Everything new that rolled out to Microsoft Teams in May 2021
Microsoft rolled out a ton of new features to Microsoft Teams this month.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
What you need to know
Microsoft Teams gains new features every month, and we stay on top of them as they roll out in preview and to the general public. But with so many capabilities coming to Teams, it’s easy to miss something. Each month, Microsoft gathers everything new for Teams from the month into acomprehensive post. We’ve listed everything here and highlight the biggest ones.
Meetings and webinars
This category may be the one that general users care about the most. Meetings and webinars gained several features in May, including support forDynamic viewandPresenter mode. Dynamic view has Teams automatically change what appears on your screen, making the meeting show content that makes sense. Presenter mode only supports Standout mode right now, but Reporter and side-by-side mode are on the way.
Another handy improvement is the improved sharing experience. Before, when you went to share your screen or other content with a meeting, you saw a crowded menu of all your apps and displays. Now, your windows are gathered together in a convenient bucket you can rotate through.
Here’s the full list of what’s new for meetings and webinars:
Calling
The calling experience within Teams got refreshed this month. It’s been streamlined to show contacts, voicemail, and call history together. Teams also gained the ability tomerge callsthis month, which lets you merge active one-to-one calls together or have a one-to-one call join a group.
Here’s everything else that rolled out for calling in Teams:
Devices
Sharing content from your mobile phone to Teams devices got easier this month. You can nowcast content from your phone to a Teams Roomrunning on Windows. There are also several new Teams devices available:
Get the Windows Central Newsletter
All the latest news, reviews, and guides for Windows and Xbox diehards.
Chat and collaboration
The biggest change to chatting in Teams this month is the added option to chat with up to 250 participants across multiple organizations within a single chat. This should make it much easier towork together with external partners.
Microsoft also rolled out some other handy features:
Power Platform, Security, compliance, and privacy
Admins and IT professionals have some new capabilities that improve the security and management of Teams. One of the biggest additions is the ability for admins to install Apps in Meetings.
Teams for Education
The ability to add assignments to the Office 365 calendar within Teams is a welcome addition to the platform. It makes it easy to keep track of due dates and all the assignments coming up.
Here’s everything else that’s new for education:
Frontline Workers
Frontline workers gained a couple of capabilities for Teams this month. Most notably, Tag APIs make it easy to quickly reach people based on role. The APIs let you programmatically create and manage tags in a team.
Government
As is normally the case, there are new features for several government clients of Teams that were already available for the commercial consumer version of Teams. These features are rolling out to the US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and United States Department of Defense (DoD).
Microsoft Teams is an ever-growing communication platform for messaging, calling, and meetings. This month it gained several new features.
Sean Endicott is a tech journalist at Windows Central, specializing in Windows, Microsoft software, AI, and PCs. He’s covered major launches, from Windows 10 and 11 to the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT. Sean’s journey began with the Lumia 740, leading to strong ties with app developers. Outside writing, he coaches American football, utilizing Microsoft services to manage his team. He studied broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University and is active on X @SeanEndicott_ and Threads @sean_endicott_.
