Throughout Microsoft’s Ignite 2023 occasion, the corporate’s annual IT professional convention, a slew of attention-grabbing updates have been revealed for Groups, its Slack-like collaboration and messaging service.
Among the many dozens of updates right here, a number of the highlights are the preliminary rollout of voice isolation, an AI-driven noise discount characteristic that may not simply scale back repetitive noise within the background but additionally different folks’s voices, and a brand new “enhance your background” characteristic that may take a look at the room you’re working from after which improve it by cleansing up litter or including vegetation to the wall.
Picture Credit: Microsoft
“Adorn your background” will certainly steal the headlines. Customers, it appears, will have the ability to select several types of enhancements to their work environments, however the true promise right here is that you just’ll by no means have to wash your house workplace once more (till someone invitations you to a Google Meet or Slack name, in fact).
The voice isolation characteristic is rolling out now and might be usually accessible in early 2024, whereas “enhance your background” might be accessible early subsequent yr in Groups Premium.
In the meantime, Microsoft additionally introduced that immersive areas in Groups, a remnant of the metaverse hype of 2021, might be usually accessible in January, permitting customers to create avatars to attend these conferences inside varied 3D environments and play interactive video games, roast digital marshmallows and throw beanbags (sure, these are issues Microsoft particularly mentions in its announcement).
Microsoft Mesh, its device for creating these immersive areas, may even be usually accessible in January.
You’ll hopefully by no means have to make use of any of this.
Among the extra helpful new options, although, are customizable emoji reactions, the flexibility to ahead chats, create a gaggle chat profile image and add a non-public second telephone quantity for a choose set of callers. There are additionally new keyboard shortcuts (Alt+Shift+D to set your standing to Do Not Disturb, for instance) and a few new instruments for IT to handle groups extra successfully.
Earlier this yr, Microsoft launched a re-architected Groups app for Home windows and Mac. Now, the online expertise on Edge and Chrome will acquire a few of these benefits, too, with Microsoft promising to double the efficiency whereas utilizing 50% much less reminiscence.
For extra Microsoft Ignite 2023 protection:
This story was initially revealed at 8am PT on Nov. 15 and up to date at 3:10pm PT.