These are some of the newest features being rolled out across Microsoft Outlook and Teams this Summer. Sharon Chen, Online and Digital Events Service Assistant in the Applications Directorate, has rounded up five new updates coming to Microsoft Outlook and Teams. Scheduling Poll in Outlook The Scheduling Poll feature is a tool that assists the organizers and attendees of a meeting in voting on the best date and time to meet. This saves time coordinating schedules across different diaries and companies because anyone invited will be able to vote, including those using non-Microsoft account. This feature has begun rollout and will appear in your Outlook account soon. Image For a how-to video and further information on the new Scheduling Poll, read more here. Add Pronouns to Your Profile Card Users are now able to add, change, or delete pronouns on their profile in Outlook on the web and Teams. Users can choose whether or not to use the pronouns feature. For support and further information about using this feature read more here. Microsoft Teams updates rolling out in mid-June: Shuffle Feature in Breakout Rooms Meeting organizers, co-organizers or Breakout Room managers will soon be able to use the new Shuffle capabilities to: Randomly assign participants to breakout rooms—before or during the meeting Shuffle > Everyone or Shuffle > Only unassigned participants to evenly re-distribute participants to existing rooms. Image Click here to find out more about using breakout rooms in Teams meetings. New setting Live Captions in Meetings The ‘Live Captioning’ feature - which displays a live feed of text as a person speaks – will soon make several new features available. Organisers will be able to chose to: change the spoken language, change caption language, adjust colors, height, position, and font size of the text. Image Click here for more information on using live captioning in Teams meetings. Search Within Chats and Channels Made Easier A new search experience will allow users to search key words in a specific chat or channel, reaching relevant results faster. Key enhancements include: Keyboard shortcut: Users can see the chat/channel list and search results in one single view by using keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+F (on Windows devices) or Cmd +F (on Mac devices). Image Find in Channel - users can also click ‘Find in Channel’ to initiate contextual search Image Read more about the search feature here. Images and video courtesy of Microsoft. Publication date 14 Jun, 2023
