Companies and employees are discovering that remote work is not just possible—it may even be preferable. A whopping 52% of people say they are considering shifting to hybrid or remote work this year, and remote and hybrid jobs are the most popular among applicants—they garner 2.6 times more views and 3 times more applications than on-site positions.

Clearly, hybrid work is here to stay. Anticipating this change early on, many updates to Microsoft 365, including in Teams, have been geared toward facilitating successful hybrid work. Let’s look at some of the newest and upcoming features that will make a big difference in your hybrid workplace.

New features have been added to Microsoft Teams to make everyday communication and collaboration a breeze. Enhancements have been made to core functions like meetings, calling, sharing media during calls, as well as adding new certified devices, and more. Here is a roundup of some of the best new features in Microsoft Teams.

Dynamics 365 Sales makes sales-focused CRM easy, and organizations can expect even better features with updates that refresh the user experience and maximize efficiency. More AI capabilities will allow sellers to work smarter and prioritize the most gainful activities while keeping track of critical information for each lead.

Microsoft will begin rolling out a robust update to the Dynamics 365 suite later this year, and Dynamics 365 Sales in particular will see quite a few improvements. The improvements were created based on customer feedback, so users can look forward to a highly optimized app experience.

Businesses and employees have needed to embrace a “new normal” workplace reality, and it’s crucial that remote, asynchronous, and hybrid work options can keep up with expectations. One thing has been clear – innovation and growth mindsets are key factors in successfully getting things done together, even while working apart.

Microsoft Teams provides an all-in-one collaboration solution for environments returning in-person, embracing remote work, and everything in between. The best features of the Microsoft Teams desktop app have been optimized into a mobile app for iOS and Android, letting users talk with anyone, anywhere — without missing out on the capabilities of the desktop version.

After the forced pivot to remote work due to the pandemic, companies have learned an important lesson: working from home can be effective and productive. Though the quick and easy option for a “return to work” plan might be reverting to business-as-usual pre-pandemic, innovative and growth-minded companies will want to embrace those lessons brought about by remote work. This means establishing hybrid workplace policies, which 80% of managers expect to implement and 70% of employees plan to use.

Microsoft 365 contains a wide range of business productivity applications that are used on a daily basis by millions of users. With this array of applications, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s new for the suite and how users can make the most of them. April had several new features added with more coming up soon. In this blog we’ll cover some of highlights Microsoft 365 users can look forward to using.

Over two years ago, Microsoft announced that Skype for Business Online would be retired on July 31, 2021. Now that we are a mere three months from that date, Microsoft is providing more details and information for moving existing Skype for Business customers to Microsoft Teams. It’s important to note that the retirement of Skype for Business Online does not affect the Skype consumer service or Skype for Business Server. These services will continue to operate as normal.

With many organizations still operating in a work from home environment, digital communication is integral to maintaining on the same page. In a recent update to Microsoft 365, there are new ways for team members to interact and improve that sense of comradery that is often missed is a digital setting. Let’s walk through three ways Microsoft 365 apps are now integrated into Microsoft Teams to help employees stay connected.

Microsoft Teams stands tall not only as an effective method for businesses to facilitate internal communications, but also as a way for them to collaborate on their work. Teams allows for seamless collaboration in a variety of applications, especially with other Microsoft applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and SharePoint.

Teams has an integration to work with Dynamics 365 applications such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamics 365 Marketing. This integration is receiving some new features as part of the 2021 Dynamics 365 Release Wave 1. They’re expected to be coming with the first part of the release wave next month.

If your organization already uses Microsoft Teams for internal or external communication, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft continues to release monthly updates for the application that greatly advance the collaboration capabilities. If you haven’t used Teams before, it is included in most Microsoft 365 packages and integrates with the Office storage applications like SharePoint and traditional Office applications like Word and Excel. We’ve put together a list of the latest updates to Microsoft Teams that will encourage collaboration among your staff.

Back in August, Microsoft announced the official end of support for Internet Explorer coming in late 2021. This announcement also included a slew of end-of-support dates for Microsoft 365 application support of Internet Explorer. As of November 30, 2020, Microsoft Teams no longer supports Internet Explorer 11.

For salespeople in the field that spend most of their time on the road, it can be difficult to find the time to make sure their CRM data is up to date. Frankly, it is difficult to use most CRM applications on the road. The latest release of Dynamics 365 Sales expands the mobile experience to help salespeople to quickly access and update customer information on the go.

In the work-from-home era, companies like professional service organizations have been forced to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Engaging with audiences without in-person interactions can seem like a daunting task. However, applications like Dynamics 365 Marketing do the work to help companies keep their customers engaged.

Microsoft Lists, a recently released Microsoft 365 productivity application, has proven to be a catalyst to help companies organize and track tasks. On its own, Microsoft Lists allows users to create and share lists with members of their organization to view, edit, and complete within the app - even on mobile. However, where it really shines is in its integration with Microsoft Teams.

Since Microsoft originally released Microsoft Teams as a successor to Skype for Business, they have been consistently improving the application with regular updates designed to make communication and collaboration easier for organizations of all sizes. With the recent situation surrounding COVID-19, many organizations have begun to rely more heavily on Microsoft Teams to help their staff communicate and collaborate while working remotely.

We’ve put together a few of the most beneficial features Microsoft Teams has to offer to organizations looking to take advantage of the communication app in a more effective way.

Microsoft Teams gives users the ability to record their meetings. Recording meetings can be useful for training sessions or webinars that you want to reuse in the future. When a meeting is recorded in Microsoft Teams, it is automatically uploaded to Microsoft Stream, the default video player application in Microsoft 365. It is very easy to share videos uploaded to Microsoft Stream with members of your organization, but there is currently no way to share videos in Microsoft Stream with external users. So what should you do if you need to share a recorded Teams meeting with someone outside of your organization? This blog will go through the easiest workaround.

Smaller retailers like hair salons, auto repair shops, boutiques, and other small to midsize retailers who don’t have dedicated teams to implement advanced COVID-19 response operations can utilize appointment booking software like Microsoft Bookings to safely open their business to their customers.

Within Microsoft Teams, Teams are the highest level of organizations for groups of users. Teams can be used to communicate with groups of people, store relevant group files, or even just post notifications. Typically we see Teams be created for departments, project teams, specific office location staff, or group interests, but Teams can be created for just about any group type.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and its subsequent spread around the world, many companies and employees are taking the responsible step to have employees work from home to combat further spread of the virus, a concept known as social distancing. Companies of all sizes may struggle to adequately prepare staff to work remotely full-time. They may not have the equipment or the tools to access work resources remotely.

Microsoft has announced that it is offering 6 months of free licensing for certain cloud applications to help organizations respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Licenses available with this offer include Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Apps portals, and Power Virtual Agents. This announcement follows a previous offer for six months of free Microsoft Teams licensing for organizations who have not already implemented Office 365.