M365 - Microsoft Teams Center

2022, here we are. It's been a couple of years since I was invited to write one of these "look back" articles (maybe I was too harsh last time?) but with the rapid pace of innovation in Microsoft Teams, I think it's good to look back at how far we've come.

Wow. As I sit here and reflect on the afterglow of Comms vNext Reconnect, that's all I can think. With all the craziness of the past 18-20 months, I know many have been wondering if in-person events would ever come back and if they did, would they be any good? From my experience, there is only one word to answer both of those questions: yes.

Over the past year, many organizations have adopted entirely new collaboration systems then what they had a year ago (if they even had one at all). As employees start to return to the office, this poses a challenge in the meeting rooms and can ultimately end user experience and productivity if the proper equipment and training isn't in place. For many organizations, they had simplistic rooms or if they did have collaborative rooms, they may be based around a platform that isn't in use or isn't compatible with the new platform employees are using now.

For many people who are moving to Microsoft Teams for Enterprise Voice, a major component that needs to be addressed is Call Queues. Other PBX systems might call these Hunt Groups. No matter what you call them, a Call Queue is just an ordered way to handle call routing to a group of users and is a critical component of Microsoft Teams reporting.

With the current pandemic of COVID-19, many people are working outside of their normal office and are needing to stay connected to co-workers. For a lot of organizations, this means they are using Microsoft Teams. Some organizations have been using Microsoft Teams for a while and some very abruptly started their journey.

As the year comes to an end we commonly look back and reflect on the good things that have happened to us. I thought it would be a good time to look back on Microsoft Teams and re-cap some of the great features that have come to the platform this year. This list was put together based on either my value of an item’s importance and/or what I've heard from the community (through social media, talking to people at user groups, etc.). If you think I've missed something, please feel free to add to the discussion on Twitter.

One of the concerns many companies have when they start looking at Microsoft Teams reporting is how to control the creation of new Teams. The more Teams that are created, the more administrative overhead is needed. By having lots of Teams, it can be hard for end-users to find the right Team to contribute to and IT Pro’s are stuck having to filter through the Teams to find the one they need to support.