Here are the new features, enhancements coming to Teams next month

Teams is expected to get more than 20 new features and improvements next month, including the rollout of its new Teams Premium add-on.

What makes Teams interesting is its continuous development through the new features Microsoft is introducing to it. And we’re not just talking about one or two. The communication app is one of Microsoft’s well-loved products that always get a rich number of feature additions every month. As a matter of fact, just this month alone, it has eight features in general availability now rolling out to customers, and there are three already fully released. Even more, the number of these features might soon increase before January ends as 11 of the new Teams capabilities are still under development, though labeled to get their general availability this month. And in February, more are coming.

According to the latest Microsoft 365 roadmap, Teams users can expect over 20 new features next month, including the new Teams Premium, which will bring several new advanced capabilities. Aside from that, other things coming to the communication platform include the Class and Lecture Meeting Templates for the Teams Education platform, profile card expanded view, Virtual Appointments calendar level analytics, and more. Here is the complete list of the features coming in February, alongside their short descriptions.

• Video filters in Microsoft Teams Meetings. Users will be able to augment their video stream with visual effects.
• Busy-on-busy end user setting. Gives users new options to manage incoming calls when they are currently in a meeting or another call.
• File uploading to approval request via Power Automate portal. Files uploaded through the Power Automate portal will show in the view details window of an Approval request.
• Suggested Files. An expansion of suggested replies in chats that will detect and suggest the files relevant to your conversations.
• PowerPoint Live slide magnification. Allows attendees to privately magnify slides and presenters to do it for everyone at the meeting.
• Tabs for anonymous users. Allows developers to show tab experiences for anonymous users in Teams meetings.
• Virtual Appointments app. The new one-stop place for professionals and administrators to access different appointment functions, such as managing and setting appointments, viewing appointment insights and analytics, sending appointment reminders, and more. Users will get dedicated Teams/Surface devices and web/desktop versions.
• View switcher updated interface for Teams Rooms on Windows. The improvement aims at making it easier to control and customize views in a meeting.
• New SMS option for Parent Connection invitation channel. Admins can now choose either email or SMS as the preferred Parent Connection invitation channel when enabling the parent-teacher communication feature on Teams.
• Presenter window improvements. Presenter window usability is getting new improvements in screen sharing with the controls now located at the top and raise hand notifications surfaced.
• Virtual Appointments Analytics Takeback. Virtual appointment analytics reports will be converted as Teams premium functionality.
• Virtual Appointments calendar level analytics. A report showing trends over time and also offers the ability to drill down into individual appointment data.
• Microsoft Teams Premium availability. An add-on that will offer more features, such as branded meetings, intelligent recap and search, live translated captions, advanced meeting protection, and advanced webinar and advanced Virtual Appointment experiences.
• Virtual Appointment (desktop). A new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside the organization.
• Frontline worker Audience targeting. A new capability for frontline worker communicators to identify target audiences through the use of location, job code, and department. Also coming to Outlook.
• Targeted in-meeting notification. Allows users to send in-meeting notifications to specific individuals in a meeting via a bot.
• Actionable missed call notification in Activity. Users will get the option to call back on a missed call directly from the activity feed.
• Profile card expanded view. Allows users to view more details about other persons’ profiles alongside richer organization chart information.
• Class and Lecture Meeting Templates. New templates coming to Teams for Education. 
• Improved Teams flyout design. Teams for desktop is getting visual layout enhancement for better app engagement and discovery of more apps.
• Survivable Branch Appliance call controls. New controls will be accessible with Survivable Branch Appliance when users encounter network outages. It includes accessing contact search, dialing by name, and making a call from the call history.