Microsoft announced the updates that will come to the different products of the company in its annual conference, Build 2020. Updates were announced for Teams as well as the launch of the Lists and Project Reunion platforms, a service that seeks to help unify the creation of applications.
Microsoft Build is the annual developer conference held by the Redmond giant. It is one of the most outstanding technology events in this area, where the company announces the updates that will come to its products.
Microsoft Build 2020 started yesterday and will continue later today. The entire meeting is held in virtual format. On the first day, news for Windows, Azure and Microsoft 365 were unveiled. The focus was on productive solutions for work as well as tools that seek to help developers work more collaboratively.
In relation to Microsoft 365, new functions were presented in Microsoft Teams, Fluid Framework, Outlook and Edge, as well as the new Microsoft Lists application.
Microsoft Teams
This video call tool, which in April exceeded 70 million daily active users, will add the following new features:
Schedule virtual appointments through Bookings
From now on, companies will be able to schedule, manage and conduct virtual appointments between their organization and consumers through the new integration of the Bookings application in Microsoft Teams. With this function it will be possible to manage various areas and locations, as well as make medical consultations, interviews, customer service, and all kinds of virtual meetings.
Custom templates
When creating a new team, you will soon be able to choose from a variety of templates that can be customized. You can select templates designed especially for each industry such as banks or hospitals, as well as themes: event management, crisis response or business. Each template includes predefined channels, apps, and guides.
Administrators will also be able to generate custom templates and generic templates for existing teams in their organization, allowing them to standardize team structures and find relevant applications for their needs.
The templates in Teams will be available in the coming months and will appear automatically. The chatbots integrated to this platform will guide the user in the use of this new tool.
Broadcast events and create studio productions
New support will be added for Network Device Interface (NDI) and Skype TX interoperability for Microsoft Teams, which offers a more advanced set of options for custom public and private broadcasts of high quality.
Customized applications and automated workflows
Developers and administrators will soon be able to add their custom apps from Power Apps to Teams just by pressing the “Add to Teams” button. To start using this option, go to make.powerapps.com , click on the ellipsis (“…”) next to the application you want to publish and select “Add to Teams”.
In addition, new Power Automate business process templates for Teams will allow creators to optimize workflows through pre-built templates or as a basis for customizing their own. In turn, they will soon be able to personalize the names of the bots, create extensions of personalized messages, automate the @mentions and publish messages on the channels.
Share Power BI reports
Power BI users can now share reports, or specific tables of their documents, in Teams with the new “Share in Teams” button. Senders can also direct the recipient’s attention to a specific table in the report or share it with the entire team. To use this option, select “Send to Teams” from the Power BI portal and enter the name of the team with which they want to share this information.
New Shifts application options
New capabilities in the Shifts app expand functionality and allow integration with existing systems. The new Power Automate actions allow developers to take information from Shifts and create custom workflows with other applications or perform operations at scale. Finally, the new templates will help support a variety of time-saving and streamlined scenarios, such as enabling automatic authorizations for shift change requests in cases where manager authorization is not required.
Fluid Framework
The first Fluid Framework integrations in Microsoft 365, coming soon to Outlook and Office.com, will allow collaboration on dynamic documents and create connected components that can be shared simultaneously and easily in applications.
In this sense, tables, charts and task lists can be inserted in Outlook for the web, so that projects and research reports are always updated . Fluid Framework workspaces can be created and managed within Office.com. These experiences will be available to those with a Microsoft 365 business license in the coming months.
More developer options were released in the preview with new options for development in .NET and UWP (WinUI 3.0), allowing them to integrate Chromium-based Edge WebView into WinForms, WPF and UWP / Win UI 3.0 applications. A 3D view was also added in the developer tools (DevTools).
Microsoft Lists
This is the new smart tracking app in Microsoft 365. With Lists you can create, share and monitor data and information live from Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and the Lists mobile app , which will be available soon. Lists can be easily created and customized with templates, color codes, workflows, and more.
Project Reunion
Project Reunion seeks to help unify application development across the 1 billion devices that use Windows 10. It is a platform for Windows developers that facilitates integration between Win32 and UWP APIs, to build applications that work across all versions and devices with Windows 10.
