Current changes & information

11/2024: Changing the Teams user interface

All platforms are affected (Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, Web)

A new Teams interface announced by Microsoft will allow a better overview of Microsoft Teams in the future.

This change will be rolled out from November 2024 and is expected to be completed by April 2025. During this period, users will receive a personal notification in the application as soon as the new interface is available and activated for them.

What changes in the user interface?
  • The “Chat” and “Teams” areas are merged into one navigation point “Chat”.
  • Personal chats and active conversations from channels are summarized in a compact view.
  • You can find contacts and channels marked accordingly under Favorites.
  • The filter functionality has been expanded and custom views can be defined. For example, channels and personal chats can be grouped according to topics or projects.
  • The classic view can still be used via the team settings.

(Source: https://www.drwindows.de/news/microsoft-teams-neue-oberflaeche-bringt-alle-unterhaltungen-in-einer-kompaktansicht-zusammen )

07/2024: Uninstall MS Teams on Remote Desktop Service "rds.scc.kit.edu"

The "Microsoft Teams" application will no longer be supported by Microsoft on RDS server in future. The application is therefore uninstalled on the RDS farm of the SCC "rds.scc.kit.edu".
Users used Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to schedule Teams meetings via the Outlook calendar function.
MS Teams can no longer be used on the remote desktop server "rds.scc.kit.edu". This also means that it is no longer possible to schedule a Teams meeting on "rds.scc.kit.edu" via Outlook.
To create MS Teams meetings in the future, users can enter an appointment on their own computer in the MS Teams web application (https://teams.microsoft.com) in their own Exchange calendar.
Instruction: https://www.scc.kit.edu/en/services/ms-teams-tutorials.php#planmeeting

 

03/2024: Planning of meetings via the personal calendar in MS Teams possible

Planning meetings via the personal calendar in MS Teams has been possible since the adjustment of the login names in March 2024. This allows you to schedule an online meeting in MS Teams without Outlook Client. The AddIn for Microsoft Outlook is therefore no longer required.

How to set up a Teams meeting in your personal calendar in the KIT mailbox.
  • Go to your "Calendar" in MS Teams
    • You can find this in the left navigation bar under [...] 
      -> enter "Calendar" via the search function
    • Sie sollten damit Ihren persönlichen Exchange-Kalender sehen 
  • There you create a new Teams meeting using the "+New meeting" button, specifying all meeting options
  • Save the meeting
  • Participants and organizers receive an invitation with a corresponding meeting link and can participate in the planned meeting via this link.

11/2023: Activation of live subtitles in Teams

To increase accessibility in Teams, the function for displaying live subtitles at KIT has now been released. In mid-November 2023, this function will be activated for both clients (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (employees, GuP) and student.kit.edu (students)).

After activation, people participating in a meeting via Teams will be able to view the live caption at any time. The displayed text is not saved and is therefore no longer available after the meeting has ended.

Information and brief explanations of the "Live captioning" function can be found in the service description for MS Teams at KIT under the tutorials - https://www.scc.kit.edu/en/services/ms-teams-tutorials.php

08/2023: A new Version of Teams is coming

The new Teams version will be rolled out from September 2023. There is no defined date when your own team will appear in a new design.

08/2023: Activation of the recording function - recording of meetings possible

Employees and students have the opportunity to record meetings at KIT in MS Teams, subject to the legal requirements.

Please note

Attention.
The recording function is only possible in a meeting that has been started in a team. Moreover, only owners and members of a team have the right to start or stop recording. Guests and persons from other organizations are not authorized to do so.

08/2023: Disabling of WIKI function by Microsoft - migration necessary

Microsoft has discontinued WIKIs in MS Teams at the end of 2023. As of January 2024, access to MS Teams wikis will be removed altogether.

WIKI pages in MS Teams will no longer be accessible and therefore unavailable as of January 2024. Already now, creating new WIKIs in MS Teams is no longer possible. The alternative solution offered by Microsoft to WIKI pages are the OneNote notebooks.

Measures by owners of affected teams
WIKIs in MS Teams should already be migrated to OneNote, Microsoft provides information on how to export a wiki to a OneNote notebook. It may still be necessary to do some rework in "OneNote" after this migration. Early planning of the migrations is recommended accordingly.

Note
Please do not confuse here the discontinued WIKI in MS Teams (Teams Wiki files) with the wiki pages of the KIT team pages at team.kit.edu (SharePoint Wiki). The SharePoint wiki is not affected by Microsoft's discontinuation and is based on a completely different storage format. A migration of Teams-Wiki files to SharePoint-Wiki would only be possible manually via copy/paste due to these different storage formats and is not recommended by us. REASON Microsoft has discontinued WIKIs in MS Teams at the end of 2023. As of January 2024, access to MS Teams wikis will be removed altogether.

07/2023: Available: Inviting an external guest to one's own team at KIT
The owner of a team can invite external guests to join it. A description can be found at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-guests-to-a-team-in-microsoft-teams-fccb4fa6-f864-4508-bdde-256e7384a14f.
What do you need to know in advance?
  • You only need the mail address/the MS account of the external person with whom he/she is "travelling" in the M365 environment. 
The article does describe that you should adjust the display name, but this is automatically adjusted again as soon as the guest has accepted the invitation.
To add to a team, select the displayed user name, confirm it with ADD and close the window.
Now the guest account is created in the background, the invitee receives an invitation by mail, via which the invitation must be accepted
Organisational arrangement: At KIT, such an external guest account is deleted without further enquiry as soon as:
  • the guest account is no longer a member of any team, or
  • the last login with the guest account took place more than 180 days ago 

09/2021: Default chat responses

Mobile Teams clients have recently added the ability to use standard responses in chat.

Example:

To the question: "Shall we have lunch together?" the answers "Can we" - "Yes" - "Yes, absolutely" are offered as a small additional menu.

This option is only offered for chats in the own client (in our case in the client "Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)").

You can turn this off in the following way:

Open Teams on the mobile device

Go to settings via the round icon next to "Chat".

Then select Messages

In the following window this functionality can be switched off.

02/2021: Voicemail usage disabled

For data protection reasons, the VoiceMails function as well as its transcription has been switched off. (02.02.2021)