Teams Pro Plan in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Business Accounts

Microsoft has announced what it calls a new service plan, Teams Pro in Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Microsoft 365 E5, E3, A5, A3, Business Standard, and Business Basic license in the message MC238782 published in the Admin Center on Feb 9, 2021. While Microsoft has not revealed much about Teams Pro, the major update is expected to be rolled out in mid-March 2021 at the tenant level.

The message also states that the new Teams capabilities will be available to all the users with the appropriate licenses and admins can turn it off and turn it on again for specific people. While the details of the features that will be available in Teams Pro are still sketchy, Microsoft has confirmed that the new capabilities that are being introduced are related to meeting intelligence and webinar capabilities.

Webinars in Microsoft Teams

Webinars can be conducted using Microsoft Teams by scheduling meetings. Here are the different ways to schedule a Microsoft Teams meeting/ webinar.

• Book meetings with the people in the chat by selecting the “Schedule a meeting” option below the box for typing your message.
• Click on Calendar>New meeting and use the Scheduling Assistant to add a title to the meeting, invite people, and add meeting details.
• Microsoft Teams also supports webinars involving people outside the organization, including those without a Teams license, who can join the webinar from an email with a link to the meeting.
• Users can schedule a channel meeting if they want everyone in a team to be able to see and join the webinar in that channel.
• Finally, Microsoft Teams also can be used as a webinar provider for Dynamics 365 Marketing events because the Teams event functionality is now incorporated directly into the Marketing app.

Meeting Intelligence in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft has been working on the Socially Intelligent Meetings program since 2019 that explores social and technological interventions for making organizational telepresence effective, comfortable, and adaptable. The project intends to drive social and organizational value rather than attempting to replicate in-person experiences by developing telepresence technologies with a holistic and flexible approach for intentional collaboration over time.

Microsoft Teams already incorporates advanced features, such as auto-transcription, and Together Mode. The company is also working on a bot leveraging Artificial intelligence (AI) called AffectiveSpotlight that analyzes facial responses and head gestures of audience members and dynamically spotlights the most expressive ones, that could be added to the collaboration software soon.

Apps4Rent Can Help with Microsoft Cloud Solutions

While Microsoft offers a free version of the Teams collaboration software, many of the advanced features will only be available in the licensed version available with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 business plans. More importantly, Teams Pro will only be available with Office 365/ Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise licenses.

As a Tier 1 Microsoft CSP, Apps4Rent can help organizations adopt the right Microsoft cloud solution to meet their unique requirements. Contact our Microsoft certified consultants available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email for assistance.