Microsoft Teams on Windows 11 is getting a major facelift, and I’m excited
There’s no ‘I’ in Team
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Microsoftis making some key improvements to the free version ofMicrosoft Teamson Windows 11. The new changes will make thevideo conferencingsoftware - which many of us dread using - a lot more user-friendly, and generally a lot more pleasant to use.
The built-inTeams appwill include support for Microsoft’s communities feature inside Teams, the company’s more professional rival to Discord.Microsoft Designer, the nifty generative AI art tool, will also receive integrated support in Teams, making it easier for users to whip up images for invitations, social media posts, or a cheeky work meme all in one place.
Microsoft Teams ‘communities' launched last December and act as a way for families, friends, and businesses to plan out meetings, share calendars, and chat, similar to how people might use Slack or Discord. The feature has been limited to mobile so far, but today’s expansion will letWindows 11users join in on the fun.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Amit Fulay, Vice President of Microsoft Teams, explained in ablog postthat “On Windows 11, community owners can create communities from scratch, share and invite members, create and host events, moderate content with critical trust and safety features, and get notified about all important activities”. According to the post, Microsoft plans to extend the community love toWindows 10, macOS, and the web browser version of Teams.
Microsoft Designer will have a preview version available in Microsoft Teams forWindows 11soon, which will help people create community banners, profile photos, inside jokes, and event imagery. This is the same service already integrated into Microsoft Edge, which uses a combination ofDall-EandAdobe Expressfeatures for basic, easy-to-use AI image generation.
Finally, amongst all these pretty cool updates, communities in Teams will be getting mobile and general usability improvements, allowing you to record videos from your phone and use filters on your videos and photos within the app.
It’s really encouraging to see Microsoft Teams get a huge personality update, shifting the general vibe of ‘dull and boring’ towards something people will hopefully be inclined to use every day.
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Discord can be a lot to wrap your head around if you’re just starting out on the platform, so gradually introducing similar features to Teams, which many people already use for work or school, cuts out that initial confusion and gives users more tools to employ in a familiar environment. These Teams updates basically make theonline collaborationplatform a lot more fun and unintimidating. We’re excited to see these updates - and probably make many, many memes with the Designer tool.
Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison.
Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she’s joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you’ve got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you’re in the right place.
Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook’s Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).
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