But one of the areas where Microsoft Teams has not received enough credit is the way in which it has helped ease several gaps created by the physical distance and missing connection brought on by remote-only or hybrid work environments.

As an employee who started at Microsoft during the pandemic and works 100 percent remotely, Microsoft Teams is the sole product that has afforded me the ability to cultivate strong relationships with colleagues that I have never physically met. The same types of “hour-long lunch date, over share about your personal life, and solve all the problems of the company” conversations that I had with teammates at former jobs pre-pandemic have still been possible thanks to the authentic connections that I have established via Microsoft Teams.

Now I understand that not all employers see these types of conversations as fruitful or productive, but I do know that all employers value the importance of a strong company culture and connection between colleagues. So how does one go about making these types of authentic relationships when they are brand new to a company and separated physically from the rest of their team?

Seeing a real need to help new hires successfully onboard during the pandemic, several organizations within Microsoft were looking for an innovative way to drive connection while removing the awkwardness of being the new employee and the pressures that come with having to be the first person to proactively reach out. So, some great minds within Microsoft Teams Customer and Partner Ecosystem, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, and its India Development Center (IDC) got together to figure out a way to solve this.

“Working together with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, we looked for a new way to enable and spark human connection within Microsoft Teams to help solve for some experiences that employees were missing due to the pandemic,” says Eu Nice Loh, a customer and partner ecosystem senior product manager on the Microsoft Teams product group.

Deploying the Icebreaker app

Icebreaker is based on a template created by the Microsoft Teams product group. This app is hosted in Microsoft Azure and backed by the Microsoft Azure Bot Framework that can be deployed to any company’s Microsoft Teams apps store. It aims to do the work of sparking connections by randomly pairing team members to help them build trust and encourage valuable, meaningful, long-term, and personal connections.

Microsoft’s Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization was one of the first to adopt the out-of-the-box Icebreaker as part of their onboarding experience. When the pandemic first hit, they realized they would need to completely rethink the way they did their onboarding and sales training. Previously, the program had been a two-week immersion at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington where new hires were flown in for onboarding, training, networking, and to build their social capital within the company.

Paola Medina, a business program manager with the MCAPS onboarding team, quickly got to work on finding new ways to foster connection within MCAPS new hire communities.

Even with hybrid work and people returning to the office, Icebreaker continues to be ranked high for MCAPS new hires as their favorite tool for connection, and we have found it to be more cost effective than some of our previous alternatives. In strained financial times, where many companies’ budgets for networking, morale-related events and internal company travel might be limited, the Icebreaker app is a great tool to help initiate connections that were once mainly nurtured by in-person activities.

—Paola Medina, business program manager, MCAPS onboarding team

“I started exploring for ways to help build engagement within MCAPS onboarding during this unique time and stumbled upon the app template for Icebreaker,” Medina says. “After some trial and error, I was able to figure out how to deploy the app, and we started using it with new hires worldwide as a way for them to connect and foster belonging. It has been such a powerful tool for bringing people together.”

Thousands of MCAPS new hires have accessed Icebreaker over the past few years, and they continue to use the app as a critical tool of engagement. Originally as a solution for remote work and office shutdowns brought on by the pandemic, it has continued to prove its usefulness, especially now during challenging economic times.

“Even with hybrid work and people returning to the office, Icebreaker continues to be ranked high for MCAPS new hires as their favorite tool for connection, and we have found it to be more cost effective than some of our previous alternatives,” Medina says. “In strained financial times, where many companies’ budgets for networking, morale-related events and internal company travel might be limited, the Icebreaker app is a great tool to help initiate connections that were once mainly nurtured by in-person activities.”

Not only did we have great team engagement, but it ended up fostering different types of conversations. You had people having casual discussions, in some instances with managers a few levels above them, that may never have happened without Icebreaker. It also led to becoming a great mentoring app for many.

—Timi Bolaji, software engineer, Xbox

xCloud, Microsoft’s Xbox cloud gaming team, has also utilized the Icebreaker app with much success. In fact, in a recent survey taken by xCloud employees, 97 percent of the participants said that the Icebreaker app gave them the ability to make new relationships across the organization.

Timi Bolaji, a software engineer with Xbox and a member of their Culture team, was the one to first introduce Icebreaker to his organization. He felt like the initial Icebreaker app was very approachable, and the documentation was particularly good, but for it to be successful for the xCloud team, he would need to make some technical changes that would better suit his teams’ needs and ensure usage.

“Not only did we have great team engagement, but it ended up fostering different types of conversations,” Bolaji says. “You had people having casual discussions, in some instances with managers a few levels above them, that may never have happened without Icebreaker. It also led to becoming a great mentoring app for many.”

This company-wide need to continue to foster personal connections in a hybrid environment brought together a team with the best suited skill sets to enhance the Icebreaker app. The Microsoft Teams product group set out to design a new experience that would feel fully native to Teams. Also, they provided insights into potential improvements through usage of the latest Teams software development kit (SDK) and Adaptive Cards features.

IDC, one of Microsoft’s premier centers for engineering and innovation, and others on the Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team united modern designs, enterprise-scale performance requirements, new technology capabilities, and Microsoft’s internal app compliance standards to create an improved version of Icebreaker.

Before we could deploy it, we needed to ensure that it could be used by multiple Teams simultaneously using a single set of Azure resources, and the backend service could handle the complex logic of pairing-up employees from different teams based on individual user preferences and Team settings. The scalability requirement drove the re-architecture of the application and broke it down into multiple micro-services, so now the app can be installed by any team in the company.

“In addition to making these changes, we had the opportunity to validate our approach with internal users who had already used Icebreaker and iterate on that feedback,” says Balasubramanyam Janakiraman, a principal software engineering manager leading IDC’s engineering team and overseeing the technical implementation of Icebreaker. “After four months of running the app in pilot, hundreds of teams at Microsoft are now using the new and improved version.”

What we learned as Customer Zero

From all the internal employee usage of the Icebreaker app has come great insight and response. For instance, Medina was instrumental in helping the Icebreaker product team improve the app based on the collective feedback she received from the MCAPS organization.

Some of the top recommendations for improvements included:

• Pulling profile data to present on the app card when matching occurs
• Feature to adjust scheduling, frequency, and matching for Team Owners and Team Members
• Improved messaging, language, and user experience within the App
• Incorporating conversation starters to the app when matched to ease connections
• Ability to modify time options for the “pause matching” feature

“It’s been a real collaborative effort between us, IDC, the Microsoft Teams product group, and our internal customers to get the Icebreaker app where it is today,” says Mykhailo Sydorchuk, a Teams productivity senior program manager with Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “Through the feedback we have received from our employees, we’re able to improve the app and make it even more useful for cultivating strong connections and helping solve the gap created over the past few years.”

The Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team takes our mission to power, protect, and transform Microsoft very seriously. Part of that responsibility is ensuring that Microsoft employees can thrive in a flexible hybrid work environment. As Customer Zero for many products and services, our team obsesses over every aspect of an employee’s experience. Finding ways to better our culture through connectivity and strong relationships is all part of that commitment.

Microsoft Teams will continue to play an integral role in helping our employees and customers connect, collaborate, and explore for many years to come. Innovations like the Icebreaker app are just a small indication of what is still yet to come for Teams as we prepare for many advancements that will continue to enable deep connections within many dimensions.

Are you a customer wanting to learn more about the Icebreaker app in Microsoft Teams or how you and your organization can use Microsoft Teams to foster culture and connectivity? Please go to: https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-apps-icebreaker

Also, if you want to learn more from Paola Medina on her experience as a Microsoft employee and the importance of building community with the Icebreaker app, check out this video.

• Check out these five ways Microsoft Teams has transformed Microsoft.
• Explore advancing your meetings with the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide.
• Learn how we’re transforming how meetings happen at Microsoft with Microsoft Teams Rooms.
• Discover Microsoft’s tips for staying productive in an evolving hybrid world.

The post New Microsoft Teams app helps facilitate employee connectivity in a challenging hybrid work environment appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

The TRP has been on a journey since it first launched in 2015, undergoing several iterations including initially being hosted by a third-party vendor. In July 2021, it was brought in-house and hosted on Microsoft Azure to have more control and flexibility to further enhance the experience. As part of this continual improvement, understanding and hearing from employees and managers about their usage and satisfaction with the tool has been critical to its overall success and the latest iteration of the portal.

“We took a three-phased approach to help us inform the most recent design, as well as guide the objectives, goals and principles for the future state of this tool,” says Nur Sheikhassan, a principal group engineering manager on the Rewards and Compensation team in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience.

Phase 1—Understanding TRP usage

The goal of phase one was to establish a baseline understanding of usage and gather insights into what was working and what wasn’t. One-on-one interviews were conducted with both employees and managers to obtain feedback. Our key findings included:

1. Integration of tangible and intangible total rewards: Understanding that total compensation and benefits are often comprised of both tangible elements (such as money) and intangible elements (such as culture and work/life balance), we found it’s important to surface both in order to clearly communicate the total value of the compensation and benefits package and highlight it in a way that provides clarity rather than clutter.
2. Make TRP more discoverable: The discoverability of TRP, particularly outside of rewards season, had been particularly low. Clearly and consistently branding the site and situating it within areas employees commonly use could help them discover employee tools and content related to rewards more easily.
3. Optimize for the complete task flow: The tool needed to fully consider the complete flow of a potential task. We identified all the information one might be in search of to learn about their total compensation to ensure users do not feel the need to seek out additional resources on other sites and tools.
4. Consider surfacing contextual data: We needed to think critically about the contextual data that is brought in to TRP and use data that will only enhance understanding the value of the Microsoft compensation and benefits packages. By focusing on common scenarios such as managers’ rewards conversations with directs, hiring, and modeling future rewards, this would help to provide a clearer path to what data should be included.

Phase 2—Develop common TRP scenarios

The next phase was designed to build on the learnings from phase one, leveraging common TRP scenarios to help understand what is working and what is not. Exploring these scenarios uncovered opportunities for consideration and started to light up themes around the need to get to overall rewards understanding faster, drive meaning through contextual data, and seamlessly connect related tools and sites. The three key themes that came out of this phase were:

1. Clearly communicate value of total rewards opportunity: We wanted to display total rewards clearly, succinctly, and comprehensively, indicating relevant timeframes and breaking out cash base and bonus. We looked at utilizing data visualizations (i.e., charts) more strategically to help give a clearer view of changes and trends; otherwise, more detailed data in a table was considered to increase usability.
2. Empower rewards conversations: We needed to provide more conversation starters or pointers within the tool that can help managers be prepared and have more meaningful rewards conversations with their teams.
3. Optimize rewards workflows: Better access to related content and sites to enable task completion across the tools in the HR ecosystem was evaluated. Helping managers traverse the fragmented manager-tool ecosystem by providing relevant links, on-ramps, and off-ramps to related tools and information for a more seamless experience that improves workflow.

It was abundantly clear of the immediate appeal the new TRP design had on employees and managers alike. The clean, welcoming visuals and the ability to see more detail on each page in an easy-to-understand layout were all enhancements that were very well-received.

—Jennifer Hugill, principal program manager, Rewards and Compensation team, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Phase 3—Optimize TRP design

Building on the learnings captured from the first two phases, a redesigned user experience was developed including a high-fidelity prototype. The goal of phase three was to assess the usability of the new site and ultimately ensure that user needs and pain points were addressed with the new design.

“It was abundantly clear of the immediate appeal the new TRP design had on employees and managers alike,” says Jennifer Hugill, a principal program manager on the Rewards and Compensation team. “The clean, welcoming visuals and the ability to see more detail on each page in an easy-to-understand layout were all enhancements that were very well-received.”

Key benefits of the newly configured site include:

1. Seamless task completion and delightful moments: Core tasks were easily completed, with participants noting the ability to see multiple pieces of information in a single view. Calculations that had real impact were already done for the user, and thoughtful additions like talking points and personal notes are considered both helpful and delightful.
2. Continued focus on aggregation of information as a key value-add: Bringing together information from disparate systems and tools is important to users. For individual contributor (IC) views, it means showing all compensation-related information in TRP, including hourly wages for hourly workers and revenue and/or commitment-based incentives for sales employees. For managers, it’s bringing together information on direct reports into a single table.
3. System “insights” that help fulfill business and user goals: Providing system-derived “insights” in both manager and IC views allows employees to spend less time connecting the dots between pieces of information and more time making decisions and taking action. For managers, it provides team insights to ensure fair compensation and talent retention. In an IC view, it showcases opportunities to take advantage of additional benefits left on the table.

“The Total Rewards Portal provides seamless access to information about my team’s comprehensive rewards and compensation, allowing me to have meaningful discussions with my employees and leadership during Connect season and beyond,” says Michelle Huenink, a Microsoft manager and global enablement leader in Customer Service and Support.

Ultimately, the goal of the TRP is to show the value of an employee’s individual rewards, while empowering rewards conversations for managers and providing a complete data set to inform decisions. Keeping these core objectives at the heart of our future enhancements enables us to continue to have a tool that provides a consistent experience that our employees will use and enjoy as part of their overall Microsoft employee experience journey.

—Nur Sheikhassan, principal group engineering manager, Rewards and Compensation, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Vision and Future State

Putting all the user research findings together leads to clear business objectives and user experience goals for the future state of the TRP solution. These foundational elements ensure the right principles are in place for the product team providing the guideposts to stay true to the product objectives and goals.

“Ultimately, the goal of the TRP is to show the value of an employee’s individual rewards, while empowering rewards conversations for managers and providing a complete data set to inform decisions,” Sheikhassan says. “Keeping these core objectives at the heart of our future enhancements enables us to continue to have a tool that provides a consistent experience that our employees will use and enjoy as part of their overall Microsoft employee experience journey.”

• In a competitive talent market, having a tool like the TRP really helps represent the value of Microsoft compensation and benefits and reminds employees of the company’s investment in them.
• By using multiple micro-services, we can build a better experience to represent employee compensation at various stages of an employee’s journey with Microsoft.
• Developing and using the Total Rewards Portal is providing us a strong return on our investment (ROI) over time, especially since it is now hosted on Microsoft Azure and because it was developed in-house.
• Our sensitive compensation information for 220,000-plus employees stays within the control of Microsoft while informing our employees.

• Reinventing Microsoft’s Employee Experience for a Hybrid World
• Upgrading Microsoft’s core Human Resources system with SAP SuccessFactors
• Powering hybrid work at Microsoft: A conversation with Andrew Wilson and Nathalie D’Hers

The post Helping Microsoft employees understand their value with the Total Rewards Portal appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

While use of apps for Microsoft Teams can be daunting for IT Teams to implement, due to the oversight of such things as security, compliance, access permissions, connectivity, etc., the benefits of the ecosystem greatly outweigh any perceived challenges.

There’s an endless amount of opportunity for organizations that take full advantage of the apps catalog available in Teams. By integrating with other tools and services, Teams apps can help users by automating routine tasks and manual processes and enabling access to the information and resources they need. This can help reduce distractions and interruptions, allowing users to stay focused on their work and be more productive.

—Mykhailo Sydorchuk, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

I sat down with the Microsoft Digital team responsible for managing the Teams apps ecosystem here at Microsoft to find out what customers should be thinking about when it comes to supporting their organizations. The following summarizes what they had to say about accelerating the deployment and management of apps in Microsoft Teams, what users need to know when evaluating Teams apps, and the lessons we’ve learned as Customer Zero for Microsoft.

“There’s an endless amount of opportunity for organizations that take full advantage of the apps catalog available in Teams,” says Mykhailo Sydorchuk, Teams productivity senior product manager with Microsoft Digital. “By integrating with other tools and services, Teams apps can help users by automating routine tasks and manual processes and enabling access to the information and resources they need. This can help reduce distractions and interruptions, allowing users to stay focused on their work and be more productive.”

How does an organization go about deploying and managing their Teams app ecosystem?

It starts with the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, which allows administrators to customize their Teams app store experience to add company-specific branding and to manage which apps are made available to users. In addition, administrators should consider the following controls for creating a guided experience for users.

Four best practices for administrators to manage how users discover and request apps:

1. Only allow approved apps in the catalog. You want users to know they can trust the apps available to them, so make sure you are only enabling apps that have been reviewed and pre-approved by your compliance team. Additionally, the manage requests function can be utilized by tenant users to request any unapproved/blocked apps, or can redirect user requests to your existing app request process outside of Teams.
2. Use app permissions policies to control which apps are available to users in scenarios where only a subset of company users should have access to a specific app or group of apps. This article provides the steps on how to create an app permissions policy for your organization.
3. Proactively direct users to approved apps for your organization. Use this app setup policies article to help install approved apps for users, so such apps are readily available to them. Additionally, you can utilize auto install approved apps feature for an automatic installation of allowed apps for users who already access these apps on the web.
4. Customize your app store. A branded Teams app store gives users more confidence that its admin team has taken the time to make the experience feel more custom and user-friendly. The customize store location in the Teams admin center allows administrators to select:
   • Organization logo
   • Logomark
   • Background image
   • Text color of organization name
   This article provides more information about customizing your store.

Once administrators have had the chance to set up the above guided experience for their organization’s users. It’s now time for the users to better understand how to best evaluate an app for use. To do this, it’s important to understand a bit about an app’s components and features.

1. 1. Understanding app components: Microsoft Teams apps are composed of one or more components defined in an app manifest. Apps by app features are noted in this article that better helps users understand the permissions of and the information accessed. Before adding an app from the app store, a user can see the access an app will have by looking at the app’s features and permissions section in the About tab (example About tab featured below).

      

   2. Understanding app features: In the image above for example, the app features section references Tabs and Messages, these refer to this third-party apps’ features. The following image includes a breakdown of the various app features descriptions, and refers to the components or experiences included in the app.

      

   3. Evaluating app permissions: This is the most important aspect of app evaluation, as this determines what types of data will be shared with the application. Access to M365 data via Microsoft Graph leverage Azure Active Directory (AD) app registrations, which allows access to other services configured in API permissions in Azure AD.
      Teams data sets can also provide access to data with Resource Specific Consent, which provides scoped access to Teams chats, channels and meetings when specified in the app manifest.
      An application can only access the information described and consent is provided. A global administrator can consent on behalf of an organization. The permissions requested by a Teams app can be reviewed in the Teams admin center (Teams RSC permissions) and the Azure AD Portal (other Graph permissions).

      

   4. Microsoft 365 Certification: This certification is designed to show customers that an app has been vetted against controls derived from leading industry standard frameworks, and that strong security and compliance practices are in place to protect customer data. Users and admins can have confidence that if a third-party app has gone through the certification process that it has underwent strict quality controls, further helping to remove any risks.

   With a general understanding of the components, features, and permissions an app has, and with best practices put in place by the IT team to manage the use of apps, a user can feel confident about adding new apps to their Microsoft Teams ecosystem. In addition, if an app has gone through the Microsoft 365 certification process, that is a further layer of protection that users can trust.

   How do Microsoft Teams users know what apps to add to their ecosystem?

   With the wide-ranging apps available to Teams users, it might be overwhelming to know which ones you want to add. There are many that can help increase a user’s productivity or help with team collaboration. For instance, some of the more popular Teams apps include Microsoft first-party apps like Polls, Whiteboard, Power Automate, Praise and the various Viva modules like Learning, Insights, and Engage. While third-party apps like Adobe Acrobat, Trello and Kahoot! can also help make employees more efficient, create a better learning environment, and greatly add to the overall employee experience.

   Consider the following information and additional resources when it comes to making the most out of the Microsoft Teams apps ecosystem.

   1. It’s important to gain a full understanding of the applications and software being used within an organization and identify any parallels that can be used within the Teams ecosystem. Moving those users into Teams could provide additional efficiencies and methods of collaboration.
   2. Have a predetermined compliance process and enforce it in the App Catalog as early as possible. This will help maintain a sufficient security and privacy posture that is consistent with the org norms.
   3. Teams App Store: Accessed through the left rail on Microsoft Teams, the App Store is the best place for users to acquire and get details on the apps available. It shows the full catalog, and the catalog fully respects the admin policies that have been set-up within each environment by the admin team.
   4. Microsoft AppSource: AppSource is Microsoft’s marketplace for all Microsoft apps (not just Teams apps). You can browse through the extensive collection of apps, sorted by categories and popularity. It provides user ratings, reviews, and detailed descriptions of each app to help you make an informed decision.
   5. Peer Recommendations: Ask colleagues, friends and other professionals who use Microsoft Teams about the apps they find most useful. Their insights and experiences can provide valuable recommendations.
   6. Microsoft communities and forums: the Microsoft Tech Community Teams blog is a great place to keep up-to-date on new apps and Teams features, as well as following Microsoft Teams-related social media channels.
   7. Third-party reviews: Look for external reviews and comparisons of Microsoft Teams apps on tech-related web sites. These reviews can often provide an in-depth analysis, feature comparisons and insights into the usability and functionality of different first and third-party apps.

   From Microsoft first party apps to third party apps, to custom apps built by internal and citizen developers, the breadth that’s at our disposal lends to a richer, more integrated user experience. However, administrators and users should carefully consider the benefits of any app and ensure that it meets their organization’s compliance standards. In addition, M365 certification, least privileged access principle, and data classification labels can also help to remove most risks.

   —Dexion Kornegay, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

   Remember to consider specific needs and requirements when evaluating Teams apps. Consider factors such as functionality, integration capabilities, security, and use purposes. It’s also important to check the compatibility and system requirements for the app to ensure it works seamlessly with your organization’s version of Microsoft Teams. As well as making sure it meets your organization’s compliance standards including security, privacy, accessibility, and licensing requirements.

   

   “From Microsoft first party apps to third party apps, to custom apps built by internal and citizen developers, the breadth that’s at our disposal lends to a richer, more integrated user experience,” says Dexion Kornegay, senior product manager with Microsoft Digital. “However, administrators and users should carefully consider the benefits of any app and ensure that it meets their organization’s compliance standards. In addition, M365 certification, least privileged access principle, and data classification labels can also help to remove most risks.”

   The Teams app ecosystem will continue to play a critical role in helping our employees and customers connect, collaborate, and get the best out of their overall Microsoft Teams experience. It’s up to the IT team to make the experience as seamless and user-friendly as possible. In turn, it’s important for users to explore and experiment with the vast catalog of apps that are available to help them increase productivity, efficiency, and innovation.

3. 

   • Having a well-documented process with transparent controls improves app onboarding for everyone and creates a guided experience for users.
   • Only allow approved apps. At Microsoft, we only enable those apps that have successfully completed governance review process.
   • Disabling user-delegated consent and enabling user consent requests in Azure Active Directory helps IT to minimize the risk of exposing sensitive M365 data through Graph.
   • Reliance on M365 Certification can reduce compliance assessment load.
   • Providing users with a self-service app request process that lists already approved apps in the same category can redirect them for quicker resolution.
   • There are significant resources available to help users better understand what apps will help them improve their productivity, collaboration, and efficiency to work smarter in Microsoft Teams.

   

   • New Microsoft Teams app helps facilitate employee connectivity in a challenging hybrid work environment.
   • Enabling hybrid work internally at Microsoft with ‘digital fabric’ Microsoft Teams.
   • Microsoft Teams increases collaboration in the modern workplace at Microsoft.
   • Five ways Microsoft Teams has transformed Microsoft.

The post Work smarter in Microsoft Teams by leveraging the apps ecosystem appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

The aim of the new Microsoft Teams Premium experience is to make any Microsoft Teams meeting more personalized, intelligent, and secure. But to ensure these features are indeed a value-add for our customers, Microsoft employees must first use and test them extensively to understand the additional benefits they bring.

After using some of the initial Teams Premium capabilities internally, with the latest technologies including AI-powered language models, Teams Premium is going to provide a real advantage for users. It offers a set of solutions that makes Microsoft Teams meetings highly customizable and intelligent.

—Sara Bush, principal PM manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

For the past several months, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, the company’s IT organization that is responsible for serving as Customer Zero for Microsoft products, along with the Teams product group, have been working together to ensure Microsoft Teams Premium lives up to its promise and provides an enriched set of features for our customers.

“After using some of the initial Teams Premium capabilities internally, with the latest technologies including AI-powered language models, Teams Premium is going to provide a real advantage for users,” says Sara Bush, a principal PM manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “It offers a set of solutions that makes Microsoft Teams meetings highly customizable and intelligent.”

How to get started with Microsoft Teams Premium: Get Started with Microsoft Teams Premium – Microsoft Community Hub

To learn more about Microsoft Teams Premium, I spoke with several Microsoft employees who have been at the forefront of testing the new capabilities and are some of the early users to find out more about the new features and additional benefits.

Live translated captions

Virtual Microsoft Teams meetings have allowed more people than ever to connect, engage, learn, and collaborate. Currently, within a regular Teams meeting, you can easily follow along with who’s talking with speaker-attributed live captions and transcription. But what happens if you are presenting to people who don’t speak the same language as you? How do you ensure the conversation is seamless and easy for them to understand?

The new live translation for captions capability delivers AI-powered, real-time translations from 40 spoken languages so meeting participants can read captions in the language that they prefer most. This is thanks to the help of Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service Speech Translation. For instance, if the meeting organizer has Microsoft Teams Premium, then all meeting attendees can enjoy live translated captions. This capability helps break down language barriers, putting participants at ease and allowing for a more productive and frictionless experience.

“Live translated captions is a real game changer, especially for large, global companies,” says Jan Steberl, a product manager in the Microsoft Teams product group. “This feature really puts all meeting participants on an even playing field, no matter what their language of choice is or where they are located. For someone like me, who is based in the Czech Republic and participates in virtual Teams meetings with colleagues from all over the world, it really has been a difference maker.”

Advanced webinar features

Building upon the basic webinar functionality available in Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft 365 offerings, with advanced webinar in Microsoft Teams Premium, users get the familiar and secure experience of Microsoft Teams combined with new host and event management controls that make it easier to connect with your audience. Whether presenting a keynote, training new employees, or showing off a new product to customers, the advanced webinar capabilities deliver a high-quality experience that improves overall event logistics.

Building upon the basic webinar capabilities in Microsoft Teams today, with the new registration waitlist and manual approval capability within Microsoft Teams Premium, the registration experience is now a lot more robust. Enabling the waitlist will allow the event organizer to keep webinar registration open (even after the event has reached capacity), allowing additional people to register and be automatically added to the waitlist. As new spots open, people are automatically moved to the pending approval state, enabling the organizer to approve or reject the additional registrants. In addition, organizers can customize the start and end time and specify when they want registration to start and end, making it much easier to manage an event.

Virtual green room

Remember pre-COVID days, when presenters used to gather with the event host in the physical green room to go through a dry run or hammer our last-minute details of an event? With virtual green room, the host and participants are still able to connect and manage all the behind-the-scenes action prior to the meeting start.

“Anyone who plans virtual events, team meetings, or presentations knows that there are always eleventh-hour changes leading right up to the start, so the addition of the green room has been a much-needed, welcome feature,” says Michelle Strub, an executive and internal communications lead in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “It allows presenters a dedicated space, separate from attendees, to hash those final details out, socialize, monitor the chat or Q&A window, and manage what attendees see before the event begins.”

For more information on how to manage the meeting experience go to: Manage your meeting presentation experience for sensitive Microsoft Teams meetings.

And the benefits of green room are there for the attendees of the event as well! As attendees wait for the meeting to get started, green room will provide a welcome screen, and participants can use the chat and Q&A windows to engage with each other or prepare questions for the upcoming presenters.

End-to-end encryption and confidentiality settings

Managing and protecting confidential information in virtual meetings is now much more secure thanks to some of the end-to-end encryption features and advanced meeting protection available in Microsoft Teams Premium.

For those extremely sensitive meetings that require disabling some of the features for an advanced security option, users can apply end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to the meeting. Data is always secure within Microsoft Teams, but there may be some customers that need an extra layer of protection for ultra-sensitive business topics that Microsoft Teams Premium now provides.

Upgrading safeguards for confidential business meetings, like watermarking to deter information from being leaked or limiting who can record a meeting, gives customers the additional assurance they need to keep a virtual meeting private. With Microsoft Teams Premium, meeting organizers can leverage unique watermarks over attendees’ screen shares and video feeds to confidently display and present any confidential information.

In addition to the added benefits you get with Teams Premium, I see it providing a real opportunity for customizing and securing the meeting experience for our customers. Given the myriad capabilities to set options, brand visuals, and even templates for meeting types, it is a huge value-add.

—Chanda Jensen, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

“These new features are really good for those who are obsessed with security,” says Hongsik Choi, a principal program manager in the Microsoft Autonomy, Space, Critical Industry and Innovation (ASCII) group. “Customers who prioritize security in general tend to worry about the security of online virtual meetings, but end-to-end encryption is very useful and provides that next level security layer for audio, video, and shared screen.”

Through intense internal testing and use and by incorporating the latest in AI-powered capabilities, Microsoft employees are ensuring that Microsoft Teams, and specifically the new Microsoft Teams Premium offering, provides customers with the solutions they need to adapt to the ever-changing workplace environment and improve their organization’s productivity. The increased security, personalization, and modern technology that comes with Teams Premium makes the new offering a no-brainer for customers trying to up their game when it comes to communication, collaboration, and managing virtual meetings. The additional investment will be a boost to our customers, supporting the new ways of working, securely collaborating, and personalizing their enterprise experience.

“In addition to the added benefits you get with Teams Premium, I see it providing a real opportunity for customizing and securing the meeting experience for our customers,” says Chanda Jensen, a senior product manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “Given the myriad capabilities to set options, brand visuals, and even templates for meeting types, it is a huge value-add.”

Since its launch six years ago, Microsoft Teams continues to innovate at a rapid pace. With the introduction of Microsoft Teams Premium and with new features continuing to roll out, we can feel confident that the feedback we’re providing as Customer Zero for Microsoft will only continue to fuel the innovation and keep the bar very high for Microsoft Teams solutions for years to come.

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