On the Road to Teams: Enhancing and Optimizing the Best in Collaboration

As Microsoft begins to roll out features that enhance the extensibility of Teams, we are able to experience more cohesive collaboration in one centralized setting. Development teams are working to create all the granular tasks and controls that we have been waiting for, and New Signature is here to help boil down and evangelize the newest and best updates for our customers.

Three of the major updates are the interfacing of Microsoft Planner and SharePoint with Teams, the brand-new Teams Admin Center, and Direct Routing entering public preview. Check out the details below and check back on the New Signature blog for all the Teams updates as they roll out to unveil the best in workplace collaboration. 

• Planner and SharePoint Interface with Teams
  Teams aims to be the one-stop location for file sharing and task tracking, and in May, we saw many new integrations rolling out to help this become a reality. Now, users can access both Planner’s schedule and chart views within Teams to stay up-to-date on plans and assignments in conjunction with your calendar. Filtering by assignment, progress, and due date can also help create granular views of tasks.  SharePoint news pages can be pulled into channels to allow for access to data-driven pages full of content that users can then use to spark discussions automatically with SharePoint news connector.
   
• Teams Admin Center
  Teams innovators continue to develop better management and governance tools, and the new Teams Admin Center allows for joint control of both Teams and Skype for Business, giving access to call analytics and the Call Quality Dashboard, along with enabling the ability to control user settings more easily. Check out Microsoft’s full announcement on this.  

• Direct Routing in Public Preview
  Effective mid-May, if your country is supported by both Teams and Microsoft Phone System, you can begin employing Direct Routing, now in public preview. This will open more doors for customers to connect to Teams in many more countries. To learn more about self-managing Direct Routing, you will need to focus on a few key areas of your unified communications infrastructure. Learn more from the official announcement.