All the new features announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022

This year again, the big Microsoft Ignite conference , organized by the American giant in Seattle from October 12 to 14, 2022, created the event.

And for good reason, with no less than 100 products and updates unveiled, Microsoft Ignite 2022 is bringing change.

Many Microsoft solutions are affected by this wave ofinnovation, including Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva.

Interested in learning more about what's being announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022?

To discover all the features that will soon be available to your company and your teams, read carefully what follows!

1. What is Microsoft Ignite?

Before going any further, let's briefly recall what Microsoft Ignite is.

Microsoft Ignite is a large annual event held by Microsoft.

This conference brings together more than 200,000 IT professionals, developers and Microsoft customers to discuss the latest developments from the IT giant.

Microsoft Ignite is an opportunity for Microsoft users to enhance their skills and explore innovations to their favorite software and services alongside Microsoftproduct experts and partners.

A promising program that, as we will see, does not disappoint!

2. New features in Microsoft Teams 2022

The Microsoft Teams collaborative communication application, which has become a must-have with the rise of telecommuting and hybrid work, is seeing some interesting updates.

Here's what to take away from the announcements made at Microsoft Ignite about Microsoft Teams:

2.1. Teams will offer a Premium version

Between December 2022 and February 2023, a new module will be gradually deployed on Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Premium.

The goal of this new high-end version of Teams? Make every meeting, appointment, assembly or webinar "more personalized, intelligent and secure."

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👉 Personalizing Teams meetings with guides and branding

Specifically, Teams Premium will offer customizablemeetingtemplates called"an overview of the main new features presented at Microsoft Ignite 2022 for Microsoft Teams, Viva and Planner.

This is a real time saver for employees as they can organize a customer call or a brainstorming session simply by selecting a predefined template with adapted parameters.

Employers will also be able to customize their virtual meeting spaces , for example by adding their logo or a background in the organization's colors.

The ideal way to spread and infuse the company culture to customers, partners and employees, especially when they work remotely.

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👉 Smarter meetings with AI

Microsoft Teams Premium also introduces several features that allow business stakeholders to get the most out of their virtual meetings.

Teams Premium users will be able to fully focus on discussions, contribute ideas and innovate together without having to worry about organizational aspects.

An artificial intelligence (AI) will take care ofassigning the tasks arising from the conversation.

But that's not all. Teams Premium users will also have access to automatically generated meeting summaries .

Better yet, the recording of the exchanges will be broken down into chapters, highlighting the key moments of the meeting (split screen, new speaker, etc.) and can be browsed quickly via the smart search .

These features will facilitate the follow-up of the meetings. Participants will be able to easily recall the content. Absent employees will be able to catch up on what they missed, without having to watch the entire video.

The flow of meetings will also be optimized thanks to live translation . The latter will generate real-time subtitles in 40 languages.

In international organizations, communication and collaboration between talents of different nationalities will therefore be greatly facilitated.

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👉Even more secure meetings with labels, watermarks and options

Finally, Teams Premium will provide enhanced protection for the most sensitive information.

Teams Premium users will be able to apply privacy tags to their appointments to automate their protection. This will allow them to ensure the integrity of their communications without wasting time making adjustments.

In addition, Teams Premium customers will be able to prevent data leakage by watermarking their content and secure their exchanges by selecting security options (e.g. end-to-end encryption).

As you can see, the Premium module of Teams includes some remarkable new features. However, the "standard" version of Teams is not left out...

2.2. Chat Teams features will be improved  

Among the new features announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022, several concern Chat Teams.

Between October 2022 and the end of 2022, this discussion space will be equipped with functionalities designed to make it easier to use, more lively and more in tune with employees' needs.

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👉Easier to use chat with suggested contacts and responses

Chat Teams users will soon be able to respond to their colleagues' messages at a glance, simply by clicking on a pre-written suggested response : "Yes!" or "Great, thanks!" for example.

Starting a conversation will also be easier. When a user creates a conversation in the chat, contacts will be automatically suggested based on previous interactions.

There is no need to rack your brains for long minutes to remember a forgotten name or surname.

Collaborators will also be able to add a new person to a conversation, only by mentioning their name preceded by an "@".

Better yet, they will be able to send a notification to all the participants of the chat by typing "@everyone" and even leave a discussion when it no longer concerns them.@everyone" and even leave a discussion when it no longer concerns them.

This means less computer manipulation and distractions, and more time to focus on valuable tasks and exchanges.

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👉Amore lively chat thanks to emojis and video clips

More streamlined, the chat will also be more friendly and lively in order to strengthen team cohesion andemployee commitment.

They will be able to use more than 800 emojis to react to their peers' messages, in a fast, pleasant and fun way.

And since nothing beats the sound of a voice and the expressions of a face to create links and understand each other, employees will be able to film and send each other short video clips via Chat.

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👉A chat that preserves life time balance with message scheduling

Finally, Chat Teams users will be able to schedule their messages to be received by the recipient during their work hours or when they are most available.

This feature is in line with the respect of thework/life balance necessary for the well-being of employees, which is often threatened by hybrid work .

In the same logic, employees will be able to show their working hours and locations on their profile. This way, teammates will know when to organize a face-to-face meeting or when to contact their colleague.

2.3. The team meeting experience will be optimized

Like Teams Chat , video conferencing and hybrid meetings held via Teams benefit from new features revealed at Microsoft Ignite 2022 .

The result: a better user experience and easier collaborative work , including remotely, due to more interactivity.

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👉More vivid presentations with Cameo in PowerPoint Live

Teams users can now use the Cameo feature in Powerpoint Live.

How does Cameo work in PowerPoint Live? The speaker films himself and appears on his PowerPoint slides to animate his presentation.

Gone are the days when presentations lacked dynamism. Now employees can make their PowerPoints come alive and make them more engaging.

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👉 Co-authoring made easy with Excel Live and collaborative annotations

Another new feature unveiled at Microsoft Ignite 2022 is Excel Live.

This feature will allow you to open an Excel file directly in a Teams meeting and then edit it with multiple people and live.

This feature will, for example, save valuable time for project teams that need to review their budgets.

And the Co-authoring is not limited to Excel tables...

Indeed, various documents, notably Word, can already be annotated in a collaborative way by the participants in a videoconference, without leaving Teams.

The ideal, for example, for Brainstorming more effective and clear.

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👉Constructive meetings with Microsoft Polls

Employees can also interact via polls in the Teams meeting they attend.

This feature, offered by Microsoft Polls, gives an even more collaborative turn to business meetings, invites everyone to get involved in the exchanges and speeds up the decision making process.

It can, for example, be used to choose the name or future features of a product between several options.

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👉Astep closer to the Metaverse with Mesh avatars in private preview

Announced during the Microsoft Ignite 2021 the arrival of Mesh avatars is becoming a reality.

However, this feature is still in the testing phase. It is reserved for customers of the Technology Adoption Program (TAP).

Mesh avatars are virtual characters with a design that evokes the graphic trends of video games and the Metaverse.

Users will be able to design up to three avatars in their own image thanks to numerous customization options.  

These digital doubles will allow employees to participate in team meetings without turning on their camera, and even react to exchanges with gestures and facial expressions .

This reassuring , fun and privacy-friendly feature will give employees the opportunity to present themselves to their colleagues in their best light, even when they are unable to film themselves, for example because they are on the move or in the home office.

2.4. Teams gets a smart meeting room system

Finally, Teams is adding a smart meeting room system to facilitate remote and hybrid meetings.

👉More friendly and engaging meetings with Together mode

Together mode is already available in Teams. It gives the organizer of a Teams meeting the ability to select a virtual environment (an auditorium or a traditional meeting room for example) and place the different participants in it.

This feature allows employees to have an overview of their meeting and experience the unifying feeling of being all in the same space.

It is therefore a lever for commitment and cohesion .

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👉Technology rooms and devices for optimal hybrid meetings

Microsoft is finally revealing a series of technology devices and appliances designed to make hybrid meetings ever more fluid, enjoyable and efficient:

• Intelliframe, a feature that allows all participants in a meeting, including those in the meeting room, to be viewed in a single video gallery;

• Yealink SmartVision 60 360° camera, which can be used as the basis for Intelliframe, released in early 2023;

• Logitech Brio 505 Tiltable Camera;

• Cisco meeting devices for MS Teams Rooms, also available in early 2023;

• Microsoft Teams rooms with a redesigned spatial organization;

• New Teams screens to bring all Teams features together in one digital medium;

• Microsoft Presenter+, a remote control that makes Teams presentations easier, available for pre-order;

• The Surface Headphones 2+ Bluetooth headset.

3. What's new at Microsoft Viva 2022

Like Microsoft Teams, the Microsoft Viva collaborative experience platform is affected by many of the updates and new features announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022.

Here are the most important ones:

3.1. Viva Engage adds "Storyline" and "Stories" features

The Viva Engage platform is now enriched with two new features accessible from Microsoft Viva, Outlook, Yammer and Teams: "Storyline" and "Stories".

These are not unlike the popular social networks Instagram and Facebook.

And for good reason, the objective of Storyline and Stories is to create a link between employees by facilitating the sharing of experiences and the creation of communities of interest.

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👉Concretely, each employee has now the possibility to share publications in his Storyline to interact with his colleagues.

These Posts can contain text, but also links, videos, images or attachments.

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👉Viva Engage users will also soon be able to post Stories to their Storyline.

Like Facebook and Instagram Stories, these will be carousels of short video clips and images.

As you can see, with these new features, Viva Engage takes the form of a true corporate social network conducive to Employee Advocacy.

The result is a stronger corporate culture and more cohesive, committed employees.

3.2. New Viva Insights features for QWL

The Viva Insight productivity and wellness app, available in Teams and Outlook, is also affected by several innovations presented at the Microsoft Ignite 2022 conference :

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👉Thenew "Focus" mode, for better concentration and more productivity

The "Focus" mode, soon to be available in Teams, will allow employees to schedule focus and break times.

The objective: to help employees to focus on their most demanding tasks by alternating moments of intense work and breaks from it.

During these intervals, employees will be able to regain their intellectual capacities thanks to mindfulness meditation exercises offered by Headspace.

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👉The"quiet time" settings, for true disconnection .

The "quiet time" settings allow the employer or employees themselves to set time slots during which no Teams or Outlook notifications can be received.

This feature is accessible from Teams, Outlook and the Viva Insights app.

It imposes respect for the right to disconnect, promoteswork-life balance and ultimately contributes to the well-being of employees.

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👉Suggesting sending times in Chat Teams.

By the end of 2022, Chat Teams users will have access to a new feature: when they send a message to someone outside of that person's business hours, the app will offer to schedule the send for later.

Thanks to this feature, the balance of life times is preserved, especially when employees work in different time zones. In addition, employees do not drag each other into a deleterious race to work constantly.

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👉Tools to optimize Teams meetings

The Viva Insights app in Teams now offers a series of tools to optimize meetings:

• Science-based recommendations for meeting planners;

• Surveys at the end of meetings with more than five people to gather feedback from employees regarding the exchange;

• A dashboard (formerly MyAnalytics) to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the meetings conducted so far;
• Meeting plans to better frame the meetings, and thus optimize them.

3.3. A new Viva Topics adoption dashboard

In February 2023, the Viva Topics knowledge management system will have a dashboard to measure its adoption by the company.

This Dashboard will bring together different indicators coupled with reference data.

If the implementation of Viva Topics is delayed, administrators will be recommended actions to improve the organization's results.

3.4. An improved training path in Viva Learning

Finally, the Viva Learning platform, accessible from Teams, has several enhancements including:

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👉Tailored"learning paths".

Administrators will soon be able to compile different training and educational resources to create true learning paths.

These will be available on Viva Learning and can be shared or recommended to employees in order to invite them to learn about a given topic.

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👉Individual learning collections .

Talent will be able to take control of their training by building a library of resources in Viva Learning.

Better yet, they can share it with their colleagues.

A very useful solution when employees collaborate on the same project and need to acquire common knowledge to move forward.

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👉Managing access rights to training and resources

To prevent employees from being overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge available to them, Viva Learning administrators will be able to manage access rights to the various resources on the platform.

In this way, only the employees concerned by a content will be able to access it.

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👉Anupdated mobile application

The Viva Learning mobile app gets a makeover with a new homepage, notifications for recommended learning, a search engine for online learning providers and the ability to take lessons on the mobile app itself.

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4. Other Microsoft 2022 news

As we've seen, many of the new features presented at Microsoft Ignite 2022 relate to Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva.

However, there are other notable innovations in Microsoft 365:

4.1. New Microsoft Project and Planner features

Between late 2022 and early 2023, Microsoft Project and MS Planner project management software will see several enhancements, including:

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👉Theconnection of Planner and Project to the Viva Goals solution

Connecting Planner and Project to the Viva Goals solution will allow to align the work of project stakeholders with key objectives and results (OKRs ), as well as to set and track project-specific goals.

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👉The"Assigned to Me" list to see all the tasks that are assigned to me

Employees will have access to a list called "Assigned to me"which will centralize all the tasks that have been assigned to them via the Tasks, Planner and ToDo applications.

A valuable tool to relieve the mental load of employees.

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👉 Theability to organize tasks into Sprint blocks in Project

MS Project users will be able to organize their tasks into Sprint blocks to work in Agile mode more easily.

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👉Anew "People" view in MS Project

Finally, the project management software will offer project managers a new "People" view.

This will allow us to understand the tasks assigned to each member of the project team and to better distribute the missions in case of imbalance.

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4.2. New for Loop components

Loops components are portable modules designed for collaborative work.

They can be pasted simultaneously to different places in Microsoft365 (Outlook email, Chat Teams, documents, etc.) while remaining synchronized.

By the end of 2022, this recent Microsoft technology will also undergo several optimizations:

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👉MoreLoop components and expanded use.

First, the Loop components "Surveys", "Check-list"and "To-do list" will soon be able to be integrated more easily into a Word document for the web. Users will only have to type the "@" character in their document to insert a module.

The secret? Context IQ, an innovation touted by Microsoft as "a new set of features from Microsoft that intelligently connects people with the information they need, where, and when they need it."

But that's not all...

It will also be possible to paste Loop components into a Microsoft Whiteboard. This feature will allow, for example, to update a to-do list during a team meeting and simultaneously edit this list in a Word tracking document.

In addition, the "polls" component will soon be able to be used to conduct quizzes, surveys and word clouds live, during meetings.

In addition, a new "Q&A" component allowing for live explanations or opinions should appear soon.

📌 Don't know how to use Loop yet? Here are 15 use cases for Microsoft Loop

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👉New security options

The last news concerning Loop components: they will soon be more secure.

Confidentiality labels can be attached to the most sensitive content to encourage users to be more vigilant.

A banner inviting to take precautions could also appear automatically on a Loop component when certain keywords predefined by the administrators are used.

4.3. The introduction of the @mention feature in Outlook emails

The Microsoft Outlook email service is subject to several updates.

The ability to insert files, people or Loop components into an Outlook email simply by typing the "@" character is particularly noteworthy.

Here again, the Context IQ technology comes into play by suggesting content or contacts from different Microsoft applications. The user just has to select the one of his choice in the drop-down menu.

The result is real time savings and employees who can focus on higher value-added tasks.

4.4. Improved security to prevent cyberattacks

Faced with an increase in computer attacks and phishing attempts, Microsoft is working to further improve the security of its services.  

Many updates and new features were therefore announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022 in terms of cybersecurity.

Among them:

👉Microsoft Defender for DevOps, to secure the code

The Microsoft Defender for Cloud application protection platform is enhanced with new features, including Microsoft Defender for DevOps.

This solution will allow IT teams to centralize security management across multiple development platforms such as GitHub and AzureDevops.

👉New features for Microsoft Entra Identity Governance

Microsoft Entra Identity Governance is a new solution under Microsoft Entra, Microsoft's secure identity and access management product.

The goal of Microsoft Entra Identity Governance is to provide access to the right resources to the right people at the right time, in particular through the creation of automated workflows .

📌 To go further on this topic, find out how to secure your company's workstations

5. What's new at Microsoft Ignite 2022: conclusion

As we have just seen, the new features announced during the Microsoft Ingnite 2022 are very numerous and concern Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva but also many other Microsoft products and services.

They all have one thing in common: they respond to the current needs of companies in a rapidly changing world of work .

Employee well-being in a particularly stressful context, commitment and cohesion in a hybrid work situation , or even cybersecurity in the face of an increase in computer attacks: Microsoft's technological solutions precisely address the various challenges facing organizations today.

To learn more, check out the highlights of Microsoft Ignite 2022 in video, or dive into the 2022 edition of the "Microsoft Ignite Book of New Features".