There are some upcoming Microsoft Teams changes that we would like to share with you, these are being rolled out over the next seven months and bring some great features with them.
The first change is that any existing or any new Private Teams you set up will be hidden by default. This is to prevent accidental discovery as well as unnecessary access requests. Private Teams will no longer be visible to the public in any form, membership will require invitation by an owner or through I.T, this change is aimed to be released in late January.
Secondly, guest access to Microsoft Teams will be enabled by default from the 8th February 2021 for any organisations that do not explicitly disable guest access within their Teams environment. This is currently defaulted to ‘off’, and enabling Guest access is a task completed normally by I.T. If you already have guest access enabled, then no action is required. However, if you wish to limit guest access you will need to change the Guest access setting, this needs to be set to “Off” instead of “Service default “.
Next, Microsoft has confirmed that the Skype for Business Online Admin Centre has officially been retired, this will happen on 21st July 2021, making way for Microsoft Teams to be the default collaboration and communication platform in Office 365. For those who are still using Skype for Business Online, your new administration centre will be through the Microsoft Teams Admin Centre, the Skype for Business Online settings for users are under the ‘users’ tab for each user profile.
Lastly, a new AI-assisted background noise suppression option is being rolled out globally in Microsoft Teams. This new feature is currently being made available for Microsoft Teams desktop apps and aims to remove any unnecessary background noise during your Teams meetings or calls, making it ideal for those currently working from home. You can check to see if this feature is available to you by looking under ‘device settings’ in your Microsoft Teams desktop app, you’ll see a new option called ‘noise suppression’ with several options:
- Auto (default) – The Teams app decides on the best level of noise suppression based on local noise.
- Low – Suppresses low levels of persistent background noise, such as a computer fan or air conditioner. This setting is best to use if you are playing music.
- High – Suppresses all background sound that is not speech.
- For this option, your computer’s processor must support Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2).
- Enabling this option uses more computer resources.
- Off – Noise suppression is disabled. Use this setting for high-fidelity microphones in low noise environments.
You can view the official roadmap here – Microsoft 365 roadmap
Do let us know if you have any questions regarding these changes or would like some advice on best practices.
