Microsoft announced the Teams Premium add-on for $10 per user per month in October and is now ready to test some of the additional features with commercial customers. The Teams Premium add-on includes features that should benefit all kinds of meeting participants and organizers – whether they’re on 1-on-1s, virtual appointments, or town halls, and webinars. As per the original plan, Teams Premium features begin to roll out in December as part of this preview. General availability is scheduled for February 2023. Also: Meetings in the metaverse: Our experience with HTC Vive Sync Teams Premium offers branding across meetings, organization backgrounds, and organization together mode scenes. The AI features include live translation of captions and recap features, such as autogenerated chapters. There are also AI-suggested action items, and insights to catch up on missed meetings. On the security side, Premium offers end-to-end encryption for meetings, watermarks and sensitivity labels for meetings, with options to prevent copy and pastes of a meeting chat and control over who can record a meeting. For webinars, Teams Premium offers a registration waitlist and manual approval. It also offers a pre-event virtual green room for presenters that’s isolated from attendees. Presenter can ensure attendees only see shared content and participants brought on-screen. For end-to-end virtual appointments, Teams Premium features text reminders, custom-branded virtual appointments, and a Virtual Appointment dashboard to view schedules, queues and analysts to oversee no-shows and wait times. Interested customers can sign up here to Microsoft’s Teams Premium preview. When GA is reached in February 2023, customers with existing Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licenses can purchase Teams Premium as an add-on to their existing Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft notes features in intelligent recap will begin rolling out in the first half of 2023. Microsoft has published a lengthy blog explaining how each of the Premium features works for participants, meeting hosts, and Teams admins. Also: Is Microsoft really going to cut off security updates for your ‘unsupported’ Windows 11 PC? Custom branding is coming to the preview in January and allows organizations to customize their meeting pre-join, lobby, and in-meeting experience with their logo and brand imagery. Microsoft officials explained in November that Live translated captions will be temporarily available for all customers until February 2023, after which it will require a Microsoft Teams Premium license. But the license appears to be tied to the meeting organizer. “If an organizer has Teams Premium, all meeting attendees can enjoy live translated captions,” Microsoft’s Holly Lehman noted in a blogpost. Live translated captions is “temporarily available for all customers”, but after February 2023 it will require a Microsoft Teams Premium license. But the license appears to be tied to the meeting organizer. “If an organizer has Teams Premium, all meeting attendees can enjoy live translated captions,” Microsoft’s Holly Lehman notes in a blogpost.
