Teams group chats are getting a new Meet Now experience. Is that good news? Well, it’s not an earthshattering change, but it is a nice change because it simplifies the way the Meet Now feature works. It’s the kind of change that software vendors make to tidy up the loose ends in a product.
Microsoft is adding the @Everyone mention to Teams group and meeting chats. Using @Everyone highlights a message to all chat participants by notifying them through their activity feed (dependent on user settings). It’s a feature similar to the @Team and @Channel mentions available for channel conversations. Not a huge advance, but welcome none the less.
Microsoft Teams Connect now allows external (federated) people to join group chats. Federated participants come from other Microsoft 365 tenants. Previously, federated chats were only supported for 1:1 conversations, but as part of the effort to prepare for the introduction of shared channels (also based on federation), multiple external participants can join a group chat.
Microsoft announced on May 1 that the limit for Teams group chats is increasing from 100 to 250. The new limit will be available everywhere by mid-May. Nice as an expanded limit it, large group chats come with some notable decreases in functionality, like losing the ability to display user status messages or read receipts. In some cases, taking a conversation to a channel might be a better idea.
Teams supports pop-out windows for personal and group chats, including those with federated users and Skype consumer users. From June, Teams will support pop-out windows for meetings and calls too. Microsoft plans to roll-out the new meeting window slowly and users will have the choice to use the current or new implementation until August. At that time, pop-out windows for calls and meetings become the norm.
Two Office 365 Message Center notifications bring news about an increase in the number of participants for a Teams group chat to 100 and improvements in shareable links for files. Moving the limit from 50 to 100 for a group chat makes these conversations more flexible. Adding permissions to the sharing links used by Teams gives users more control over how they share information with others.