The announcement broke down the various features and capabilities by a few key areas: Messaging, Meetings, and Calling.
Messaging
While Messaging was not really the focus of some of the bigger announcements at Ignite, there are a still a few cool features that we can expect to be delivered soon. The following features are targeted for delivery in Q1 of 2018:
- Hide Chat
- Share Chat
- Mute Chat
- Messaging Policies
- Messaging Retention Policies (the ability to retain for a finite time)
There are more components to the Roadmap for Messaging, but I will defer to Microsoft's official announcement (See Below) for those remaining items. I am excited to get to the Meeting and Calling stuff!
Meetings
In my opinion, the evolution of Meetings within Teams provided for some the bigger and more impressive announcements at Microsoft Ignite. Taking a look at this image provided by Microsoft in their Roadmap announcement today, we can see that there are some very exciting new features coming to the Teams client as early as Q4 2017 (tentatively):
What's slated for Q4?
- Audio Conferencing in 90+ countries
- Anonymous Join
- Interactive Troubleshooting
- Lobby Support
- Mute Other Participants
- Application Sharing
- Give & Take Control in Sharing
- Support for meetings in Edge and Chrome browsers
- Enable Call Quality Analytics
What's slated for end of quarter, Q2 CY2018?
- Broadcast Meetings
- Cloud Recording
- Federated Meetings - Yes, you read that word correctly: FEDERATED.
- Large Meeting Support (~250 participants)
- Lobby for PSTN Callers
- Outlook meeting schedule from other platforms (OWA, mobile, Mac)
- PSTN Fallback
- PowerPoint Load and Share
- Whiteboard and Meeting Notes
- Enable VTC Interop Services*
- Skype Room Systems Support*
- Surface Hub Support
- Trio 1 Touch Teams Meeting Join*
- User-Level Meeting Policy
- eDiscovery enhancements
*Dependent on 3rd Party
As you can see, the Engineering team will be VERY busy over the next several months!
Calling
Finally, we come to the all-important PSTN capabilities within the Teams client. I was very happy to see that we should see this capabilities by the end of CY2017! Again - grain of salt - emphasis place on the word 'should', and of course the Roadmap is always subject to change. Let's take a look at the Roadmap for Calling:
The above image is a bit more...involved! There is a LOT coming, and this Roadmap will be very important when it comes to planning out strategy with your internal organization or clients. Let's start with what we can expect before the end of CY2017:
Enterprise Calling Features for Q4 CY2017:
- Blind Transfer
- Call Blocking
- Call Forwarding
- Hold
- Multi-call Handling
- Sim Ring
- Caller ID Masking
- Speed Dial
- e911 Support
- Extension Dialing
- Translate user input to standard format phone #
- Suggested Contacts
- Voicemail
- Enable Existing Calling Plan Support
Skype for Business Interop & Federation for Q4 CY2017:
- Skype for Business Online - Teams Calling
- Teams Interop Policies
Platform & Device Support for Q4 CY2017:
- Windows, Mac, Edge, iOS, Android
- TTY Support
IT Pro Capabilities for Q4 CY2017
- Skype for Business Online - Teams Interop Policies
- Call Quality Diagnostic Portal
Now, what can we tentatively expect by the end of quarter for Q2 CY2018? It gets pretty exciting:
- Boss & Delegate Support
- Call Queues
- Consultative & Safe Transfer
- Do Not Disturb breaththrough
- Distinctive Ringing
- 1:1 to Group Call Escalation with Teams, Skype for Business, and PSTN Participants
- Forward to Group
- Org Auto Attendant
- Transfer to PSTN Call
- Hybrid Connection to Teams
- Out of Office Support
Skype for Business Interop & Federation for Q2 CY2018:
- Call Support between Teams & Skype Consumer
Platform & Device Support for Q2 CY2018:
- Support for existing certified SIP Phones*
- USB HID
IT Pro Capabilities for Q2 CY2018:
- eDiscovery enhancements
Finally, what will the Calling landscape look like by the end of CY2018 (Q4)? The plan is for these additional Enterprise Voice-like features to be added in to Teams:
- Call Park
- Group Call Pickup
- Location-based routing (LBR)
- Shared Line Appearance
*Dependent on 3rd Party
Well, this is pretty exciting stuff! Check out the official Roadmap announcement on the TechCommunity here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Roadmap-for-Skype-for-Business-capabilities-coming-to-Microsoft/ba-p/119636/jump-to/first-unread-message
Keep your eye out for some of this awesomeness to start hitting your Teams client this quarter!