Microsoft is continuing its drive to make Teams the most functional and fully-equipped communications tool on the market, as it prepares to launch a new way to collaborate on agendas.
It’s been hard to miss the huge number of new features that have been added to Teams in recent memory, as Microsoft invests heavily in the technology – a clear bid to stay ahead of its video conferencing competitors as workplaces continue to become more atomised.
This trend looks set to continue, at least for now, with collaborative agendas being the latest addition.
Dubbed ‘Collaborative Notes’ by XDA, this new feature allows those on a Teams chat to jointly make notes, create agendas, and generate action items from within their meeting – rather than having to do so within the chat or in a separate program altogether.
With these notes gathered, MS Teams will then automatically synchronize them with the Tasks app so participants get personalised meeting actions. Tasks ascribed to certain individuals will also trigger an email to cover the assignment and provide an additional reminder.
To use Collaborative Notes, first schedule a meeting then select ‘Add an agenda everyone can edit’ from the bottom of the form. Once the meeting has begun, click ‘Notes’ in the toolbar to open a separate pane where notes can be taken and actions allocated.
This new feature hasn’t yet made it out to Teams globally; it’s currently in the Public Preview phase. This is where tools that are almost ready for a wider audience are tested out at scale so they can really be put through their paces for final adjustments (and is therefore often a precursor to a full roll out).
Whilst some errors have been identified – including issues with meetings of over 100 participants, or where a user is part of 300 conversations with Collaborative Notes – the feedback is proving largely positive.
As such, it seems a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ this feature makes it out to a full release.
