Microsoft Teams Gets Improved Sign Language

 New accessibility

Microsoft Teams is getting a sign language view  in theVerge

The new accessibility feature creates a larger, high-quality view for interpreters and signers separate from other call participants or presentations.

By JESS WEATHERBED   Nov 18, 2022, 7:57 AM EST|

A screenshot of Microsoft Teams new sign language view. A signer is prioritized on the left, with another call participants kept separately on the right.

Sign language view allows signers to prioritize up to two video streams on center stage, in a consistent location during every meeting. Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has a new dedicated sign language view for its Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform. The feature enables sign language users to select up to two other participants’ videos to be fixed in a central location, allowing designated signers to be visible throughout the meeting.

Microsoft says Teams users can enable the feature for all meetings or on a meeting-by-meeting basis, which is especially useful for non-hearing impaired signers. Sign language interpreters can be pre-assigned prior to starting a meeting if they’re within your organization, and external interpreters can only be assigned within a meeting using the Accessibility tab in the app settings. Microsoft does not provide sign language interpreters for Teams meetings.

Sign language view doesn’t affect what other call participants can see on Teams

Other participants can still be pinned without encroaching on the prioritized video streams of the signer, which will default to an uncropped ratio at the highest available quality. The prioritized stream shifts when a presentation is shared but will still be easily distinguishable from other participants, retaining a larger size and high video quality. Sign language view is also personal to the user — other call participants will not be alerted or have their own Teams view altered.

Microsoft is also announcing a new sticky Accessibility preferences pane for Teams. The new pane gives users easy access during calls to make changes like turning on sign language view by default or pre-identifying preferred signers. Sign language view and live captions can also be quickly toggled on or off within the pane. ...'

Microsoft Teams now for Friends, Family, Fun, Slack .... and Free too

Players have decided that free group software in all contexts is the way to win big and broadly post pandemic.

Microsoft Teams is ready for 'friends and family'

After almost a year in preview, Teams has a bunch of new features for personal use.

By N. Ingraham   in Engadget

Microsoft Teams is well-known as a competitor to Slack for workplace communications, but almost a year ago the company announced it was also getting some features geared at using it with family or friends. After a long preview period, Microsoft is announcing that Teams is now available to anyone and free for personal use.

If you haven't tried Teams for personal use yet, it includes core features from platforms like Slack and Discord, including video calling, chat, integration with files you're working with and so on. Today's announcement highlights the kinds of features Microsoft is aiming at people who want to use it with friends and families. For example, "Together Mode" is a twist on video calling that puts you and your callers into a virtual shared environment; Microsoft says this actually reduces video call fatigue "because your brain doesn’t have to work as hard when compared to a standard video call."   ... '

(Much more with pics of group usage too) 

Microsoft and SAP Extend Partnership

Had worked in the enterprise extensively with SAP and MS, so this is interesting.  Note in particular this opens SAP to consumer facing products like Teams, a first.

Microsoft and SAP have announced an extension of their existing partnership, one that will see Microsoft Teams integrated into SAP’s suite of products.

The two companies have sought deeper synergies in recent years, combining their respective strengths in the enterprise software sphere. Back in 2017, the duo announced plans to use and sell more of each other’s cloud services, with Microsoft committing to S/4 HANA, SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and SAP running more of its financial systems on Azure. Two years later, the companies teamed up again to “accelerate customer adoption” of S/4HANA and the SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure. ....'

Microsoft Teams to be Enhanced for Business Plays

Been looking for ways that the now numerous collaborative systems will really improve task and goal oriented business process.   Its still mostly the basics.  Very useful but hardly 'intelligence' in any sense.  For example a system that could analyze the essence of a  meeting and extract decisions like who agreed to do what and what support they need.  Schedule follow ups.  The below is not that, but I get the sense they are considering new things of real value.   We brainstormed some things like that in the early 00s.  Lets see it now.

Microsoft Teams gets an overhauled calling interface, CarPlay support, and more

Microsoft Teams will soon let you transfer calls easily between desktop and mobile

By Tom Warren@tomwarren in TheVerge 

Microsoft is overhauling its calling features inside Microsoft Teams today. A new calling interface will now show contacts, voicemail, and calling history in a single location. It’s designed to allow Microsoft Teams to more easily replace your desk phone, with built-in spam call protection, reverse number lookup, and the ability to merge calls.

Microsoft Teams users will also be able to transfer calls between mobile and desktop soon, allowing people to quickly move locations in the middle of an audio or video call. The Teams app will let people join without audio on an additional device, or simply transfer the call and end it automatically on other devices. Microsoft says this particular feature will be available in early 2021.  ... '

Power Apps for Teams

Like to see this direction, not only as a means to interact, share data and improve collaboration, but Apps that will address particular inefficiencies that already exist in business.   We all do business, lets make it work better.    Add intelligence to work flow, business process, goal achievement  ... results.  Will it? Don't know, but will take a look.   We need more testing beyond the obvious.   (Considerable details at the link) 

Microsoft expands Teams with meetings apps and low-code tools in Venturebeat   By Emil Protalinski

Microsoft today announced the general availability of Teams apps for meetings. For those who prefer a low-code approach, Power Apps for Teams, the Power Automate app, the Power Virtual Agents app, and Dataverse have also hit general availability. These announcements come on the heels of Teams passing 115 million daily active users (DAUs) last month. This is a pandemic-induced explosion, given that 16 months ago Teams had 13 million DAUs.

Microsoft Teams is the company’s Office 365 chat-based collaboration tool that competes with Slack, Facebook’s Workplace, Google Meet, and even Zoom. Indeed, Microsoft is in a virtual meeting war with Google and Zoom. Teams has seen 200 million meeting participants in a single day, Google Meet has seen more than 235 million meeting participants, and Zoom has seen 300 million meeting participants. (Unlike DAUs, “meeting participants” can count the same user more than once.)   ... ' 

Future of Work by Microsoft Teams

Nice to see Microsoft Teams expanding their capabilities.   Have now used Teams now many times, like it. Now lets see more assistance built in.

Microsoft aims to enable the future of work with new Teams features and devices  By  Mike Wheatley

Microsoft Corp. is doubling down on what it says will be the “future of work” amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

At its Ignite 2020 virtual event today, it announced a host of new products and services it says will help people to become more productive, whether they’re working remotely or simply being careful to maintain social distancing upon their return to the office.

For remote workers the main focus has been on expanding the capabilities of Microsoft’s Teams collaboration app, Microsoft 365 Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro said in a blog post. For example, Teams Together Mode, which is an experience that’s meant to help participants feel closer together even when they are apart by placing them in a shared background, is getting more options, including auditoriums, conference rooms and even a virtual coffee shop.  ... " 

Polinode and Microsoft Teams

Just informed of this and taking a closer look.   Polinode and its advances have been mentioned here many times.   For more about Polinode, see here.

Polinode Connects with MS Teams and Slack

Announcing Integrations with Microsoft Teams and Slack   By Andrew Pitts

Today is an exciting day at Polinode! We are thrilled to announce that we now have direct integrations with both Microsoft Teams and Slack. With so many organisations recently moving to a situation where most or a significantly increased proportion of work is now done remotely, we decided to accelerate these integrations a few months ago. For a number of years there has been a trend towards more internal communication taking place across Enterprise Social Networks such as Teams and Slack. And so, both in the current environment and because of this trend, we feel that the ability to tap into the natural network data that these tools produce will be particularly powerful and insightful for organisations. A handful of organisations who have been testing the integrations over the last couple of months have already proved this to be true! 

HOW DOES IT WORK?
The Teams and Slack integrations are available to any Enterprise and Partner customers who would like to take advantage of them. They sit alongside our existing integrations with Microsoft Active Directory, Office 365 Email, Office 365 Calendar and the Microsoft People API. All of these integrations are simple to setup - they just take a couple of minutes! All that is required is for an admin user of the tenant to provide authorisation to Polinode by clicking a button, i.e. oAuth approval.   .... " (Much more explanation at the link) 

Revamped GMail to Compete

Used GMail since we tested it in the enterprise.   Later because we collaborated with universities who got it for free.    Always liked it, and the following GSuite, but its design was always a bit quirkily  'academic' as well, making you need to do things in sometimes illogical ways.   Our enterprise went full Microsoft soon afterwards, but it was OK to keep the Google connections as needed.  Will advances in GMail help this?   Notable the look at MS Teams, which is not in considerable use.

A revamped Gmail could bolster interest in G Suite as it looks to take on rivals like Microsoft, Slack and others.  By Matthew Finnegan in Computerworld

Google has unveiled a revamped Gmail that will serve as a hub for collaboration with access to video, chat and shared files available directly from the email client. It’s a move designed to bring Google into closer competition with Microsoft Teams, according to one analyst, as well boosting its position against newcomers.

Google has moved in recent months to integrate its various G Suite apps with Gmail, with its Meet video and Chat team messaging applications gradually being melded with the email client. Indeed, despite expectations in some quarters that team chat will kill email, Google has long seen Gmail as the natural home for collaboration in its portfolio. ... "

Microsoft and Teams

Adding somenewand novel capabilities to the conferencing method.  Have used it and others since their inception.  Well done.   They also provide some usage numbers.


How Microsoft Teams will use AI to filter out typing, barking, and other noise from video calls
 By Emil Protalinsky in VentureBeat

Last month, Microsoft announced that Teams, its competitor to Slack, Facebook’s Workplace, and Google’s Hangouts Chat, had passed 44 million daily active users. The milestone overshadowed its unveiling of a few new features coming “later this year.” Most were straightforward: a hand-raising feature to indicate you have something to say, offline and low-bandwidth support to read chat messages and write responses even if you have poor or no internet connection, and an option to pop chats out into a separate window. But one feature, real-time noise suppression, stood out — Microsoft demoed how the AI minimized distracting background noise during a call. ...

Oracle Plans Voice Digital Assistant to Integrate with MS Teams

Of interest because this implies that this assistant will integrate with office features, like Microsoft Teams.   Below the introduction, much more in the article.  Am a user of teams so will be interested to see how this works together.

During its OpenWorld event this week, the company also unveiled plans to have its Digital Assistant integrate with Microsoft’s Teams collaboration platform.
     By Matthew Finnegan in Compterworld

Oracle has added AI voice commands to its Digital Assistant, offering users an alternative way to interact with its various business apps. The company on Tuesday also announced that the bot will integrate with Microsoft’s work stream collaboration platform, Teams. 

Oracle’s Digital Assistant was launched last year as an interface to its portfolio of enterprise software applications, which includes sales, marketing and human resource tools. The virtual assistant uses AI techniques such as machine learning and natural language processing and understanding to interpret user intent; it’s designed to automate processes such as expense approvals and meeting re-schedules.

The Digital Assistant was initially targeted at text interactions and embedded in various communication and collaboration tools such as Slack, WeChat and Facebook Messenger, as well as user websites and as a standalone mobile app. The most common use cases so far have  been customer service interactions, employee self-service for IT help desk issues, and interactions with Oracle’s enterprise resource planning systems, such as invoices, the company said.

The addition of a voice interface should broaden the appeal of the virtual assistant, said Suhas Uliyar, Oracle’s vice president of AI and Oracle Digital Assistant. “One of the things we are beginning to see in the field or have received feedback from customers on is the rise of voice in the enterprise,” he said. “People want to be able to speak to the chatbot or virtual assistant rather than type or tap.”  .... " 

Microsoft Teams Surges Ahead of Slack

Microsoft shows the numbers, somewhat unexpectedly.  Have used Teams since its rollout.  A quite fast pickup.   Its well done for basic chat and beyond.  Probably because its integrated with the commonly installed Office.

Microsoft Teams Surges ahead with 13M users, likely surpassing Slack   By Dunan Riley in SiliconAngle

Microsoft Corp. has finally revealed user numbers for its Teams service, likely confirming what was first reported in a survey in December: It’s now more popular than rival Slack Inc.

More than 13 million people were using Microsoft Teams on a daily basis as of June, with more than 19 million people using the service weekly, Microsoft said today. By comparison, Slack reported it had 10 million daily users in January.  ... " 

Microsoft Teams vs Slack

Now been using Teams since its release, and also Slack for projects and consulting.  And have been using things like Google Drive and OneNote for similar purposes of communication sharing, information and development.    Following article takes a comparative look:

Microsoft Teams: Its features, how it compares to Slack and other rivals

Microsoft's entry in the crowded group messaging market continues to evolve. Here's how Microsoft Teams fits into the boom collaboration software market and what you need to know to evaluate it against its rivals. .... 
           
By Matthew Finnegan By Matthew Finnegan in ComputerWorld ...

Microsoft Makes Kaizala Free for 365 Subscribers

Kaizala seems to provide a number of network architectures for people working together.    Nice idea, how will it compare to the now popular Teams?    Do most people know the architecture that is needed, and will that architecture remain stable during the project?   Still like the idea.  Will be experimenting. 

Coordinate work across dynamic networks of people using Microsoft Kaizala    

 By Praveen Maloo  of Microsoft

Today’s workplace extends well beyond organizational boundaries, and there is an increasing need to connect your entire business value chain, including your Firstline workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, and customers. A disconnected value chain hinders productivity, slows down decision making, prevents the ability for insights to surface from the field, and creates potential for customer dissatisfaction. Today, consumer messaging apps are often used between people across the value chain, but this poses security, privacy and compliance risks to company data. Microsoft Kaizala aims to solve a lot of these challenges, especially in mobile-first, developing markets.

Microsoft Kaizala is a simple and secure mobile app, with easy sign-up using just a phone number. It enables networks of people to connect and coordinate work across their roles, spanning Firstline workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, customers, and citizens.  Many organizations are already doing amazing things with Kaizala.

Kaizala delivers on four key promises:

1. Communicate across dynamic networks: Kaizala supports diverse group types such as hub and spoke, hierarchies, and public groups – which model the communication needs of your organization. Use it to connect with your customers and partners or your Firstline workers. Temporal and geo-fenced groups make the set-up and discovery of groups easy, and large group size of up to 1 million users enables scenarios such as government-to-citizen communication .... "

(Apparently the 'free' version contains fewer capabilities than the full version, will examine)

Robots in Skype Need to Augment Meetings

Not normally a user of Skype, but I have some correspondents who use it.   So I revisited the current Skype system as I needed it.    There has been some controversy about recent re-design.   I loaded it up on an older i-Pad and saw they had added a column of available 'robots' you could interact with.  This option did not show up on i-Phone or Windows versions of Skype.

The robots appear to be skills that can be talked to,  perform various actions. I like the general idea, I may want intelligent support for things I do on Skype.   Even participants in conversations I am having on Skype.  I need a meeting set up with Skype.  Say add a particular kind of expert agent, human or AI, to support a domain I am not up to date in.   Perhaps they could solicit those resources from Linkedin?   Office could take notes.  Azure AI could cross reference them.  Perhaps Cortana could act as a go between in negotiating setting it up?

So now that MSFT has Linkedin, Skype, Teams, Office and Cortana, why not integrate the capabilities with these robots.  Based on my quick look at what was being offered the robots were not doing the right level of skill integration.  All the components are there, so why not?    Microsoft, if you want help with designing this, contact me.

Look at Microsoft Teams

Would think that Teams would be a good thing to connect to Skype, Linkedin and Office tools.  Is it becoming that?

Microsoft Teams: Its features, how it compares to Slack and other rivals

Microsoft's latest entry in the crowded group messaging market continues to evolve. Here's how Microsoft Teams affects Skype for Business and what you need to know to evaluate it against its rivals.

By Matthew Finnegan   Senior Reporter, Computerworld 

Microsoft launched Teams last year as its own take on the booming market for group messaging apps led by Slack and now also fought over by Google, Facebook and Cisco, to name but a few.

As with all team chat tools, the core aim of Microsoft Teams is to connect staff and enhance productivity, providing an alternative to – or even replacing – email. Microsoft describes it as a “digital translation of an open office space.” That’s how a company spokesperson described the software. .... "


             

Microsoft Teams

An Overview.   Have now used Slack for a number of collaboration examples with projects, and like it.    Will MS Teams do as well?  I do note its not available for standard versions of Office, a mistake, its where people will learn to use it, and select it over options like Slack.  Also want to see assistant methods like Cortana well integrated in context.

Microsoft Teams cheat sheet
Microsoft's answer to Slack, Teams provides group messaging, voice and video calls, and useful integrations with other Office 365 apps. Here's how to get set up in Teams and find your way around.
By Jonathan Hassell in Computerworld.

Email is everywhere, and it has been around seemingly forever. But is it really the most effective way for groups of people to collaborate on work and advance business objectives? Several new products on the marketplace, most notably Slack, wager that the answer is indeed no.

Slack and similar team messaging products try to remove threaded email conversations as a common platform of communication in organizations and replace it with instant message-like short bursts organized into channels based on the context or subject of the conversation. Microsoft Teams is the Redmond behemoth’s suggested alternative to Slack. Teams, which is included with Office 365 business and enterprise subscriptions, is essentially group chat software with some interesting features thrown in around working with documents and spreadsheets, especially those stored in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. .... " 

Microsoft Teams vs Slack

Almost everyone I now talk to now is setting up a Slack channel.  Microsoft Teams is now happening, but still don't see it mentioned by clients.   Has to be a viable, free and easy to use option to compete.   Better links to Microsoft's Linkedin would also be appealing idea to recognize resources, internal and external.

Microsoft turns up heat on Slack with Teams group chat update
A Teams app directory is among the new features added to the company’s Office 365 group chat tool. Analysts say Microsoft is looking to match rivals like Slack in functionality.
               
 By Matthew Finnegan ... in Computerworld

Thinking Forward about Enterprise Collaboration

Have followed the question of efficieint collaboration, and finding the resources to collaborate for some time.  We even discussed it with Bill Gates during the announcements of the earliest versions of Windows.   Now with Microsoft's acquiring Linkedin, there is even more opportunity to think about an architecture of collaboration.  And AI points us to some means of improving the process and measurement of collaboration.  Some good opinion thoughts below, but does it have to be won by a vendor, or is that inevitable?

How Microsoft can win the upcoming collaboration wars
Its product lineup is confusing at best, but it could still come to dominate this emerging market.       By Preston Gralla in ComputerWorld

 It’s the perennial question: What’s the next big thing in the enterprise? Plenty of people and companies are betting that it’s collaboration tools that improve workers’ productivity by letting them easily work together, whether they’re across the hall or around the world from each other. The research firm Market and Markets, for example, estimates that the enterprise collaboration market will grow from $26.69 billion in 2016 to $49.51 billion by 2021 — a compound annual growth rate of 13.2%.  .... " 

Microsoft Teams is off Running

Seen it in Beta,  a group collaboration tool,  better than Slack, especially for users of other MS tools.    And who isn't?   Free for 365 users as I understand.   But it needs critical mass in groups to make it fly.   Continue to nurture it, Microsoft.  Keep it aimed at productivity, as opposed to another thing to update.   Connect it effectively to bot intelligence.   I had used Slack for real examples, but it was tedious.

Teams is Microsoft's most intriguing productivity app yet
The potential Slack-killer is rolling out to all Office 365 users today.

Devindra Hardawar, @devindra .... 

See also, related Google Hangout Chats.

Bot support is becoming common on these offerings.

Scientists using Slack

And other messaging tools.  My own experience is that most people that are balancing multiple real time, multiple participant tasks use messaging tools.   More are now also emerging.   And AI bot style add-ons are also now being included to enhance the experience through attentive and cognitive methods.  Expect that to evolve.  In Nature: 

How scientists use Slack
Eight ways labs benefit from the popular workplace messaging tool.  by Jeffrey M. Perkel .....