I was away last week with the family in Cornwall which was awesome so was out of the Teams space for a week and what a week i missed it seems.

So i missed out alot from week commencing 9th July in the Teams space so as im finding out what i missed ill blog it here.

First up on

Monday 9th July

Microsoft Teams Online Courses for IT Pros Now Available

Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams then heres an online course for free ! you also have the chance to pay for a certificate if you like as well. Ive took this before i went away and its a great course and i recommend it.

Microsoft uses edX to delivery the training and there’s interactive labs and great learning materials.

More details here on Tech Community

To sign up for the course go here

 

Thursday 12th July

Was a biggy as we have

Introducing a free version of Microsoft Teams

yep there’s now a free version of Teams designed for small businesses and smaller teams that want to try it out or don’t have commercial office 365 subscriptions

and you get quite a lot in the free version for up to 300 people and guests

The free version includes the following for up to 300 people:

• Unlimited chat messages and search.
• Built-in audio and video calling for individuals, groups, and full team meetups.
• 10 GB of team file storage plus additional 2 GB per person for personal storage.
• Integrated, real-time content creation with Office Online apps, including built-in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
• Unlimited app integrations with 140+ business apps to choose from—including Adobe, Evernote, and Trello.
• Ability to communicate and collaborate with anyone inside or outside your organization, backed by Microsoft’s secure, global infrastructure

 

More info here on Tech Community

 

Thursday 12th July

New! Respond to emails, Twitter and Facebook messages in Microsoft Teams with the MailClark App

An new blog post on MailClark third party app for Teams which allows users to respond to emails, tweets and facebook messages directly in Teams.

It appears to be free out of box BUT only for up to 100 messages then you need a subscription. I believe the 100 messages is per month from reviewing MailClark Website.

Feature differences depending on subscription

If you start out on free and reach 100 messages per month. It only mentions slack and not teams but guess its the same.

More info from MailClark website here

 

Friday 13th July – Was a lucky day for Teams with two annoucements !

What´s new for IT Admins in Microsoft Teams

With the new Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business admin centre we can now access this directly from the Office 365 admin centre !! This is great to make it simple for users to access this portal instead of a different URL, you can still access this if you prefer direct by going to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com

We now have “Teams & Skype” listed.

You can access the old “Legacy” SfBO Portals from here as well under “Legacy Portal”

Wohoo

Call Analytics in the Admin Center

Nice to see the Call analytics of Skype for Business Online coming directly into Teams admin centre, again making it simple for admins to troubleshoot calls.

Updates in user level policies and organization settings

You will be able to set policies in Admin centre and via PowerShell, i havent got this on my tenant and it says its rolling out.

• User level policies available
  • TeamsMessagingPolicy
  • TeamsMeetingPolicy
  • TeamsCallingPolicy (settings only available in PowerShell)
• Tenant/organization level settings available
  • TeamsMeetingConfiguration
  • TeamsGuestMessagingConfiguration
  • TeamsGuestMeetingConfiguration
  • TeamsGuestCallingConfiguration

This new setting will be rolled out in stages over the next coming weeks. Once the new settings are available for you, you’ll see a notification in the Teams settings section on the Services & Add-Ins page in the Office 365 Admin Center.

Its great to see the Teams and SfB Admin centre growing

Tech Community Post here

 

The BIGGY FOR ME

Live events in Microsoft Teams !!

Ive been waiting and excited to see what Skype Meeting Broadcast v2 will look like incorporated into Teams and here we have the blog post on it and its called Live Events !! Great name and looks to be awesome. Currently its in public preview.

What are live Events ?

A live event delivers one-to-many video and content streaming to a large online audience while providing centralized control of the shared attendee experience. Live events now empower every organizer,

from Microsoft Teams users all the way to webcasting professionals.  Attendees can join the experience where they are: through Stream, in Yammer or in Teams.

Similar to SfB Meeting broadcast we need to have organizers, producers and presenters for the live events and attendees viewing.

We do however have different ways to produce events including an option for external encoder which is noted as coming soon so for the me producing is all in Teams client.

Live event production: Organizers will ultimately have multiple choices in production methods:

• Quick start. The quick start setting enables users to produce their live events using the Teams client. This option is best to facilitate remote participants or if there is a need to use USB audio/video devices connected to a PC.
• External encoder (coming soon). External encoders can be used by producers to manage their live events with 3^rd party hardware and software via Microsoft Stream.  The service will support studio quality equipment (e.g. media mixers) that can stream to a Real-time Messaging Protocol (RTMP)  This option is typically used in large scale events such as company all-hands – where a single stream from a media mixer is broadcasted from multiple in-room inputs. This live event method will be available over the next month. 

 

Roles

Organizers can setup live events directly in Teams client which is awesome, we don’t need a separate scheduling portal like sfb.

Producers can

• Start / Stop
• Share own video
• Share participant video
• Share active desktop/window
• Select layouts
• Chat with other event team members
• View live attendee count
• Moderate Q & A
• Toggle captions on/off for live event attendees (coming soon)

You can have a queue and view live events.

Presenter. Presenters send audio, video and/or screen sharing into the live event that uses quick start production method.  A presenter can also moderate Q & A.

Attendee. Attendees can experience the event live, using DVR controls or on-demand. Attendees can also interact with the presenters using Teams Q & A or Yammer. Microsoft Teams users will be able to join the live event from the web, desktop and mobile clients.

Tech community Post here with all the details

IT Pro docs here

gives overview, prereqs, planning and setup, capabilities, admin tools etc.

 

Tomorrow ill have a play and setup live events