BigBlueButton vs Microsoft Teams

2023. Microsoft’s AI-powered Designer tool comes to Teams



Microsoft is introducing its AI-driven art creation tool, Designer, to the free version of Teams. Users of Microsoft Teams can now utilize Designer, an app similar to Canva, to generate various designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, and other purposes. These designs can be shared on social media platforms and other channels. Designer can generate designs based on text prompts or uploaded images by leveraging DALL-E 2, OpenAI's text-to-image AI. The tool offers options for customization and personalization through drop-down menus and text boxes. Designer is accessible through the web, Microsoft's Edge browser via the sidebar, and now within the free version of Teams. The announcement of Designer was initially made in October, and new features such as caption generation and animated visuals were added in April. Microsoft has also promised additional advanced editing features in the future.


2023. Microsoft rebuilt Teams from the ground up, promises 2x faster performance



Microsoft Teams, which competes with Slack, has had a reputation for being slow and resource-intensive since its launch, which some attributed to Microsoft's rushed response to Slack's success. However, Microsoft has now launched a preview of a new version of Teams that it describes as a "reimagining of Teams from the ground up." The new application promises to offer twice the performance of the previous version while using only half the memory. This means that joining meetings should be twice as fast, and switching between chats and channels will be 1.7 times faster. The company has also redesigned the user experience of the platform.


2022. Microsoft Teams targets Facebook Groups with new Communities feature



Microsoft Teams launched a new “Communities” feature on Android and iOS device. Users can now create and organize groups with their sports club, event planning committee, parent-teacher association or any other group in their community. The feature gives users access to group calendars, event scheduling, meetings, document/photo sharing, video calls and chat. The Communities feature in Teams includes a “new events experience” that allows users to add events to their community calendar, as well as invite guests, track attendance and chat with attendees through direct private messenger. Communities is now rolling out in the free version of Microsoft Teams. At launch, it’s available on mobile only; however, the company noted it would arrive on desktop soon.


2022. Meta partners with Microsoft to bring VR to Teams



Meta has announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring Windows apps and Teams tie-ins, to Meta’s metaverse hardware efforts. This means that Microsoft Teams will integrate with Quest devices and that Microsoft will provide a way to stream Windows apps to Meta’s headsets. Custom 3D avatars will eventually come to the experience. Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s VR space for collaboration, will connect with Teams, allowing people to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms. Microsoft 365 will come to Quest in a way that lets users interact with content from productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. These aren’t full-blown versions of apps designed for VR, importantly; They’re Progressive Web Apps, rather.


2021. Microsoft Teams gets 3D animated avatars



Microsoft announced 3D avatars for those Teams meetings where you don’t want to be on camera. Those animated personalized avatars are part of what Microsoft calls “Mesh for Teams,” which combines the company’s Mesh platform for powering shared experiences in virtual reality, augmented reality and elsewhere, with Teams and its built-in productivity tools. It’s still the same meetings that should’ve been an email, but different. To access Mesh for Teams, you will be able use anything from a smartphone to a VR headset or a HoloLens. Microsoft says businesses can also create their own spaces — or metaverses, because that’s the term we use now — within Teams, where people can virtually mingle and collaborate.


2021. Microsoft updates Teams with new presentation features



Microsoft Teams will get a new PowerPoint Live feature that will allow presenters to present as usual — but with the added benefit of seeing all their notes, slides and meeting chats in a single view. And for those suffering through yet another PowerPoint presentation while trying to look engaged, PowerPoint Live lets them scroll through the presentation at will — or use a screen reader to make the content more accessible. This new feature is now available in Teams.


2020. Microsoft launches Dataflex, a relational database for building low-code business Teams apps



Microsoft today launched Dataflex, a relational database that lets business developers create, deploy, and manage Power Platform apps and chatbots without leaving Microsoft Teams. The built-in low code data platform provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise grade governance, and one-click deployment. Dataflex is supposed to surface key business data for building low-code apps that address business problems. The relational database also brings AI, performance, and security benefits out-of-the-box. Dataflex in Teams means business users can store and manage business data with the Power Platform. In the past, there wasn’t any supported place to put the data.


2020. Microsoft updates Teams with new automation and scheduling tools



Microsoft has unveiled a slew of updates for its Teams collaboration and communications platform. For users, most of the important updates are around meetings in teams, where you’ll soon be able to schedule, manage and conduct virtual appointments through the Bookings app, for example. On the scheduling side, Teams is also getting new capabilities in the Shifts app, including new triggers and templates to enable auto-approvals for shift requests, for example, when a manager’s approval isn’t needed. Microsoft will also soon enable a new feature that makes it easier to integrate Power Apps and Power Automate business process templates into Teams, and Power BI users will soon be able to quickly share reports to Teams with the click of a single button.


2020. Microsoft updates Teams communications platform with targeted messaging



Microsoft announced a handful of new capabilities coming to its Microsoft 365 platform that are designed to improve communications among care teams and facilitate low-friction telehealth visits with patients. Chief among the new tools already rolled out to providers is targeted communication within both the mobile and desktop versions of Microsoft Teams. Individual staff members can be assigned different tags based on their roles, departments or whatever other groupings might apply. With these, groups of employees can received targeted messages within the chat platform.


2020. Microsoft Teams is getting push-to-talk feature



Microsoft is adding a new Walkie Talkie feature to its Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams. Available in preview in the coming months, the feature will turn smartphones or tablets into a walkie-talkie that will work over Wi-Fi or cellular data. It’s primarily designed for “firstline workers,” employees who face customers and run day-to-day operations inside companies. Microsoft is positioning this as a more secure way of using a traditional walkie-talkie. Microsoft is embedding the feature at the center of its navigation bar inside Microsoft Teams, suggesting that’s a highly requested feature that will be used by a lot of companies.