Get ready for fall semester with new Microsoft Teams features

Throughout the summer, Microsoft has upgraded Teams with a variety of new features and functionality that enhance the Teams meeting experience and allow you to work more efficiently. 

The most notable update includes the ability to assign up to 10 co-organizers to your Teams meetings. Co-organizers can access and edit meeting options, bypass the lobby and admit people from the lobby, lock the meeting, change another participant’s meeting role, and end the meeting for all. Additionally, co-organizers can become a breakout room manager after being assigned the breakout room manager role. Currently, co-organizers cannot view or download attendance reports, manage the meeting recording, or edit the meeting invitation. 

Assigning a co-organizer to your Microsoft Teams meeting might be helpful if you:

• Schedule meetings on behalf of someone else. You can set up and schedule the meeting, but the co-organizer will have the technical tools to successfully facilitate the meeting in your absence.
• Schedule recurring meetings often. Without assigning a co-organizer, if you happen to be out of the office, you would typically cancel the normal meeting invitation and another attendee would have to reschedule a different meeting invitation at the same time. But now, if you know you'll be out or unable to attend your recurring meeting, you can simply add another attendee as the co-organizer and they can hold the meeting without you.
• Teach remotely with a TA or hold remote meetings with a partner. By assigning someone the co-organizer role, they can easily assist with facilitator and administrative duties.

To read more about the co-organizer feature and learn how to assign the role in your Teams meetings, visit the Technology Help Center.

Additionally, Microsoft recently released a “chat with yourself” feature in Teams. You can stay organized by sending yourself messages, notes, files, images, and videos. If you want to use this feature as a to-do list for yourself, you can delete messages after you’ve addressed the message.

If you need a more robust tool to plan your work and stay organized, Microsoft Planner is now available as an app within Teams. Planner is a light-weight project management tool that enables you to create project plans, assign tasks to yourself or others, share files, and see visuals of your team or project progress. This app is available to all faculty, staff, and students who are a part of a Team (or channel) within Teams.

To learn more, ask questions, or share your opinions about Microsoft Teams, consider joining the Collaboration Tools Advisory Community. The group meets bimonthly to collect feedback from stakeholders and to discuss innovation and trends in collaborative technology. 

If you have specific questions or issues about Microsoft Teams, please visit the Technology Help Center to submit a ticket.