Microsoft to Roll Out Q&A app in Teams Meetings

New Delhi: As hybrid work becomes the norm, employee experience and engagement are more important than ever. The way that people work and connect with their coworkers has shifted, and Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index shows that flexible work is here to stay. To better support the hybrid mode of work, Microsoft has announced new enhancements. Have a look below:

Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings

The Q&A app will allow meeting organizers and presenters to add open or moderated Q&As to any Teams meeting. The Q&A app enables attendees to ask and reply to questions before and during a meeting. Organizers and designated presenters can mark best answers, filter responses, moderate and dismiss questions, and pin posts. Responses to questions are threaded in a conversation with the original question. Q&A is ideally suited for large and more structured meetings, such as leadership presentations, webinars, classroom trainings, all-hands meetings, and community events. The Q&A app is currently in private preview and will be rolling out soon.

Employee engagement with Microsoft Viva

With Microsoft Viva, Microsoft is creating an employee experience platform that brings together employee engagement, learning and training, wellbeing experiences, and knowledge discovery directly in the flow of work. Yammer usage doubled year-over-year and now supports tens of millions of monthly active users worldwide. New integrations and capabilities will bring these community experiences and scale directly into Viva, offering immediate value and growth opportunities for customers.

Enhancements to Communities app for Microsoft Teams

The Communities app for Microsoft Teams helps users stay connected to what’s happening in communities, tap into knowledge across teams and departments, and crowdsource solutions and best practices from frontline workers. In the coming weeks, Microsoft is updating the app to inherit Microsoft Teams styling, further incorporate notifications and deep-linking, and include new capabilities like suggested communities.

Add Communities to Outlook for the web

Microsoft has announced the new Communities app for Outlook, which brings the full Yammer experience inside Outlook for the web. Starting soon, users will be able to engage in communities, participate in conversations and live events, and share knowledge openly with peers without leaving the Outlook app.

New features for conversations and topics

Microsoft has also introduced new capabilities that make it easier to connect and communicate across the organization:

Follow conversations by topic. To help stay in touch with conversations around a topic of interest, Microsoft is adding a new capability to topics in Yammer. When users visit a topic page, they will be able to follow the topic and see who else is following the topic. This helps users find experts and collaborators and helps knowledge managers gauge interest in topics. The new “Followers” section on topic pages in Yammer is being tested in Microsoft now.

Post on behalf of another user

Users can now post on behalf of another user in Yammer. After approval is granted, internal communicators can use this feature to share news and updates as well as reply to comments on behalf of leaders and their teams. And this new capability is not limited to Yammer admins—any user can choose to delegate access to any other person.