office 365 global admin role controls who has access to these apps. Standard users will not have access to Connections, Listings and Invoicing by default. They can request access in the Business center. Global admins can accept or decline their request from Admin center > Settings > Services & add-ins > Business apps.

Q. Where can I learn more about Connections, Listings and Invoicing?

A. Visit the learn more pages for each app:

• Microsoft Connections
• Microsoft Listings
• Microsoft Invoicing

Q. Where can I learn more about MileIQ?

A. To learn more, visit www.mileiq.com/office365 for product information and detailed FAQs.

Q. How do I activate the MileIQ benefit of my Office 365 subscription?

A. Start by visiting www.mileiq.com/office365 to create a new MileIQ account or sign in using your existing one. Then enter your Office 365 credentials so we can check your eligibility and activate your subscription benefit. Note: You can use any email address you wish when creating a MileIQ account; but be sure to use your Office 365 credentials on the “Check Eligibility” step.

Q. What if I already have a paid MileIQ subscription?

A. If you are currently a paid MileIQ subscriber and you also have Office 365 Business Premium, we’ll convert your existing account. Please contact support@mileiq.com and a member of our team will get back to you.

*QuickBooks and QB are registered trademarks and service marks of Intuit Inc., displayed under license.

The post New business apps in Office 365 Business Premium help you run and grow your small business appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

• Add your Office 365 calendar to Bookings—Connect your Office 365 calendar to Bookings, so that the times you are busy will automatically be blocked in your public Booking page.
• Add buffer time before and after your appointments—Do you need prep time before or after an appointment? Adding buffer time to a service automatically blocks that time in your Booking page too.
• Bookings apps for your iOS and Android phone—Now you can book an appointment, contact a customer or check a staff member’s appointments while away from the office.
• Customize your Booking page—We added more color customization options, so you can better personalize your Booking page.

These new capabilities will start showing up automatically in Bookings in the coming weeks. Let’s take a detailed look at what’s new.

Add your Office 365 calendar to Bookings

One of the top pieces of feedback we’ve heard is that you want to be able to add events from your Office 365 calendar to Bookings. So, we added integration between these calendars to help you avoid booking customer meetings during the time you’ve set aside for personal appointments, staff and partner meetings or other aspects of running your business.

To add Office 365 calendars to Bookings, click the Staff tab on the left navigation panel. On the Staff details page, select the Events on Office 365 calendar affect availability checkbox.

Add Office 365 calendar events to Bookings.

Once you activate this option, the system automatically blocks busy times on the Bookings calendar and on the self-service Booking page your customers see, so that you won’t get double-booked. Similarly, so your staff doesn’t get double-booked, you can also add their Office 365 calendars.

Add buffer time between appointments

Some services can be provided through back-to-back appointments. But another top piece of feedback you gave us was that many of your services require travel, prep and/or set-up time beforehand, and clean-up and travel time once the service was delivered. For customers with these needs, we added buffer times to give you more options to customize the services you deliver.

To add buffer times, click the Services tab in the left navigation column and either edit a current service or create a new one. Turn on the toggle below the Buffer time your customers can’t book and you will get buffer time selections that can be applied before and after the service appointment. These are times your customers can’t book an appointment with you before and after an appointment.

You can turn on the “buffer time” option in the Services tab.

Apps for iOS and Android

We know it’s essential for you to keep up with your business while you are away from a desk, so we built mobile apps that let you manage your bookings and staff, or access your customer list while you’re on the go.

After you download the Bookings app on iOS and Android, you can use your phone to:

• View and manage your Bookings calendar.
• Create and edit bookings.
• See real-time availability and whereabouts of your staff.
• Respond to customers with bookings quickly and easily.
• Get directions to your next booking.
• Access your customer list.

Customize your Booking page

Your Booking page should look and feel like an extension of your business, and it needs to positively reflect your brand.

To help you achieve this, we added options to customize it. For example, you can choose your main color for your Booking page from a color palette, and choose whether you’d like to show your business logo.

To customize your page, click Booking page in the left navigation list and select the color you want. If you don’t want your logo to be displayed, uncheck the Display your business logo on your booking page checkbox. Once you are done, simply click Save and publish.

Use the Booking page tab to customize your Booking page. Remember to click Save and publish to keep your changes.

How to get started with Bookings

Bookings is included in all Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions, and getting started is easy. To simplify the work of customer scheduling for your business, just sign in to Office 365 and click the Bookings tile on the App Launcher. If you don’t see the Bookings tile, we may still be in the process of rolling out the service in your region—so check back a bit later. If you need more help, the article “Say hello to Microsoft Bookings” provides a quick overview of how to use Bookings.

Once you are signed in to Office 365 you can find the App Launcher on the top left corner.

Bookings is designed to delight your customers, simplify scheduling and free time for you to be on top of your business wherever you are. Your feedback has been extremely useful; please keep it coming by clicking the feedback links found on the Bookings home page.

—The Bookings team

Frequently asked questions

Q. Why can’t I see Bookings?

A. We are actively rolling out Bookings in all regions and it may take a few weeks for the updates to reach every customer. If you are already signed in to your Office 365 web experience, please try signing out and back in.

Q. Why can’t I see new features mentioned here, like Office 365 calendar integration and buffer time?

A. We are activating these new capabilities for all Bookings users, but the rollout will take a week or two to complete.

Q. Will someone outside of my company see my schedule and meetings?

A. No. Bookings will only use your Office 365 calendar free/busy information to block that time so you won’t be double-booked.

Q. I use Facebook as my business’s webpage. Can I use Bookings?

A. Yes. In October, we announced how to connect Microsoft Bookings to your Facebook page and grow your business.

Q. How do I learn more about the new features?

A. Our Microsoft Bookings support page has more details about Bookings.

Q. Will Bookings be available for Enterprise customers (E3 and E5)?

A. We intend to bring Bookings to E3 and E5 customers in the future.

Q. Where do I download the Bookings app?

A. The Bookings app for iOS is available in the App Store. The Bookings app for Android is available in Google Play in the U.S. and Canada, and will be rolling out worldwide in the next couple of weeks.

Q. Where can I learn more about simplifying my booking process?

A. Read our eBook, “4 Ways to Simplify Your Appointments Booking Process,” to learn more.

The post New reasons to make Microsoft Bookings the go-to scheduling software for your business appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Customers can schedule your business directly online

Bookings provides your business a unique web page that your customers can use to schedule appointments, even when you’re not around to pick up the phone or respond to an email. The web page is simple to use: the customer first selects the service they want and, based on availability you provide, chooses a day and time when you or one of your staff is available, enters their contact information and books the appointment.

The web page looks great on both larger screens and mobile devices. It’s easy to link to your scheduling page from an email that you send to customers or from your business’s website or Facebook page.

Customers can book with your business from any device.

Reduce missed appointments with confirmations and reminders

When a customer doesn’t show up for an appointment, it can mean wasted time and money for you. To reduce no- shows, Bookings sends your customer an email confirmation right after they book, with an option to quickly add the appointment to their calendar. But we all know how busy people can get. So to help customers remember to show up, Bookings allows you to set up a reminder email, which is sent based on how much notice you want to give before the appointment.

Make it easy for your customers to reschedule or cancel bookings

Sometimes your customers need to reschedule or cancel a booking they’ve made. With Bookings, it’s easy for them to make a self-service change. They simply click the link in the confirmation email or the appointment in their calendar, which then takes them back to the scheduling web page where they can pick a different day and time or cancel the appointment. Want to avoid last minute cancellations? No problem. You can control how much advance notice is required, whether it’s one hour or one week.

Your customers can easily reschedule or cancel the booking.

Manage bookings and customer information from anywhere

All customer bookings are visible in a centralized booking calendar, giving you a complete view of upcoming appointments. You can reschedule, cancel or re-assign an existing booking to another available staff member. You can also quickly create a new booking if you’re talking with a customer in-person or on the phone and use the day “split view” to quickly see which staff is available at a given time.

Bookings provides a clear view of your staff’s daily schedule on the web and mobile.

Bookings also provides you with a customer list to help stay in touch with your customers. Each time a customer creates a booking using your scheduling page (or you create one for them in your booking calendar), Bookings automatically creates a contact for them in your Customers list inside Bookings.

You can manage all of these capabilities on the web, with easy access from the Office 365 navigation bar. For those times when you’re out of the office, in the coming months Bookings will have a mobile app that lets you manage your bookings or contact your customers with a few taps.

Get appointment details and customer information in the Bookings app.

Automatically add bookings on staff calendars

Your customers aren’t the only ones who can forget appointments, so Bookings automatically adds new or updated customer appointments on your calendar or your staff’s calendars. Bookings works great with your Outlook calendar in Office 365. If you or your staff use an Outlook.com or Google calendar, no problem—it integrates with those calendars as well.

You work to grow your business; we want to grow with you

You work hard to build your business, and as your company expands, Bookings grows with you. You can create different booking pages and easily add new staff members as your workforce grows. There is no additional cost for creating multiple booking pages, and additional staff members aren’t required to have Office 365 subscriptions.

How to get Bookings

Bookings is now rolling out in First Release to customers who subscribe to the Office 365 Business Premium plan and will roll out to all Business Premium customers worldwide in the coming months. Once it rolls out, anyone with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription can access Bookings in the app launcher within the Office 365 web experience. Bookings doesn’t require your business email to be routed through Office 365, so you can keep using your current business email service with no changes.

To get started, sign in to Office 365, open Bookings from the app launcher and then click the Get it now button. You’ll need to provide a bit of information about your business and the services you want your customers to book. After that, just click the Save and publish button in the booking page tab to publish your scheduling web page. Your customers will now be able to start booking appointments with your business. It’s that easy!

We hope Bookings will free up time for you to grow your business, help you reduce missed appointments and no-shows and keep you on top of your business wherever you are. As you use Bookings, please tell us what you think by providing feedback in the Bookings home page.

Frequently asked questions

Q. When will Bookings be available?

A. It is currently rolling out to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers who are in the First Release program and will roll out to all Business Premium subscribers worldwide in the coming months.

Q. Which Office 365 subscriptions have access to Bookings?

A. Bookings will be available with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription.

Q. As a business owner, do all my staff need to be Office 365 subscribers?

A. No. You only need one Office 365 Business Premium account to set up and manage Bookings. Your staff can use any email service.

Q. How do I manage the appointments while I am away from the office?

A. In the next few weeks, Microsoft Bookings will deliver a companion app that will allow designated users with an Office 365 subscription to manage and see all appointments as well as all customers’ information.

Q. Will my customers see my personal or business calendar?

A. No. Your customers will only see the Bookings calendar that you publish online. You specify the services, times and staff that are visible on that calendar.

Q. Do my customers need a Microsoft account or an Office 365 subscription to be able to book with me?

A. No. Your Bookings page is publicly available. To book an appointment, your customers only need to provide their name and email so that Bookings can send the confirmation email and reminder.

Q. Do my customers need to download an app to book an appointment?

A. No. Your customers access your web-based booking page from any browser in a mobile device, tablet or laptop. The upcoming Bookings mobile app is only for the business owner to manage their Bookings calendar.

The post Bring in business 24/7 with Microsoft Bookings appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.