What’s New in Microsoft 365 Tip: Some Teams Features moving to Teams Premium in February

Microsoft announced Teams Premium back in October 2022. The gist of launch announcement is that hybrid work is here to stay, and that empowering today's connected, distributed workforce requires technology that makes work easier and more flexible.

In January 2023, Microsoft updated its announcement to provide some additional clarity, confirming that some features previously included in the standard Teams license will move to Teams Premium.

The features moving to Teams Premium are:

• Live translation of captions during Teams meetings. This feature allows users to opt to see captions generated for voice communications during meetings in their preferred language. The grace period is 60 days.
• Custom together mode scenes. A scene is the backdrop that meeting participants appear on during Teams meetings when using together mode. Standard users can choose from a set of scenes created by Microsoft. Those with premium licenses can use custom scenes created with the Teams scene studio. For instance, you could create a custom scene based on a well-known physical meeting space like an conference room or atrium. The grace period is 30 days. Up to now, the use of custom together mode spaces required the Teams advanced communication license, so this move shouldn’t affect holders of Teams standard licenses.
• Timeline markers in the recordings of Teams meetings. These markers indicate when participants join and leave a meeting. The grace period is 30 days.
• Virtual appointments is like the Bookings app for Outlook and allows users to schedule and manage structured appointments using online Teams meetings. The app comes with SMS notifications to let people know when an appointment is scheduled, analytics in the Teams admin center, and the ability to view queued appointments.

Other new features include:

• Meeting Guides help you to automatically create the experience that's right for your meeting. The guide is easily customized and managed by IT. You can select a meeting guide - like a client call, brainstorming session, or help desk call - and the options will be automatically set.
• Customized Meeting Branding is a way to have your meetings embody your company brand. The feature includes a customized meeting lobby, backgrounds, and together modes.
• Intelligent Recap gives you the power of AI to make the meetings you attend (and miss) more productive and impactful by suggesting action items and owners, create smarter recordings with automatically generated chapters, and provide insights such as when your name was mentioned, when a screen was shared, or when you left a meeting early, to help you discover important moments to quickly catch up.
• Advanced Meeting Protection provides the ability to watermark confidential meetings, limits who can record, and more.

How the actual licensing works hasn't been released yet. Pricing is estimated to be around $10 per user. We'll learn more during February.