As Microsoft Teams becomes more and more popular, Microsoft continues to push out new features to the user experience. First noted by Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, the company is now planning on adding a new Walkie Talkie feature, and many other new capabilities for the first line workers that use Microsoft Teams.
According to Microsoft, the Walkie Talkie feature will function just as you expect, with “push-to-talk” capabilities, and will be coming as a private preview in the first half of this year. Once available, it will be native and located right inside the Teams app used by a company’s employees. Apparently, it will be added as a new button in the bottom bar of Microsoft Teams on iOS and Android apps.
Microsoft also says users will be able to “experience enables clear, instant, and secure voice communication over the cloud,” when using it. This means the feature appears to be more secure when compared to traditonal walkie talkies, as it happens over WiiFi and cellular data. Users won’t experience crosstalk or be subject to eavesdropping from outsiders.
The new Walkie Talkie feature element is one of the 8 ways Microsoft wants to “empower Firstline Workers and transform the way they work with Microsoft 365.” The company describes some other incoming features for Teams in its blog post, which includes Tasks in Teams, Workforce management integrations, SMS sign in, shared device sign-out, and off-shift access controls for Teams. We talked about all these features in our featured post which looks at where Teams is heading.
