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Microsoft Teams will add breakout rooms and automated meeting recaps
Updates also include automated meeting recaps and custom layouts.
Microsoft Teams will bring fans into NFL stadiums virtually
That's certainly better than having completely empty stands.
Microsoft offers virtual graduations with up to 20,000 attendees
Microsoft is doubling the Teams Live Event audience limit for schools until July 1st.
Slack adds Microsoft Teams video call options
More of us than ever are relying on video calling apps to chat with friends, family and colleagues. Slack, for example, has seen a huge increase in calls made and received through its app in the last month amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting today, the app will give you more options. For instance, you can now hop into a Microsoft Teams call directly from the productivity app, which said last week it was working on such an option.
Slack and Atlassian team up for a chat battle with Microsoft (update)
Atlassian and Slack announced today that they're entering a partnership, one that should be beneficial to both as they continue to face competition from Microsoft. As part of the agreement, Atlassian will sell the IP for its HipChat and Stride communication products to Slack and will also take a stake in the company. Slack will make payments to Atlassian over the next three years, Bloomberg reports, and both Atlassian products will be discontinued.
Microsoft takes on Slack with free version of Teams
Microsoft Teams is getting a major upgrade, but it's not quite what you might expect. The company is taking a cue from Slack by unveiling a free version of Teams, allowing anyone to use the collaboration software without an Office 365 account. Naturally, Microsoft is hoping for free users to eventually become paying customers -- but even if they don't, they'll still steal away some mind share from its popular competitor. Slack has offered a free tier since it launched in 2014, which led to an explosion of private (and often superfluous) channels. That helped the service grow beyond teams of office workers, and it taught plenty of people how to use Slack, making it easier for them to bring it to their workplace.
Microsoft's AI cone recognizes faces and voices during meetings
Microsoft has a new tool for making meetings easier. It recognizes speech patterns, automatically transcribing them for remote participants (capable of "multiple" simultaneous translations) in addition to visually recognizing meeting participants as they walk into the room. And because the black, conical speaker is always listening, it means meeting notes are transcribed automatically.
Microsoft Teams closes in on Slack by adding guest accounts
Microsoft is giving Teams, its Slack-like app, the ability to invite any guest to a chat room. While you can invite collaborators to a Team room right now, they need to have an account in the company's Azure Active Directory first. With the new feature in place, you'll be able to add any business partner, client, freelancer or anyone else to a room using their email address, whether it's a company or a consumer email like Gmail or Outlook.
Microsoft's all-in-one 365 subscription is available for schools
Microsoft just launched its latest bid to bring its services into every aspect of schools and the workforce. To begin with, it's offering its all-encompassing Microsoft 365 subscription to education. Schools can pay a single per-person rate to get Windows 10, Office 365, the Enterprise Mobility and Security Suite and even Minecraft: Education Edition. Office 365 for Education is already free, but Microsoft is betting that all the other perks will be worth it for faculty that wants a one-stop shop for the software they need. It'll be available on October 1st -- too late for the return to school, so don't be surprised if you don't see this used in earnest until the winter semester or next fall.
Teams is Microsoft's most intriguing productivity app yet
Group-collaboration software isn't anything new, but in recent years we've seen an explosion of new solutions aiming to redefine how teams work. There's Slack, of course, which has spread across startups and big organizations like wildfire. But even before that, companies relied on things like HipChat, Yammer and plain old IRC. When Microsoft first unveiled its own offering last fall, the not-so-subtly named Teams, it initially seemed like the software giant was just jumping on the latest productivity bandwagon. It also seemed a bit redundant, since Microsoft owns Yammer. But it quickly became clear that Microsoft had some big ideas in store.
Microsoft's Teams is its Slack competitor for Office 365
Because Yammer isn't quite enough to take on Slack, Microsoft is launching yet another business chat app: Teams. It'll be part of the Office 365 suite, and from the video below, it looks like it'll differentiate itself from Slack and Hipchat with threaded chats, Office document collaboration and multi-person video chat. Basically, the company is trying to bring all of productivity strengths together in a single app.
