Microsoft Teams will now let your whole team get involved on improving a document — whether you want them to or not

Getting your whole team involved in the collaboration experience on Microsoft Teams is set to soon be a lot easier thanks to a new upgrade.

The video conferencing platform has revealed it is working on a feature that will allow all participants in a meeting to start collaborating and making notes.

The change should indeed help boost collaboration and productivity, but could also lead to a bit of a free-for-all, particularly if you are involved in a big group that decides to suddenly go all-in on a certain document or presentation.

Microsoft Teams collaboration

The entry on the official Microsoft 365 roadmap is rather brief, giving little away about the feature or how exactly it will work, simply stating, "all participants in meetings are now able to start collaborative annotations".

The feature will be available on Windows desktop and Mac devices, to users across the world, and has an expected rollout start of December 2024 - although it is still listed as being "in development", so this may yet change.

However the roadmap post does not the feature will only be available "in the new Microsoft Teams experience". We're assuming this means the premium version of the platform, which is available to users paying a fee.

Released in February 2023 and costing $7 / £5.80 per user per month, Microsoft Teams Premium offers a more personal experience due to a selection of AI-boosted plugins and features powered by GPT 3.5, the AI language model developed by OpenAI, which is able to automate certain mundane tasks surrounding meetings as part of its “intelligent recap” feature.

The company recently confirmed the rollout of a single desktop app to bring together "every type of Teams account", meaning whether on a work, school or personal Microsoft Teams account, users will now all access the same app, doing away with the current requirement for multiple versions for different use cases.

The news is the latest bid by Microsoft to help boost collaboration across the platform. The company recently announced a "huddles" allowing users to quickly start a group chat or instant meeting for chat and collaboration. The new "meet now" feature can be quickly started in a group chat, meaning there's no need to scramble around setting up an "official" Microsoft Teams call and sending out invites that may be missed in busy inboxes.

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