My Ignite Teams 2020 Wrap Up – Part 1 – Admin, Collab and Surface

By | September 29, 2020
Satya delivering the opening Keynote of Ignite 2020

Winter wrap up, winter.. oh.. your here?

Microsoft Ignite 2020 has been and gone and it was a massive whirlwind of information. Tons of new features and announcements that even I’m still catching up on.

Unfortunately without the on-site after parties and catchup with like-minded individuals to digest the day. It’s easy to miss a new announcement or change. So being the “Mad Scientist” I am, I downloaded every session from Ignite, Stuffed them into a torrent and uploaded them over here.

Microsoft has uploaded a blog post of a few features that were announced for Teams at Ignite 2020. But if you follow me, your likely looking for a little more UC and Teams.

So here they are. Every announcement I could find relating to Teams at Microsoft Ignite 2020. Starting with, IT Pro changes.

Links to relevant announcements or sessions are under each heading with the relevant timestamps to help out.

Part 1 – Teams Admin, Colab and Surface (you are here)
Part 2 – Teams Calling and Phones
Part 3 – Teams Meeting and Devices

Microsoft 365 / Teams Admin Centre

Microsoft has put together a blog post wrapping up all the new admin features announced at Ignite 2020. But here is everything I got from the recorded sessions.

Multi Tenant Support

Yes, just like in the Azure Portal, you can now quickly switch between tenants but just clicking the “All tenants” button below the Waffle Button

To whoever implemented this… Thank you!

More info: Session DB145 @26:00

Bulk Assign Policies to users

New features in the Teams Admin center will allow administrators to bulk assign policies to Office 365 groups, or upto 50k users

These policies will cover things like Calling Polices, Meetings, Live Meetings, Teams and Channel polices, Even Call Park (Who still uses this?)

The Admin portal will now even let you see when policies have been applied (a massive feature for any Teams admin)

More info: Session DB144 @6:30

Teams App Life Cycle Improvements

  • New App Submission API
  • Purchase Licenses for Third-Party Teams apps
  • Org specific settings for Apps in the Teams Admin Centre
  • Grant Permissions to use the apps from the Teams admin centre, rather than installing it in your Teams client
  • Also lets us see what apps have what permissions
  • Install apps to Teams from the Teams admin centre
  • Customize the look of the Teams app store for your business

More info: Session DB144 @8:00

Teams Admin Device Management

  • Added Teams Displays
  • Renamed Teams Rooms to Teams Rooms for Windows
  • Renamed Teams Collaboration Bars to Teams Rooms for Android

Added Device Management alerts, Posts to a Team, person or an external WebHook if a device is offline/unhealthy

New Device Admin Role, allowing your staff to just manage meeting rooms / Phones rather than everything in Teams. Even delegate to external MS Partners without giving them Global Admin / Teams Admin

More info: Session DB144 @15:50

Teams PowerShell Module Consolidation

Skype for Business Online cmdlets are being brought into the Teams PowerShell module to allow admins to authenticate once rather than having to import and authenticate multiple modules.

More info: Session DB144 @26:00

New Teams Colab Features

Lists in Teams – Rolling Out Now

Similar SharePoint Lists, “Microsoft Lists” will let you setup Lists with conditional formatting, alerts and rules to action things as needed inside of Teams.

List app on iOS entering preview “Soon”

More info: Session DB136 @25:35

Lists in Depth: http://aka.ms/session/MSLists/Overview

Official Blog Post: Over here on Tech Community

Add to OneDrive – Preview Now

Lets you add folders that have been shared with you to your OneDrive for Business.

No more messing about looking for that link you saved to access the document your working on.

Permissions are kept by the original person sharing it.

More info: Session DB136 @26:15

Demo: Session DB136 @10:30 and @15:45

OneDrive in Depth: http://aka.ms/session/OneDrive/Overview

Tasks – This Calendar year

Integrates ToDo and Planner into the same place.
Create tasks from @mentions in Word, Excel, Powerpoint or Messages in Teams

More info: Session DB136 @24:30

Demo: Session DB136 @10:00, @12:50, @13:45 and @15:45

Tasks in Depth: http://aka.ms/session/tasks/Overview

Project in Teams – End of 2020

Create new Project and Roadmaps directly inside Teams

No need to integrate Project Web as a Browser Tab anymore!

More info: Session DB136 @25:00

Surface Devices

Surface Duo – Teams “Double Landscape” Mode

Teams running in Double Landscape on Surface Duo

Most people know about the new Duo device so I’m not going to go into it too much. Other than I want one, but I love my old phones NFC too much (Guess I’ll have to get a smartwatch then) :P.

Surface Duo Overview: Session DB137 @2:00

But I will say that they show off a cool new feature of the Teams app spliiting content and video across the two screens. Showing the content on the top screen with the meeting participant video down the bottom.

I hope you can switch the content and video, however. As the camera is on the top screen and would make for considerably better eye contact.

Teams Double Landscape Demo: Session DB137 @3:50

Surface Hub

New Surface Hub 85-Inch – Pre Orders Now – Ships Jan 2021

Surface 85 Inch, when size does matter
  • 85 inch 4K screen
  • Same compute card as the 50-inch SurfaceHub 2S
  • New Steelcase Mounts
  • Pre-Order today
  • Specially designed “Curved” package for fitting in elevators
  • $21,999 USD

Surface Hub 85 Inch Overview: DB137 @5:00

Surface Hub – Duals Screen Meetings with Coordinated Meetings Experience – Available Now

Teams Coordinated Meeting Join Demo

When the “primary” device joins the meeting it brings up the whiteboard for colab, but the second appears to join muted. Displaying shared content

This also works with a Teams Meeting room and a Surface Hub, giving the best of both worlds.

Surface Hub Coordinated Meeting Experience Demo: DB137 @11:00 and DB156 @16:30

More info on Coordinated Meetings: Teams August Updates

How to set it up: Docs.Microsoft.com

Windows 10 Team 2020 update – “Next Month”

New Features in Azure AD for Windows 10 Team
  • Comming “Next Month”
  • Free update to Surface Hub 1 and Surface Hub 2s via Windows Update
  • Better Deployment and Manageability
  • Azure AD, Single Sign-on, Conditional Access and non-global admins
  • New MDM policies, FIDO2 security keys

Microsoft shows they are uplifting the software special “Team” version of Windows on the older Surface Hub device to Windows 10 as well as the newer Surface Hub 2S units.

More Info: Session DB137 @16:00
(Note, “Windows 10 Team” is a special hardened version of Windows with minimal features to reduce the attack surface. Think the old Windows Embedded. It’s not a special build for Teams )

Surface Hub 2S with Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise – No Date

a Demo of Windows 10 Pro running on Surface Hub 2S
  • No Date Mentioned
  • Surface Hub 2 only!
  • Lets you use traditional Windows and Store apps with the full GUI including Taskbar etc
  • Turns a Surface Pro into a “PC” lets them use them how they like it
  • Finger Print reader dongle plugs into side camera port for ease of logon
  • In use at today in preview at UNSW,
  • The demo includes Dr Kellerman integrating with Philips Hue to stop the camera washing out and X-Split so he can change scenes
An example of Windows 10 Pro on Surface Hub at UNSW

Windows 10 pro was mentioned in DB137 and the keynote, but no announcements on the release date.

Announcement: Key04 @11:00

Surface Hub with Windows Demo: DB137 @18:30

Next up

We go into all the announcements for Teams Calling and Phones in Part 2

2 thoughts on “My Ignite Teams 2020 Wrap Up – Part 1 – Admin, Collab and Surface

  1. Pingback: My Ignite Teams 2020 Wrap Up - Part 2 - Teams Calling and Phones - UcMadScientist.com

  2. Pingback: My Ignite Teams 2020 Wrap Up - Part 3 - Meetings and Devices - UcMadScientist.com

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