It was a busy November for Microsoft Teams, with loads of new features coming to the increasingly popular communication and collaboration service. Microsoft says Teams has over 270 million monthly active users, which is why the company keeps throwing new features at the app.
In fact Microsoft added 450 new abilities to Teams in 2021 and the rate is ongoing, with at least a new feature coming to the app per day.
Leading the charge in November was the ability to provide an instant poll with one click. This means participants in a meeting can easily gather opinions with simple polls. Polls can be set up previously or done on the fly when a meeting is already in progress.
Microsoft says that Teams is the only app that allows this one-click creation of binary polls:
“With our competitors, presenters must take time to draft a poll in advance,” Microsoft explains in its November 2022 Teams update roundup.
Other New Features
Elsewhere during November, the ability to automatically view 49 videos in a 7×7 grid came to Microsoft Teams. Previously the automatic view would only show 9 video feeds. To see more in a grid the user would need to manually select to see 49.
Also during November, the Teams desktop client received an improvement that means moving between channels and chats is now faster
On browsers (Edge and Chrome), Teams now has better calling and improvements for pre-joining meetings and dynamic view.
Also last month, Microsoft Teams added call transcriptions to the Android app. This means 1:1 calls and group calls will now be transcribed so users can head back to see information on what was said.
Tip of the day: With a single registry tweak, it’s possible to add a ‘Take Ownership’ button to the right-click context menu that performs all of the necessary actions for you. You’ll gain full access to all possible actions, including deletion, renaming, and more. All files and subfolders will also be under your name.
The Take Ownership context menu will set the currently active user as the owner of the files, though they must also be an administrator. They can then enter the folder or modify the file as they usually would.
