Microsoft Teams has been getting a lot of love lately, not only in EDU (which has gotten a lot of my attention lately), so let me introduce you to some of the recent new features available across most Office 365 SKUs.

Firstline workers can be retail associates, flight crew members, field service workers or in healthcare, often only on mobile, in a busy environment but needing to stay in the know.

With the needs of firstline workers in mind, Microsoft recently announced a customizable mobile Teams experience, where the end user or IT can choose what apps should be easily available, by pinning them to the navigation bar.

In the above screenshot you can see that channel activities are also available from within Chat, you can choose to enable this new unified chat and channels experience in Settings – General – Show channels in chat list.

If you need to quickly share your location you can now do that from within a chat, just hit the ellipsis (…) followed by Location, a map pops up, zooms in on your location and you get the option to share.

Pro tip! A little mic icon in the lower right will allow you to record and send a voice message.

Another exiting feature is the addition of a module trey with easy access to things like the organization view and files, but also things like Expenses, which to me looks like an integrated line of business app. All of this builds on the idea of Teams as a platform, where you get quick access to your most important everyday tools, to avoid context switching and navigating through multiple platforms.

You can read more about these new features made for firstline workers here, as well as how you can integrate your workforce management systems with new Graph APIs for Shifts, so that your employees can view and manage their schedule right from within Teams…

…and Praise, which is a new tool inside Teams, to keep your colleagues engaged and motivated giving kudos and recognition for their hard work.

That’s it for now, make sure to follow my blog for the latest on Microsoft Teams, and if you have something to add or a topic you would like me to cover, please leave a comment below.