Microsoft Roadmap Weekly: Microsoft to enhance Teams and Outlook with handy new tools

As a new month and a new week have begun, Microsoft announced new features it added to Teams, Excel, and Copilot and updated the roadmap page with a plethora of changes that will be introduced in the coming months.

However, unlike Microsoft’s monthly feature roundup, it’s not easy to track what changes are being added to the roadmap page every week. But we’re at it again, doing the research and informing our readers what new Microsoft 365 capabilities the company is working on and their potential impact on your productivity.

2 Microsoft Teams: Better security and privacy, guest access for Mesh events, and more

Voice and face biometric export

Microsoft is working on a new feature that will allow Teams users to export their voice and face biometric data to ensure security and protection of users’ privacy (Feature ID: 413709). The company hasn’t shared enough details about where the export control option will be available in the app, but it confirmed that the functionality will be limited to Mac and PC users at launch. This is set to arrive next month.

Participant roster grouping

Another noteworthy change coming to Teams next month is roster grouping in Teams BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) meeting rooms (Feature ID: 413711). It’ll group all the participants who are joining from their devices and are in the same physical room together in a special section called “in-room.” Despite clubbing everyone in the same room in one section, Teams will still be able to identify each individual and offer intelligent meeting features.

Attend Mesh events as guests

Microsoft has promised a bunch of new features for Mesh events in Teams over the last few weeks. Last week, it added another to its roadmap: guest access for events in the Mesh app (Feature ID: 413713). When available in October, meeting organizers will be able to invite guest users outside their organization to join Mesh events. However, guests will have to sign in to the Mesh app to gain access to the same set of capabilities as internal users.

Search query suggestions

Microsoft is also introducing an enhanced people-query search next month. It wants to help you complete your search faster by providing you suggestions as you begin typing a person’s name (Feature ID: 413112). The recommendations will be based on people that are most relevant to you. So, you could see Teams suggesting people whom you interact with frequently or have recently worked with.

Support for PowerPoint Live within Cloud Video Interop

Starting in November of this year, Microsoft will allow CVI partners to “display still images when PowerPoint Live content is being presented within Teams meetings” (Feature ID: 413712). Even though they’ll appear as videos, the presentation will not include any animations or embedded videos. This will be available for Teams web, Mac, and desktop clients at launch.

1 Microsoft Outlook: New ways to create events, and more

Create Outlook events by dragging emails into the Calendar

Microsoft is making it easier for users to create events in Outlook Calendar simply by using drag and drop. By the end of this month, the new Outlook will gain support for a new drag-and-drop capability to allow users to drag emails to the Calendar icon to create events (Feature ID: 413716). So, instead of manually copying and pasting information, all you have to do is drag the email you want to turn into an event using your mouse and the new Outlook will take care of the rest.

New location for work hours and location

The My Day pane in the new Outlook and its web client is a handy tool that lets you view your daily schedule, tasks, and agenda. In addition to those details, it’ll also show your work hours and location information (Feature ID: 412618). Not only that, but you’ll also be able to update those pieces of information from the My Day pane. This will be available by the end of this month.

Release timelines are subject to change

Microsoft doesn’t mention it on its roadmap website, but release timelines aren’t carved in stone. That simply means Microsoft might quietly delay some of the features mentioned above if need be. However, what’s almost certain is Microsoft updating its roadmap website with new feature announcements again this week, and we’ll be at it again with another roadmap weekly recap.