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Spotlight feature improvements, pinned posts, and more. Here’s what’s new in Teams for October 2020

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Published onOctober 30, 2020

published onOctober 30, 2020

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With Halloween now just one day away, the month of October is coming to a close. That means it’s time to look back at everything that was new in Microsoft Teamsin the month of October. From improvements for the spotlight feature, pinned posts, and more, here’s what you need to know.

Calling features

We’re starting first with the calling features. This month, Microsoft added live captions to Teams with speaker attribution, so that you can see who is speaking during a call. Alsonew is the spotlight featurefor all attendees in a meeting. With this, presenters can pin an individual video feed for everyone in a meeting, and spotlight them.

Another feature added for calling is the ability toprevent attendees from unmuting in Teams Meetings. Thanks to this, meeting organizers and presenters can now prevent attendees from unmuting during the meeting and enable specific attendees to unmute when they raise their hands.

There were also some smaller features, too. Microsoft Whiteboard picked up a read-only mode, to allow for more reliability, and it became possible to save teams meeting and call recordings in OneDrive for Business or in SharePoint.

Chat features

Next up are the chat and collaboration features. The biggest one here ispinned posts. With this feature, you can pin a message in a channel, so that it appears in the channel information pane for everyone to see. There are also some little things, too. This includes a newoffline presence status, language-aware proofing, templates for creating a new Team.

Of course, we can’t forget thenew file sharing experience, too. Now you’ll be able to create a sharable link for any file stored directly in Teams and get the appropriate permissions.

Some of the other things added in October in relation to chat include an Updated SharePoint pages app and new andsimplified global notification settings to make it easier to tweak your Teams experience so you’re not constantly being notified about things.

Education features and Firstline Workers

Moving along, there’s features for Teams for Education and Firstline features. With education, Microsoft added special features for teachers and students. This is the ability to anonymously grade and mark assignments. In addition, teachers and students can also now see upcoming assignments by class, too.

As for Firstline workers, Microsoft delivered on off-shift access controls. Thanks to this, IT Admins can configure Teams to let workers know that they’re opening the app on their personal device outside of working hours.

Other features

We’ve only touched on some of the core features added to Teams in October, but there’s a lot we can’t possibly touch on in just one post. The list includes a native ARM64 app for Microsoft Teams, new capabilities for Microsoft Teams Rooms, a new Power Automate app for Teams, and more. Head over toMicrosoftto see the full list, and remember tocheck out our news hubfor all the latest Microsoft 365 news and information.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

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Radu Tyrsina

With KB5043178 to Release Preview Channel, Microsoft advises Windows 11 users to plug in when the battery is low#

Copilot in Outlook will generate personalized themes for you to customize the app#

Microsoft will raise the price of its 365 Suite to include AI capabilities#

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now Xbox X|S at a huge discount#

Outlook will let users create custom account icons so they can tell their accounts apart easier#

Spotlight feature improvements, pinned posts, and more. Here’s what’s new in Teams for October 2020#

Calling features#

Chat features#

Education features and Firstline Workers#

Other features#