Queues app for Microsoft Teams now generally available
In today's fast-paced world, customer centricity is more important than ever. As organizations strive to meet the evolving needs of their customers, the demand for faster response and resolution times continues to grow. Whether you are an employee calling into your helpdesk or a customer reaching out to support, one thing is clear: delivering consistent and enriching experiences is at the core of an organization’s success.New partner-provided calling solutions are available for Microsoft Teams users in India
Each month, over 17 million users worldwide rely on Teams Phone for smart, seamless, and secure communication and collaboration. As we add to these capabilities, we’re focused on providing flexibility and choice, expanding the availability of Teams Phone to new markets. Microsoft has partnered with local operators to give Teams customers with operations in India additional choice to enable calling capabilities in Teams. We are excited to share that new Teams Phone-powered solutions from Airtel, Tata Communications Limited, and Tata Tele Business Services are now generally available. Leveraging the Operator Connect platform, these three operators have developed and will sell and support full-featured telephony solutions for Teams users in India, in compliance with local market regulations.
Teams Premium enhances scheduling in Microsoft Bookings
In today’s fast-paced world, efficient scheduling is key to keeping businesses running smoothly. Whether you're a consultant, healthcare provider, or small business owner, the challenge of coordinating appointments can feel overwhelming. This is where Microsoft Bookings steps in—a powerful tool designed to simplify and streamline the process of scheduling and managing appointments. Now, we are ready to take scheduling to the next level! Introducing advanced features in Bookings accessed through Teams Premium license. The advanced features are designed to further simplify scheduling, improve client communication, manage workflows, and enhance overall efficiency. What is Microsoft Bookings? Microsoft Bookings is an online scheduling tool that enables businesses to manage their appointments seamlessly. It allows you to create customizable booking pages where customers, clients, or colleagues can easily schedule time with you or your team without the usual back-and-forth communication. As part of Microsoft 365, Bookings offers a convenient and professional way to handle all your scheduling needs, ensuring both you and your attendees are always in sync. Bookings can be used across various industries, for different internal & external scenarios. Premium features in Bookings, included with Teams Premium With a Teams Premium license, users can enjoy advanced scheduling features in Bookings like SMS notifications and Scheduled queue. SMS notifications for appointments Microsoft Bookings users with a Teams Premium license can now send SMS notifications for appointments scheduled by either customers or staff. These notifications provide automated confirmations, service details, updates, and reminders, helping customers stay informed and reducing missed appointments. This functionality is generally available for US, UK and Canada. The assigned staff member needs a valid Teams premium license. Attendees, customers or partners need a valid United States, Canada or United Kingdom phone number before they can receive SMS notifications. This functionality will also be available for Netherlands in Dec 2024. Admins can turn off SMS in their organization by following the steps in this article: Manage granular controls for Shared Bookings | Microsoft Learn Scheduled Queue The queue functionality in Bookings is a powerful feature tailored for staff, providing real-time visibility and control over incoming appointments. This feature enables schedulers and admins to have a consolidated view of all appointments for the day in chronological order across the booking page they manage. With this view, they can better manage the load of incoming appointments and reassign delayed appointments to available staff. Staff can also self-serve on busy days by assigning the unassigned appointments to themselves, helping to balance workloads across teams or specific services. Additionally, SMS and email reminders can be sent to keep customers informed, enhancing overall transparency and ensuring a smooth appointment experience for everyone involved. This capability will be available in Bookings for users with a Teams Premium license in early 2025. Ready to revolutionize scheduling? Upgrade to Teams Premium and enjoy the advanced scheduling experience in Bookings. For more details about Bookings, refer to the documentation here: Microsoft Bookings | Microsoft Learn
Frontline Fridays Session 2: Driving successful adoption and delivering value for frontline workers
Empowering frontline workers isn’t just a business priority — it’s a strategic imperative. With the rapid acceleration of digital transformation across industries, organizations are reimagining how they connect, support, and elevate experiences for frontline employees. At Microsoft, we’ve had the privilege of working in deep partnership with hundreds of customers and millions of frontline employees in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries to unlock the full potential of their frontline workforce through Microsoft 365. Join us for an interactive session built on real-world learnings and insights to explore guidance on crafting a strategy that’s practical, people-first, and, most importantly, generates the results you care about most. REGISTER HERE FOR ALL FUTURE SESSIONS: Empowering frontline success Session 2: June 12, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Driving successful adoption & delivering value for frontline employees (Register Here) Session 2: June 13, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Driving successful adoption & delivering value for frontline employees (Register Here) Why this session matters Frontline employees are often the first to engage with customers, products, and services, yet they are too often the last to benefit from modern digital tools. This session will distill learnings from hundreds of customer and partner engagements to provide a blueprint for driving meaningful impact across your frontline operations. What sets this experience apart is its practical, people-first approach. It’s about how to plan for solving real problems to unlock measurable value through the right combination of strategy, purposeful technology, and user adoption. We’ll talk about how to balance getting initial value realization quickly against the literally limitless scenarios that you could enable. What to expect This isn’t your typical webinar, bring your questions and ideas based on your own experience! We’ll explore strategies together through discussion, live Q&A, polls, and ideation activities. We’re confident you’ll walk away with tangible ways to enhance and optimize your frontline strategy right away. The session has been carefully designed to ensure relevance, engagement, and key takeaways in 4 areas: User-centered solutioning: Every digital investment starts with the frontline employee in mind (or at least it should!). We’ll explore common challenges and goals as well as how Microsoft 365 can help meet them to help ensure you are delivering value for both your employees and your bottom line. We’ll share best practices for delivering inclusive, intuitive, and impactful solutions. Common starting points and critical considerations:No two organizations are alike; however, we see common patterns that inform how to get started with transformative experiences for frontline employees. We’ll discuss common starting points and unpack critical considerations, both technical and non-technical, that can inform your implementation and adoption strategy. You’ll get actionable recommendations based on your business drivers and frontline context. Adoption at scale: To get the most out of your investment, your employees need to use it. We’ll cover key elements to ensure adoption is happening and ways to leverage M365 capabilities to actually enable it. Success stories: Learn from real-world examples of organizations delivering experiences that solve problems and bring value. We'll share common mistakes we see customers make so you can avoid them in your own organization. When we're done, you'll have: A framework to define problem statements and build scalable frontline solutions Best practices for technology integration and user engagement Inspiration from successful transformations across industries Insights into tailoring your adoption strategy for maximum impact Ready to Reimagine Your Frontline Workforce? Whether you’re just getting started or looking to elevate your frontline transformation, this session will equip you with the tools, insights, and inspiration to help you go from the Art of the Possible to the Art of the Practical. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights, practical recommendations, and actionable strategies you can start implementing right away. Business Decision Makers, IT Pros, and Change Managers welcome! We look forward to seeing you. REGISTER HERE: Empowering frontline successFrontline Fridays Session 1: Deploying Microsoft Frontline Solutions - Best Practices and Strategies
In today's fast-paced business environment, frontline workers play a crucial role in ensuring operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Microsoft Frontline Solutions offer a comprehensive suite of tools designed to empower these workers, streamline processes, and enhance productivity. This blog gives you a sneak peek into the first session of Microsoft Frontline Fridays - "Deploying Microsoft Frontline Solutions - Best Practices and Strategies", highlighting key insights and actionable strategies. REGISTER HERE FOR ALL FUTURE SESSIONS: Deploying Microsoft Frontline Solutions - Best Practices and Strategies Session 1: May 29, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Overview & Deployment Best Practices and Strategies (Register Here) Session 1: May 30, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Overview & Deployment Best Practices and Strategies (Register Here) Introduction to Frontline Fridays Frontline Fridays is a series of expert-led sessions aimed at providing clarity on Microsoft's suite of tools for frontline workers. These sessions address common customer challenges, define use cases, and share resources to help organizations launch, adopt, and support their employees effectively. An overview of this session The session "Deploying Microsoft Frontline Solutions - Best Practices and Strategies" is structured to provide a comprehensive overview of Microsoft's tools for frontline workers, along with practical deployment strategies and best practices. Here's a summary of the session: Introduction: The session begins with an introduction to Frontline Fridays; a series of expert-led sessions aimed at providing clarity on Microsoft's suite of tools for frontline workers. Overview of Microsoft Frontline Solutions: This section covers the key components of Microsoft Frontline Solutions. Example Customer (Woodgrove Grocery): The session uses Woodgrove Grocery as a practical example to illustrate the deployment of Microsoft Frontline Solutions. It discusses the current state of their tools and systems, and the desired business value from the deployment. IT Deployment: This section provides detailed information on identity provisioning, device management, and Teams deployment, including demos and screenshots. Next Steps and Call to Action: The session concludes with next steps and a call to action. Throughout the session, there are various demos, screenshots, and practical examples to help attendees understand the deployment process and the benefits of Microsoft Frontline Solutions. REGISTER HERE: Deploying Microsoft Frontline Solutions - Best Practices and Strategies
Keep your Microsoft Teams in VDI client up to date to ensure the best user experience
In the fast-evolving world of collaboration tools, Microsoft Teams stands as a cornerstone of productivity. But as with any modern software, staying current isn’t just about accessing the latest features—it’s also about ensuring your tenant is up to date on the latest security, performance, and compliance. This is where the concept of Teams sedimentation becomes critical. In this blog, we want to cover some of the key terms that IT Admins for VDI need to understand as we move into stricter minimum version enforcements, and end of availability of Classic Teams. What Is Teams Sedimentation? Sedimentation refers to the accumulation of outdated Teams client versions across an organization. These clients, often left behind due to manual golden image update processes in non-persistent VDI, or legacy deployment practices on Server Based Computing, can become incompatible with the Teams services over time. Microsoft governs Teams under the Modern Lifecycle Policy, which mandates that desktop clients remain up to date to stay supported and functional. Enforcement of this policy is achieved via two main mechanisms. When a Teams client in VDI is: 60–90 days out of date, users begin to see in-app alerts (dismissible warning banners, shown at application launch time) Over 90 days out of date, a blocking page appears, preventing access until the client is updated by the user (in persistent VDI) or the Admin (in non-persistent) This policy ensures that both users and Admins receive value from a wide range of benefits: End User benefits IT Admin benefits Improved Performance and Experience Staying up to date ensures that users benefit from the latest performance enhancements and a smoother, more reliable Teams experience—especially with the new SlimCore media engine. Policy Enforcement and Lifecycle Compliance Staying current aligns with Microsoft’s Modern Lifecycle Policy, which mandates up-to-date clients for support and functionality. Access to New Features Users on current versions can take advantage of the latest collaboration tools, UI improvements, and integrations that enhance productivity. Supportability Running consistent, supported versions across the organization reduces variability and simplifies diagnostics and support. Admins can use the Teams Admin Center and Call Quality Dashboard to monitor client versions and proactively manage updates. Security and Compliance Updated clients receive the latest security patches, reducing exposure to vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with organizational policies. Avoid End-of-Life Penalties Classic Teams will reach end of availability on July 1, 2025. Users still on Classic Teams will face blocking pages and degraded performance if not upgraded. Why is keeping up-to-date more important than ever in VDI? With the release of the new optimization for VDI (based on the SlimCore media engine used in native Windows Teams as well), Microsoft will automatically update SlimCore based on the Teams version you have on the VM. If Teams is not auto-updating, neither is SlimCore. This is not a good place to be on – while all the Teams cloud services and most of the Teams app code is auto-updating (even if you used the disableAutoUpdate registry key for non-persistent VDI), you are now running a disjointed combination of components that are all out of sync. This will inevitably lead to poor user experience. Understanding Teams Builds Outdating Schedule In order to understand when a specific Teams version will become outdated, you should monitor this table (updated every Friday) and always use the next version release dates to calculate. As an example, let’s look at version 25031, released on March 4 th . The clock for a version only starts ticking after the next one is released, in this case 25044 on March 13 th . So we add 60 and 90 days to March 13 th and we end up with dismissible banners being shown on June 6 th and blocking pages on June 29 th . Important: Microsoft starts the rollouts on those dates on lower Rings like the public preview channel – it might take a few additional days to reach 100% of the user base). Build GA 60d Warning 90d Blocking 24335 Jan-9 Apr-4 May-4 25007 Feb-4 Apr-17 May-17 25017 Feb-17 May-4 Jun-4 25031 Mar-4 May-17 Jun-17 25044 Mar-13 Jun-7 Jul-7 25060 Apr-7 Jun-22 Jul-22 25072 Apr-22 Jul-7 Aug-4 25094 (latest version) May-13 TBD TBD What about the supported Server Operating Systems for VDI? End-of-support dates for Microsoft Teams on Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 are October 2025 and October 2026, respectively. For further information, check this link. We encourage customers on Windows Server 2019 to migrate to Windows Server 2025, which is now fully supported in VDI while it's in Mainstream Support, until October 2029. If you want to reach out to us regarding any Windows Server question, please fill this form. What about Classic Teams As we are rapidly approaching the End of Availability date for Classic Teams (July 1 st 2025) – we are urging customers to upgrade to new Teams as soon as possible – while we are allowing customers to run Classic Teams until that date, you must be using a relatively recent version of the product (1.8.00.4966). Come July 1 st , VDI users will see a blocking page urging them to upgrade or use Teams on Web (which is not supported and NOT even optimized, incurring in server-side rendering penalties on CPU/RAM/BW). How can you query for the existing Teams version in your organization? Teams Admin Center has Usage reports (under Analytics and reports) that you can use to spot old versions. Call Quality Dashboard can be used as well. Conclusion We encourage you to talk to the multiple teams in your organization that have jurisdiction over image management practices and validation, and share the update cadence that is expected for Microsoft Teams. An up-to-date Teams client will provide the best user experience, latest fixes, and, because of the new optimization architecture, an up-to-date SlimCore media engine.Introducing Microsoft Frontline Fridays: Your Guide to empowering frontline workers
Are you ready to enhance the way your frontline workforce operates with Microsoft's suite of tools? Join us for Microsoft Frontline Fridays, a series of expert-led sessions designed to help organizations maximize productivity, security, and efficiency for frontline employees. Check out our full series schedule below and register now: Session 1: May 29, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Overview & Deployment Best Practices and Strategies (Register Here) Session 1: May 30, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Overview & Deployment Best Practices and Strategies (Register Here) Session 2: June 12, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Driving successful adoption & delivering value for frontline employees (Register Here) Session 2: June 13, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Driving successful adoption & delivering value for frontline employees (Register Here) Session 3: June 26, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Streamlining Operational and Corporate Communication (Register Here) Session 3: June 27, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Streamlining Operational and Corporate Communication (Register Here) Session 4: July 10, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Optimizing Operational Efficiency - How to do more with less, at scale (Register Here) Session 4: July 11, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Optimizing Operational Efficiency - How to do more with less, at scale (Register Here) Session 5: July 24, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Turbocharging your Employee Home Experience through Customization (Register Here) Session 5: July 25, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Turbocharging your Employee Home Experience through Customization (Register Here) Session 6: August 7, 6:00 - 7:30 PM Pacific (UTC-7): Adding agents to your workforce: Transforming frontline efficiency with AI (Register Here) Session 6: August 8, 9:00 - 10:30 AM Pacific (UTC-7): Adding agents to your workforce: Transforming frontline efficiency with AI (Register Here) Why attend Microsoft Frontline Fridays? This series is tailored for organizations looking to explore or optimize their use of Microsoft’s frontline solutions. Key benefits include: Comprehensive Insights: Gain an in-depth understanding of Microsoft’s solutions for frontline workers. Expert Guidance: Learn best practices from Microsoft specialists to maximize the impact of these tools. Interactive Q&A: Get real-time answers from product experts to address your specific challenges. Hands-On Experience: Participate in live demos and interactive activities to build confidence with the platform. What to expect These engaging sessions will provide expert insights, interactive learning, and practical resources to help you deploy and optimize Microsoft’s frontline solutions. Recordings and materials will be shared after each session, and you can choose to attend all or just the ones that interest you. Session Schedule: 1. Microsoft Frontline Solutions: Overview & Deployment Best Practices and Strategies Learn what Microsoft has to offer in the frontline space and how to successfully deploy Microsoft’s frontline solutions with a structured approach. This session covers planning, pilot deployment, environment setup, and app set up to ensure a smooth rollout. Also, learn how to protect frontline workers and organizational data with identity management, secure access controls, device management and secure & compliant solutions that lay the foundation for your tailored frontline environments. 2. Driving successful adoption & delivering value for frontline employees Whether you are shifting from an existing employee engagement solution to Microsoft 365 or expanding M365 experiences to new frontline users or scenarios, managing change in how employees get work done can be the most challenging aspect of technology implementations. In this session, we'll discuss best practices and key considerations related to enabling faster, more successful end user adoption to help your organization get the most from your investments. We'll share real-world learnings and patterns of success based on direct engagement with hundreds of customers across every industry (and we expect we'll learn new things from you too!). 3. Streamlining Operational and Corporate Communication Discover how Teams supports both top-down communications—like community announcements and leadership updates—and local frontline coordination using tools like chat, channels and Walkie Talkie, keeping everyone connected in real time without relying on non-compliant consumer apps. 4. Optimizing Operational Efficiency - How to do more with less, at scale Discover how Microsoft's Frontline solutions can help meaningfully re-engineer your existing business processes to be more efficient, easier to use, and measurable for a digital first and emerging AI world. Learn about everything from off-the-shelf schedule and task management to learning in the flow of work, along with integrating with third party systems of record like your workforce management, inventory and ticketing systems. 5. Turbocharging your Employee Home Experience through Customization Explore rich integrations with third party applications, unique and complex task flows, and home-grown apps, all presented in a single pane of glass. 6. Adding agents to your workforce: Transforming frontline efficiency with AI Learn about how to leverage Microsoft Copilot Chat and agents to optimize frontline workflows - such as relevant, reliable information retrieval, automating repetitive tasks and orchestrating multi-step actions. By participating in Microsoft Frontline Fridays, you’ll gain the tools and insights needed to empower your frontline workforce, enhance efficiency, and secure business operations. Register for the session here.The future of Microsoft Teams in VDI
Today we embark on another chapter of the Microsoft Teams story in VDI, with the public preview of a new optimization architecture that brings closer alignment between physical and virtual desktops. Last year we released a fully revamped Teams app, built on the premise of speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence, providing a foundation for game-changing new AI-powered tools. Now we are bringing a new media engine that will elevate the user experience in virtual desktops with new features, and further quality, performance and reliability improvements.
The new calendar in Microsoft Teams now generally available
We are excited to announce that the new calendar in Teams is now generally available for commercial customers. The new calendar is designed for familiarity and reliability, while incorporating the latest innovations in Microsoft Copilot and Places to elevate your scheduling and time management experience. The new calendar delivers a unified experience with Outlook, so you can enjoy the same modern and intelligent calendar across both Teams and Outlook. Unified calendar experience The new calendar integrates the Outlook calendar into Teams, offering a single, cohesive calendar experience. This update also brings more feature parity across the Teams and Outlook calendars. Outlook features coming to Teams include delegate access, print support, expanded calendar settings, filtering, support for multiple time zones, time suggestions in scheduling, support for attachments, and more. Let’s take a closer look at these and additional experiences coming to Teams calendar below. Cutting-edge experiences This evolution of the calendar empowers you to achieve more by incorporating the latest innovations from both Copilot and Places to help infuse intelligence into your time management. Copilot capabilities like managed booking are available in the new calendar experience. Places capabilities like workplace presence and the Places card are also available. With a Teams Premium license, advanced capabilities like quick book and Places finder are available in the new calendar. Expanded calendar views The new calendar offers several new views and navigation options: Month View: View your calendar by month, a highly requested feature, especially useful for users with sparse calendars. Split View: When more than one calendar is selected, you can now split the calendar into two independent views. Time Scale: Specify time scales or intervals for the calendar surface Saved Views: Save your current view for easy access later Weather Display: See the weather for your current location directly in the calendar Calendar settings and customization Customize your calendar settings, including start and end times for events, location settings, and more. You can also share your calendar with others in your organization and print your entire calendar. Lastly, the new calendar can be popped out as a separate window, allowing you to multitask more effectively. Save time with easy scheduling Creating meetings is now more intuitive. You can quickly create a meeting from the quick view by clicking on a timeslot in your calendar or by opening the new scheduling form. The new scheduling form includes refreshed meeting options and templates for different meeting types You can also access meeting artifacts directly from the peek view. For example, you can access the recap of a previous meeting by left-clicking on the event. To try the new calendar in Teams: Open the Teams desktop client and navigate to the Calendar app. Click the “New Calendar” toggle in the top-right corner of the calendar surface, and the new calendar should load within a few seconds NOTE: You can switch back whenever you want. Just switch the toggle off in the new calendar and it will automatically open the classic version. For more details visit Microsoft Support page With this update, we are not changing any settings for you or your organization. New calendar is an opt-in experience, so it’s ready for you when you are. We are excited to reach this milestone and look forward to your ongoing feedback to make the new calendar the best time management experience for you and your organization. We will continue to make feature improvements and monitor feedback, so continue to try the new calendar and let us know what you want to see next!
