Everything new in Microsoft Teams announced at Build 2021

By Arif Bacchus Published May 26, 2021

Microsoft Teams is usually a big highlight at Microsoft’s Build developer conference, and that was the case again this year. There were several key updates announced for Teams that should be rolling out through the rest of 2021, mainly for developers.

Following the launch of Teams apps for meetings last year, Microsoft is following up to give developers more opportunities in this area. Developers are now able to build apps for the main stage in the meeting.

Recommended Videos

For you, this means more in-meeting experiences such as whiteboard apps and project board apps. Developers can also use new meeting event APIs in Teams to automate meeting-related workflows.

Other changes include the ability for developers to create new Together mode scenes. There’s also the ability for developers to have real-time access to video streams for transcription, translation, note-taking, insight gathering, and more.

Microsoft

As for the actual app-building process, Microsoft is now rolling out a dedicated app-management console (now known as the Developer portal for Microsoft Teams) that’s available via the web or within Teams. This is for developers to register and configure apps within a single, central location.

Other developer-related changes rolling out to Teams include new support for Message extensions in Outlook on the Web. This makes it easier for developers to code one extension that works across and pulls info from Outlook. Then, there’s the Adaptive Cad support in Teams and Outlook, which allows developers to easily share user interface data across both Microsoft services.

Microsoft

Finally, there are Fluid components in Microsoft Teams chat. With this developer feature, users can send a message with a table, action items, or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line, minimizing the need for long chat threads and meetings.

Some other changes rolling out include the ability to purchase third-party app license subscriptions directly from the Microsoft Teams app store and Teams admincenter. Microsoft even updated the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code in preview, so less code is needed to build Teams apps.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…

Computing

Microsoft’s Copilot app has a new icon, and it’s causing problems

Copilot on a laptop on a desk.

Bad news if you have a PC with a low resolution since Microsoft's new Copilot app icon is almost impossible to decipher on them, according to Windows Central. Microsoft's new logo now includes a bit of text embedded in the icon, which, depending on the resolution of your screen, might be impossible to read.

The poor design has not gone unnoticed online. Users can barely read the icon on their screens when they pin it to the Taskbar, and the lower pixel density makes it even harder to read the icon's text. If you have a Surface Laptop Go, which has a very low resolution display, there is a good chance you had no idea it said "M365." When you first saw it, you may have confused it with text such as MJEG, M366, or M355.

Computing

Microsoft Outlook has a new ‘critical’ flaw that spreads malware easily

Outlook running on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 cover screen.

In a security alert, Microsft warned users how easy it is for hackers to distribute malware using their Outlook email client. Microsoft has already released a patch for the CVE-2025-21298 user-after-free vulnerability and urges users to apply it immediately.

Microsoft gave the vulnerability a severity score of 9.8 (critical) since it uses freed memory and corrupts valid data, or parcels out malware remotely. This bug is in the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLED) function, allowing you to embed and link to documents and other objects, such as adding an Excel chart to a Word document. It's so dangerous that you can become infected by previewing the specially crafted email.

Computing

Microsoft introduces new ‘pay-as-you-go’ AI agents

microsoft copilot introduce ai agents free enterprise subscription tier m365 465350 blog 250110 1 1260

Microsoft will begin offering access to AI agents — specialized generative models that can operate independently and automate repetitive daily tasks — to enterprise users. The new program is called Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and offers "pay-as-you-go agents to our existing free chat experience for Microsoft 365 commercial customers," the company announced Wednesday.

The "free plus metered agent usage" Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat offers many of the same features as the existing $30 per user per month "Microsoft 365 Copilot" enterprise program, including access to a chatbot powered by GPT-4o, Copilot Pages, file uploads, image and code generation, enterprise data protection, and, of course, to Copilot Studio, where individual users and IT departments alike can create AI agents. Note, however, that the free Chat program does not grant you access to the Copilot personal assistant, which integrates the AI's capabilities into the rest of the 365 Copilot app ecosystem such as Word, Outlook, and Excel.