Microsoft Teams gained all of these new features in July 2021
As is the case every month, Microsoft released a mountain of features to Teams across a range of devices and categories.
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What you need to know
Microsoft Teams is a rapidly evolving app that regularly gains new features and options. While we often cover individual features as they roll out, it can be difficult to stay up to date on everything that’s new. To make things easier,Microsoft gathers togetherevery new feature that comes out each month. Here’s what’s new from July.
Meetings and webinars
Microsoft Teams gained several new features for meetings last month. As meetings are the core of the app for many people, Microsoft works to expand their capabilities. Meeting organizers can now automatically record meetings, including single meeting occurrences and series of meetings.
It’s now possible to lock a meeting from additional join attempts. People can use this to keep latecomers from attending or to avoid distractions during a meeting.
You can also view more people in Large Gallery view, thanks to support for paging.
Here’s everything that rolled out for Teams meetings in July:
Calling
Teams now supports transferring calls between desktop and mobile devices. This feature actuallystarted rolling out in June, but Microsoft highlights it in the company’s July roundup.
Microsoft also added support for speed dialing to Teams on mobile devices. Lastly, Session Border Controller now supports Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams.
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Devices
Microsoft Teams Rooms received an update for Windows in July, as did Microsoft Teams Rooms Managed Services. There are also several newly certified Teams devices.
Chat and collaboration
Microsoft released over 800 emojis to Teams in an expanded emoji picker. You can select emojis by clicking on them within categories or using the short code picker to add emojis with text.
Teams now supports Immersive reader and Inline Message translation, improving its accessibility. Microsoft also added a set of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises from Headspace to the Viva Insights app in Teams.
Management, security, compliance, and privacy
Microsoft rolled out several features for developers, management, and security. Developers can now configure Teams apps to utilize a “main stage.” This gives developers greater control over how apps look during Teams meetings.
Here’s everything that rolled out in these categories for Teams:
Education
There’s an entire separateTech Community postfrom Microsoft dedicated to what’s new in Teams for education, but the company also highlights some new features in its main post:
Government
Features often roll out to government versions of Teams after they’re first launched. The following features are rolling out now to customers in the US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and United States Department of Defense (DoD):
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_.
