Announced at Ignite 2022, Microsoft have introduced a Teams Premium add-on SKU – giving more benefits to organisations as hybrid working becomes more common and continues to evolve. Given the huge success of Teams, and how integral it has become to so many organisations, it makes sense that Microsoft will look to monetize this with a focus on hybrid features. These new options include:
Meeting Guides
This gives a set of pre-built options for different types of meetings i.e. client calls, brainstorming, help desk calls etc. that will set the length and best practices.
Customised branding
Again, the option to have customised meeting lobbies appears as well as custom backgrounds and together modes.
Intelligent Recap
This sounds like it could genuinely be a game changer.
It will use AI to pick out action items and assign owners during meetings and then create recordings which show key events such as where your name was mentioned or when a screen was shared – making it easier, and faster, to cover what you missed. It will also highlight speakers based on who you work most closely with, so you can skip through the transcripts to find relevant sections more easily.
Live translated captions
This is very cool for international companies and partnerships. An organiser having Teams Premium will mean all attendees get live captions in one of 40 languages.
Advanced Meeting Protections
New options around the security of meetings and recordings include watermarking and, for E5 customers, the ability to use Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels.
Appointment management
Teams Premium will offer advanced Virtual Appointments with better end to end management, text reminders, appointment access without the Teams app, a dashboard to see appointment overviews, and analytics. See more here.
Advanced webinar features
There are also some new features that help enhance the Teams webinar offering – something I’m particularly interested in. These include:
- Registration waitlist
- Automated branded reminder emails
- Virtual green room – this gives a space for speakers to chat, monitor Q&A, check content etc. separate to attendees
Teams Premium also gives control over which speakers, videos etc. attendees can see – which can be very useful when you have multiple presenters at once.
Pricing is currently expected to be $10 per user per month. The Preview will begin in December 2022 and General Availability with be February 2023, although intelligent recap features will be “first half of 2023”.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 