Microsoft 365 Roadmap Weekly: Teams will add a hub for all teams and channels in October

Welcome back to our regular weekly look back at the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website, highlighting new entries that have been added in the past seven days.

A few weeks ago, The Verge's Tom Warren reported that Microsoft was working on some user interface changes for Microsoft Teams that would combine both its text chat and channels with a new UI design. This week, the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site added a new entry that seems to suggest something similar to what Warren reported would be added to the desktop version in October:

A new ‘your teams and channels’ view provides you with a centralized hub where you can see all your teams and navigate to their channels from one page. This interface streamlines your workflows, enabling you to quickly access and manage your teams and channels.

The roadmap website also indicates there will be a number of improvements to the Mesh virtual meeting feature for Teams users in October. One of them, for the desktop and Mac platforms, will add Teams chat in Mesh events:

Participants in Mesh events on PC and Mac can use Teams chat to communicate with all participants, across all rooms, within a Mesh event. Users can do this in the Microsoft Mesh PC app, the Mesh app in Teams, as well as in the chat message list of the Teams app.

Another Mesh feature coming to the desktop and Mac versions of Teams in October will improve interactions in multi-room Mesh meetings:

Mesh event attendees can now see raised hands and reactions from attendees in other rooms during large, multi-room Mesh events. This creates a greater sense of audience feedback as a whole across all rooms in a Mesh event and increases total audience engagement.

There are also some new audio features coming to Mesh for Teams in October.

Spatial audio in Mesh provides a realistic recreation of how sound moves in the real world, with the volume of people speaking or media playing getting lower of as you move away from the source of the sound. The introduction of audio zones enables creators to craft custom audio experiences for the intended use of a space with features such as extended audio drop off distances for conversations that happen in a large area, or restricting what audio can enter a given area, to allow smaller groups to have lively conversations without disrupting their neighbors.

In November, Mesh users in Teams for desktop, Mac, and Android platforms will add Microsoft Whiteboard support:

Mesh event participants can now use Microsoft Whiteboard in Mesh 3D environments. This functionality will enable users to collaborate spatially as avatars on a 2D whiteboard present in the virtual space, available on PC and Meta Quest devices. Mesh event attendees can use inking, annotation, and other built-in tools to brainstorm, plan, and share with others on a digital canvas in real time. Copilot integration with Whiteboard helps suggest and organize ideas directly on your canvas while in Mesh.

Getting away from Teams and Mesh entries, the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site also revealed that Copilot in Microsoft 365 will add prompt suggestions in Copilot chat in September, along with image generation as well.

Finally, the new Outlook for Windows and the web will add a feature in October that will add an "always on" function. This will let users see who is in the office based on their work hours and location.

That's it for our weekly look at the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. We will be back next Sunday to look at the new entries on the site.

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