Top Tips for Microsoft Teams if you're Hard of Hearing or Deaf
If you're deaf or hard of hearing, Microsoft Teams has accessibility features that are great to ensure you get the most out of your Teams experience. The following top 5 tips are hopefully beneficial to get you started.
1. Turn on live captions
Microsoft Teams can now detect conversations had in meetings and present real-time captions.
To use this feature, go to your meeting controls and select More Options > Turn On Live Captions (preview).
2. Pin important people in your Microsoft Teams meetings
Do you need the assistance of a sign language interpreter in your Teams meetings? You can pin their video on your screen so it's always visible no matter who is talking.
To pin a video, right-click on the video and select Pin.
3. Use the shortcut to quickly turn your camera on or off
Making signing and lip reading as easy as possible, you can toggle your camera on or off by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O.
4. Access meeting recordings and transcripts
After a meeting or live event has ended. you can now refer to transcripts and recordings for a record of the discussion.
Microsoft Teams is a messaging and collaboration app that lets everyone in your business join the conversation, communicate and work together. Our blog contains an overview of the many accessibility features that make sure all users can have the best possible experience using Microsoft Teams.
Meet, chat, and collaborate inclusively with Microsoft Teams
Meet
Access meetings and participate from anywhere with Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile apps and Microsoft Teams on the web.
Live closed captioning for meetings
Blur background or use a background image free from the Teams background library, or upload and use your own
Pin a meeting participant's video to highlight an important participant
Dedicated chats for each meeting to keep all conversations and details in one place
Raise your hand in a Teams meeting to stand out
Reduce background noise in Teams meetings to avoid interruptions such as calls or messages
Add someone, like a coworker or interpreter, to a call with the click of a button
Chat
Communicate effectively with everyone regardless of language, cognitive needs, or visual capabilities.
Limit distractions with Do Not Disturb mode to prevent interruptions from calls or messages
Minimise communication barriers with language translation
Customise the reading and viewing experience for different visual and cognitive needs suited to your co-workers
Send audio messages on Microsoft Teams mobile and use Windows dictation on Microsoft Teams desktop
Collaborate
Enable collaboration for everyone by adapting to different learning paces, motor skills, and communication preferences.
Have documents read aloud and broken down by syllables with Immersive Reader
Ensure Microsoft Office content is easy for all people to read and edit directly from the Microsoft Teams desktop app
Pin chats, channels, apps, and documents for quick and easy access
Manage notifications and set your status to let your co-workers know where you are
Dark, light, and high contrast theme
Zoom in and out of Teams
Search for messages to find information quickly and easily
How to run secure and successful meetings with Microsoft Teams
As a result of the pandemic, many people were asked to work from home. That's why its more important than ever to develop our remote working skills to be able to stay productive. Microsoft Teams has been, successfully used over the pandemic as people are able to securely work together online, but also stay connected. If you are a new Microsoft Teams user, or already carry out your meetings via this too. we want to make sure you're getting the most out of your license.
Here are Microsoft's Top 8 Microsoft Teams Tips:
Connect securely with people inside and outside of your organisation: When you schedule a meeting in either Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Outlook, you are able to include the email address of your guests and MS Teams will send them an email invitation, with instructions on how to join too.
Enable attendees to dial in from anywhere, at any time: This feature is great for attendees on the go, without access to the internet, or who prefer to dial into a meeting, Teams makes sure your meetings are inclusive. Attendees who are enabled for Audio Conferencing will automatically see dial-in instructions added to their Teams meeting invites.
Meeting Controls gives you options:Microsoft Teams gives the meeting organiser many options when it comes to defining the roles and permissions for online meeting participants. For example, you can create a meeting lobby, which lets the organiser define when certain people are admitted to the meeting. This is very useful when discussing issues with confidentiality implications. Other features include muting participants, stopping/starting recordings.
Face-Face conversations via Video: As a result of the many restrictions, meeting in person is likely to be impossible, so meeting online via video is the next best thing to stay connected. Seeing someone’s expression when they talk, adds so much more context to the conversation. People are encouraged to turn their cameras on during Teams meetings, as this is more engaging. If you are worried about the room you are holding your meeting in, turn on the background blur feature or a custom background.
Only share what you need: Sometimes less is more, when it comes to Teams meetings. When sharing content in Teams meetings, you have full control over what others see. You have the ability to share your entire desktop view, or just a tab. This can come in useful when dealing with confidential, sensitive information.
Making your mark with Microsoft Whiteboard:Microsoft Whiteboard is integrated with every Teams meeting, which allows participants to contribute via touch, mouse and digital ink...this means you don't have to be in the same room for a brainstorming session. Read our release blog on Microsoft Whiteboard.
Never miss out on a meeting: If you are running late to joining a meeting, there's no need to worry. Meetings can be recorded in full, and shared instantly once the meeting has ended. Attendees are also able to use the transcript to find specific parts of the meeting.
Know and see exactly what has been said: Keeping up with a conversation can sometimes be difficult, especially with the added frustrations of lagging internet...with Microsoft Teams, participants are encouraged to turn on live captions and read the real-time subtitles. This feature improves Microsoft's inclusivity, as this helps those who are hard of hearing, have different levels of language understandings and lastly, are connecting from a loud location.
Adepteq can help you utilise, and make the most out of your Microsoft Teams subscription. Contact us today to see how we can help your organisation have secure and successful meetings with Microsoft Teams.
Threats are becoming increasingly significant at a higher rate with a rise in cyberattacks targeting small and medium-sized businesses. In the last year, Microsoft have seen a 300% increase in ransomware attacks with over 50% reaching small businesses. Microsoft is investing in security solutions purposefully designed to help protect businesses from cyberattacks.
Microsoft Defender for Business is a new endpoint security solution that’s coming soon. Microsoft Defender for Business is specially built to bring enterprise-grade endpoint security to businesses with up to 300 employees, in a solution that is easy-to-use and cost-effective.
Microsoft Defender for Business elevates security from traditional antivirus to next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, threat and vulnerability management, and a lot more. Defender helps businesses protect themselves against cybersecurity threats including ransomware and malware across macOS, Windows, Android and iOS devices.
Defender for Business includes the following capabilities:
Threat and vulnerability management
Next generation protection
Automated investigation and remediation
Attack surface reduction
APIs and integration
Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
Threat and Vulnerability management dashboard helps you to proactively discover and prioritise software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Defender for Business delivers maximum security value at a price point that works for your organisation. Included as part of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium license (or as an addon license), this security and productivity solution brings together MS Teams and Office 365 with the essential security tools for organisations.
Contact Adepteq today to find out how we can help your organisation implement Microsoft Defender for Business to help secure your business.
Transform Your Hybrid Working Experience with Microsoft Viva
Microsoft are excited to announce that all four Viva modules shared at the beginning of that journey—Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Topics, and Viva Learning—are now generally available and with the purchase of just one plan, the new Viva suite, you have access to all of them. They are also announcing new capabilities and partnerships for each module and a centralised IT admin experience.
Microsoft Viva ensures every employee is a part of their organisation’s culture, expert knowledge, personal productivity insights, and key learning resources.Viva empowers every level of an organisation to address key challenges of hybrid work and employee burnout, which is a serious, common occurrence in today's working environment.
The Microsoft Viva suite: One plan for an integrated EXP
With the Microsoft Viva suite, customers get an integrated EXP that brings together knowledge, learning, communications, resources, and insights into the flow of work.
Viva Connections: Culture and communications
Viva Connections is a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the applications and devices you use every day—and later this month, those devices will include your mobile phone.
You are now also able to add cards for Approvals, Shifts, and Tasks from Teams into your Viva Connections dashboard.
Viva Insights: Productivity and wellbeing
Viva Insights helps improve productivity and wellbeing through data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations. Microsoft are announcing expanded capabilities to help managers and team leads navigate hybrid work and to help everyone in an organisation run more effective meetings.
New manager insights and tools will help managers and team leads stay connected with team members
A new effective meetings experience in the Viva Insights app for Teams will help meeting organisers get personalised insights and suggestions to improve their meeting habits.
Guided meditations from Headspace will be generally available in November 2021 in four additional languages.
Viva Topics: Knowledge and expertise
Viva Topics applies AI to automatically organise content and expertise across your systems and teams into related topics, like projects, products, processes, and customers. That content appears as topic pages and topic centers—created and updated by AI—that enable experts to cultivate and share knowledge with wiki-like simplicity.
Viva Learning: Skilling and growth
Viva Learning brings enterprise learning into the flow of work by connecting content from your organisation, Learning Management Systems, third-party providers, and Microsoft.
See assignments from integrated Learning Management Systems to easily stay up to date on required learning.
Search across all the learning sources connected to Viva Learning and filter by interests, provider, or duration to find the exact content you need.
Make learning recommendations to your team and colleagues and track the recommendations you’ve made.
Add a curated set of learning resources as a tab in your Teams channels to bring learning directly into the flow of teamwork.
If you would like to see how Adepteq can transform your hybrid working experience with Microsoft Viva, get in contact with us today. For more information about Microsoft Viva, read our launch post here.
To read the full Microsoft Viva article, click here.
Have you ever wondered whether or not your Microsoft 365 data is secure and protected?
Many users sadly become victims to cyber attacks due to not knowing that Microsoft aren’t actually protecting their valuable data. Adepteq SaaS Protection makes it easier and more cost effective than ever to safeguard all of your Microsoft 365 data- putting your mind at ease.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is an intelligent way to deliver applications over the internet. These SaaS apps have revolutionised the way we do businesses. It allows companies to limit installation and maintenance of software by accessing applications with a click of a button. Adepteq Datto SaaS Protection helps you to remove the risk of losing any or all of your data with a simple, automated and secure backup of your Office 365 Data.
Feeling unsecure and want to know how we can protect your data?
There will also be a short Q&A where our experts and presenters- Ian Loman and Adam Salley will be able to provide additional support.
This webinar is free of charge and is held in English. You can participate using Microsoft Teams in web browser, desktop app or mobile app. If the date and time is not suitable, sign up anyway and we will send you the presentation and a recording of the webinar.
If you want to know how to Secure and Protect your Microsoft 365 Data with Adepteq SaaS Protection, REGISTER NOW for our Free Webinar to avoid missing out!
Microsoft are excited to announce that Windows 11 will start to become available on October 5, 2021.
A free upgrade to Windows 11 will begin rolling out to eligible Windows 10 PCs and PCs that come pre-loaded with Windows 11 will start to become available for users to easily buy. As PCs play a more central role in our day to day lives, Windows 11 is designed to bring you closer to what you love by empowering your productivity and creativity.
Adepteq have the rundown on this exciting new release:
With Windows 11, users will experience new designs and sounds that are modern and fresh.
'Start' utilises the power of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to show you your recent files no matter what device you were viewing them on.
Want an even more powerful way to multitask and optimise your screen? Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktops provide just that.
With conversations through Microsoft Teams, Windows 11 provides a faster way to connect with others, as Microsoft Teams will be integrated into the taskbar.
Widgets, a new personalized feed powered by AI, provides a faster way to access the information you are interested in.
This latest version of Windows, is inclusively designed with new accessibility improvements that were built for and by people with disabilities.
Microsoft are opening the Store to allow more developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to bring their apps to the Store which unlocks new opportunities for developers and creators.
Windows 11 is optimized for speed, efficiency and improved experiences with touch, digital pen and voice input.
Windows 11 is the operating system for hybrid work and learning, delivering new experiences that work how you work, are secure by design, and easy and familiar for IT to deploy and manage.
The free upgrade starts on October 5 and will be phased and measured. New eligible devices will be offered the upgrade first. The upgrade will then roll out over time to in-market devices based on intelligence models that consider hardware eligibility, reliability metrics, age of device and other factors that impact the upgrade experience. Microsoft expect all eligible devices to be offered the free upgrade by mid-2022.
Being Microsoft Gold Certified Partners, Adepteq can provide Microsoft Licences for you to purchase. If you would like to speak to an expert for more information please contact us.
Last week tens of thousands of people from all over the world came together to gain experiences and insights from Microsoft subject matter experts and partner communities as they advance their businesses, with a more thorough understanding of Microsoft's cloud to edge, secure, and trusted business platforms.
The following is a summary of the announcements and news related to modern working for you to keep in mind as you start implementing plans for a very successful year ahead.
Windows 365 Cloud PC:
If you're looking for a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 as a cloud service, then Windows 365 Cloud is your way to go. You will be able to stream the full Window's experience including Apps, settings and data to any device from the Microsoft Cloud.
With Windows 365, partners can:
Offer their clients and customers a new, flexible, and even more secure way to empower distributed workforces, seasonal, temporary workers and employees, with a need for specialised workloads.
Assist customers when it comes to choosing the size of the Cloud PC that best fits their needs with predictable per user, per month pricing. By instant on-booting to their personal Cloud PC, users can stream their tools, applications, data and settings from the Cloud across all devices.
By using Microsoft Endpoint Manager, partners can help customers procure, deploy and manage Cloud PCs for their organisations.
New collaborative apps from partnerships with independent software vendors (ISVs). These include Atlassian Confluence, SAP Cloud for Customer, Workday and Salesforce- are coming to Microsoft Teams. These integrations allow structured business processes and data to come together increasing collaborative work. Developers and ISVs can build the next generation of apps with collaboration at the core, allowing asynchronous and real-time collaboration for chats, meetings, content creation and business processes.
Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform that brings together tools for employee engagement, wellbeing, learning and knowledge. Adding integrations with more than 20 partners from the likes of ServiceNow, Workday and Qualtrics comes into play during Autumn. With these new integrations customers can seamlessly surface tools, insights and experiences personalised for employees during their workflow.
Read the Microsoft 365 Blog post from Microsoft CVP Jared Spataro and Microsoft Business Applications CVP Alysa Taylor to learn more.
Benefits for partners building Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Viva apps
Microsoft have announced new benefits for ISVs who want to build and market Modern Workplace apps for Microsoft Viva and MS Teams. Those ISVs that are eligible, will receive access to Microsoft technology, one-on-one consultations, curated training, and marketing resources that will help them reach the 145 million people using and collaborating on MS Teams daily.
Two new tools are now in preview that are intended to make it easier to deliver managed security services and identify opportunities to grow.
Microsoft 365 Lighthouse
Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is a unified portal that assists managed service providers (MSP) partners to easily secure devices, data and users, at no extra costs, for their Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers.
Project 'Orland'
Available in private preview, Project "Orland" is a fresh, new experience in the Partner Centre to help Microsoft Partners grow their cloud business by sharing Microsoft-powered insights about their own customers which will improve account management.
To find out more about the Microsoft Inspire event, head over to the main article.
If you need additional Office 365, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams or Power Platform support, feel free to contact us and one of our expert advisors will be able to assist you.
Since March 2020, the start of Covid-19, we've had to find ways to create engaging virtual experiences at work, whilst working remotely at home. Microsoft have been key players by developing new skillsets within the Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Teams,Office 365 and SharePoint. People often complain about having to use 101 different modes of software for remote collaboration to get work done, but with innovative new Microsoft Teams features, you have more ways to use ONE tool for everyday collaboration and meetings, and now for webinars and external events.
Microsoft have begun the roll out of Webinars and PowerPoint Live, with these capabilities you have new ways to deliver professional and polished presentations in meetings of every size. Does this sound interesting? Well you don't need to purchase a new license or product as these new features will be automatically updated for you in your organisation's plan.
Here's what is in store...
Rich customer engagement now able with Full-featured webinars
You can now organise and hold meetings and webinars for up to 1,000 attendees with Teams. With end-to-end webinar support that’s as simple as setting up a Teams meeting—including custom registration pages and attendee emails, rich presentation options, host controls, such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting to understand participation and to follow up with attendees.
Having a webinar with more than 1,000 attendees? Teams meetings can seamlessly scale to accommodate a 10,000-person view-only broadcast experience. With a huge increase of working from home, Microsoft have now expanded the attendee limit to 20,000 through the end of this year.
Presenting like a pro is easier than ever!
Delivering impactful and more engaging presentations in a polished and professional way is more do-able than ever with PowerPoint Live and Presenter mode in Microsoft Teams.
Presenters can feel more capable and confident during presentations by bringing together Microsoft’s rich history with presenter experiences in PowerPoint and the collaboration power of Teams.
Attendees are able to personalise their experience by privately navigating the content at their own pace or using high contrast mode and screen readers to make content accessible.
Using Presenter mode, presenters are able to customise how their video feed and content is shown to the audience. The first of three options, Standout mode, shows the speaker’s video feed as a silhouette in front of the shared content; Reporter mode shows content as a visual aid above the speaker’s shoulder, similar to a news broadcast; and Side-by-side mode shows presenter’s video feed alongside their content as they present. Standout mode is now available as of the end of May, and Reporter and Side-by-side will roll out shortly after.
Attendee engagement is just as important after a webinar...
After the event ends, easily access reporting to bring attendee information into your customer relationship management (CRM) applications for lead management and follow-up is important. At the beginning of May, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing customers can export attendee data directly from Teams to automatically create campaigns and customer journeys for ongoing nurture streams. The Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing integration gives webinar hosts more ways to drive engagement, increase conversion, and build loyalty with your attendees.
Doesn't this sound great? Get started with Webinars in Microsoft Teams today!
Since the new webinar capabilities are already included in many of the Office and Microsoft 365 plans your organization uses today, there’s no reason to not start using them now.
If you would like to explore how to get the most out of online events and webinars using Microsoft Teams, get in touch with Adepteq today. Our expert team can help educate you further- head over to our training page to see how.
It's been a busy few months but May has flown in with full force. We've got the run-down on 'What's New in Microsoft Teams?'
Microsoft Teams recent updates includes changes regarding Meetings & Webinars, Meeting Recap, Meet Now, and how to Bypass Lobby Waiting as well as much more. Keep reading to find out how!
Meetings & Webinars:
Microsoft has began to offer live transcription in the Microsoft Teams platform for English (US). This feature allows a written record of the spoken text that happens during a meeting. Each speaker is clearly identified whilst speech is captured automatically in real-time which can be accessed during and after the teams meeting.
Meeting Recap
Meeting recap is available once a meeting is over in the form of a recording, transcript, attached files and chat. This recap is available in the Details Tab and can be shared with participants of the meeting. People who have joined the meeting late, or missed it can have access to this at any time.
Meet Now in Outlook client for Windows
From the Calendar tab in Outlook for windows, you can now start a Teams meeting instantly by clicking the Meet Now button. For this to work, admins need to set the Allow Private Meet Now policy option to True in their admin console area.
Get a Meet Now meeting link from the Calendar
To share a meeting with others quickly, you can simply copy the Meet Now link from your Calendar before the meeting starts. This is a quick and easy way to paste the link into chat, text and also emails.
New bypass lobby option
With the new Microsoft updates, certain groups of users are able to join meetings directly and bypass meeting lobbies with the new policies. "People in my organisation" and "People in my organisation, trusted organisation and guests." This gives users another level of security and flexibility when using Teams.
These few points are just a snippet of some of the changes Microsoft Teams is going through, stay tuned for more posts on these important changes, and get in touch to stay up-to-date and in contact. To read the full article click here.
