New features and improvements continue to flow in from the Teams engineering teams. I want to highlight the new Files Experience in Teams as this really helps in so many areas around working with files and can open the opportunity to help drive the migration away from traditional on-premies file shares that existing across organizations.
For full details on “What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February 2020” make sure to check out Marissa Salazar‘s blog post on the https://techcommunity.microsoft.com site where she hits on the following February updates.
- Targeted communications using Tags
- Automatic creation of an org-wide teams
- New Files Experience in Teams powered by SharePoint is now rolled out worldwide
- Live Captions to give subtitles to your Microsoft Teams Meetings
- Management of the App Catalog in Teams Admin Center
- Legal hold for Teams private channel messages
- Communication Compliance and the insider threat protection
- Enhanced Power BI Tab
- Pin your apps to the left-hand rail for easy access
- Phone System capabilities for GCC based tenants
SharePoint Online offers a wide range of features and functions. One key aspect that SharePoint provides is an amazing file sharing platform that takes traditional on-premise file-sharing capabilities to a whole new level. As part of the continued efforts across the various Office 365 engineering teams, the ability to have a consistent file experience has been a significant focus.
With the new updates to Microsoft Teams, the rich file experiences across SharePoint Online are now extended and exposed within the Microsoft Teams experience. One essential item that you need to be aware of is that for this functionality to work; you must have the Microsoft OneDrive client installed on your device; this works for Mac’s, Windows, iOS, and Android devices. (See the OneDrive System requirements for details on what is supported)
Some core features that you really enhance the file sharing experience.
- Files on Demand – With files on demand, you can see all the files you have access and permissions to in the various locations where the files may be located. To reduce the network bandwidth and save space on your various computing devices, the feature lets you see the entire list of files that you have access to but does not replicate every file. The files will be copied locally upon first opening them, or if you manually select to sync the files.
- Sync OneDrive, SharePoint sites, Microsoft Teams files – You can make files across OneDrive, SharePoint sites, and teams within Microsoft Teams on your computing device and within the Windows explore and file viewer.
- Ability to share files READ ONLY, using the share function to share the content of the document using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint online as a view of the content.
- Check-in / Check-out, Approval flows, Pinned files, on-hover cards, and on and on.
Take a look at Mark Kashman’s blog post Rich, new file and sharing experiences throughout Microsoft 365, now in Microsoft Teams for more details on the capabilities of SharePoint file controls being exposed in the Microsoft Teams client.
