Microsoft presents Teams Premium and other new features

Teams is getting better and better, especially now that Microsoft has announced another set of new features for it during the Ignite 2022 event. Stealing the spotlight, however, is the Teams Premium add-on that will offer users a variety of business-oriented features.

The preview of the Teams Premium is expected to arrive in December and will give professionals more handy features and improved meeting security additions. Some of the features to anticipate from Teams Premium are customized meeting branding (for putting custom logos and backgrounds in the meeting lobby), meeting guides (guides in the selection of appropriate meeting type like client call, brainstorming meeting, or help desk call), and intelligent meeting recap (AI-based suggestions and intelligent recap with chapters and highlighted insights).

Other features coming to Teams Premium are access to live translated captions from 40 spoken languages, advanced meeting protection to prevent leaks and limit who can record, advanced Virtual Appointments, text reminders for customers, custom branded virtual appointments, appointment queuing for managing appointments in a single place, and ability to view Teams-related analytics like trends and history. 

Teams Premium is also introducing Advanced Webinars, wherein users can get new host controls and event management controls for smoother meeting executions. In addition to that, the add-on will include a registration waitlist and manual approval that keep webinar registration open even after the capacity is reached. Microsoft explained that this will allow people to still register and automatically be added to the waitlist. Premium will also allow customization of the registration start and end time and send automated reminder emails to attendees ahead of the webinar.

On the other hand, Microsoft said that regular Teams users would also be given new features. Aside from the ones already available and rolled out, such as Cameo, Together Mode, Video Clips, and Schedule Send, more are coming before the year ends. Just this October, the Suggested Replies feature is expected to be released. It will be followed by Expanded Reactions and Chat Delete in November and Excel Live, zero-state people recommendations, and user mentioning feature by the end of the year.