Skip to main content

This new Microsoft Teams feature is like Snapchat for your office chats

Microsoft Teams is getting a new Snapchat-like feature called “Video Clip.” The new feature lets you record, send, and view short videos through Microsoft Teams, and deliver your message at a tap of a button.

Messages can also be played back at convenience.

The video clip feature in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft

Announced during Microsoft’s annual Inspire conference, Video Clip builds on existing features like Front Row and Together Mode and is designed to help make hybrid work a bit more immersive. Or, as Microsoft puts it, help people work “synchronously, and asynchronously.” Basically, that means they are designed to make your chats more immersive, since you’ll be seeing the person at the other end of the message, instead of just reading messages.

Microsoft wasn’t clear on when Video Clip will roll out to Teams, but it provided us with a demo showing the feature in action. When the feature is ready for you, you’ll be able to click a new video camera icon at the bottom of a one-to-one chat to open up your camera in Teams. You can then press a record button. Messages in the demo have a one-minute limit, and you can then click a “Review” button to playback or edit parts of the message before sending it out.

But that’s just one thing that is coming to Microsoft Teams. Microsoft is also working on Excel Live. This builds on Live Share in Teams, which was previously announced at the company’s Build Developer Conference. Excel Live lets people collaborate on workbooks in real-time during Teams meetings.

Introducing Storyline

Microsoft Inspire also saw the expansion of Microsoft Viva with Viva Engage, a new app in Teams to help build community and connection. It brings consumer-like social networking to the workplace to help spark engagement. Microsoft Storyline and Stories fits in with that, letting you share experiences, celebrate milestones, and follow your favorite colleagues.

Rounding out the list of Teams features announced during Inspire is Collaborative Annotations. This feature will let all meeting participants draw, type, and react on top of content shared in a meeting. This feature is already generally available, as it is powered by Microsoft Whiteboard.

Arif Bacchus
Arif Bacchus is a native New Yorker and a fan of all things technology. Arif works as a freelance writer at Digital Trends…
Microsoft to finally fix everyone’s biggest complaint about Teams
Microsoft said that Teams has received a ground-up redesign, which will “empower customers to navigate the challenges of the evolving modern workplace.”

Microsoft Teams is reportedly testing a new design that merges the app's channels and text chat into one user interface, a lot like Slack. This could potentially streamline text communication for organizations and businesses, as The Verge's Tom Warren mentioned in his Notebook newsletter post.

The newsletter mentioned that Microsoft is currently testing a change combining the text chat and channels into one UI. An internal Microsoft message said: "Our new experience brings chats and channels together to get you to what matters faster."

Read more
Update your Chrome browser now to gain this critical security feature
Google Chrome icon in mac dock.

Yesterday, in a blog post on Google's security blog, Willian Harris from Chrome's Security Team said that Google is improving the security of Chrome cookies on Windows PCs by adopting a similar method used in macOS to help protect users from info-stealing malware.

The security update addresses session cookies that authenticate your identity when you switch apps without logging back in. Google wants to adopt the security system used by Keychain on macOS and start using "a new protection on Windows," which updates Data Protection API (DPAPI) and brings a new security tool called "application-bound" encryption.

Read more
What is Microsoft 365? Here’s the cloud software suite, explained
Microsoft Office free apps.

Microsoft 365 is the brand’s suite of cloud-based productivity apps that can be used for word processing, group collaboration, data analysis, presentation development, storage, and email. Many may be familiar with Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive as separate applications at one point; however, many high-performance users may utilize more than one of these programs for work, hobbies, or their everyday lives.

This could serve as a reason to consider Microsoft 365, to get more comprehensive access to the brand’s app library. Here is a look at what you need to know about the Microsoft 365 productivity suite.
Microsoft 365 paid subscriptions 

Read more