Microsoft Teams To Have Cortana Integration, Other Features

San Francisco: With Microsoft Teams completing one year this week, the company is set to unveil new features, including Cortana integration and inline message translation for Teams -- the company's answer to business communication service rival Slack.

Microsoft Teams is a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. The service integrates with the company's Office 365 subscription office productivity suite, including Microsoft Office and Skype, and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products.

Cortana is a virtual assistant created by Microsoft for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, Invokesmart speaker, Microsoft Band, Xbox One, iOS, Android, Windows Mixed Reality, and soon Amazon Alexa. Microsoft has integrated Cortana into numerous products such as Microsoft Edge, the browser bundled with Windows 10.

It can set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for keyboard input, and answer questions using information from the Bing search engine. It has been launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of the future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows.

"This week marks the first anniversary of the worldwide launch of Microsoft Teams. Today, 2,00,000 organisations in 181 markets and 39 languages use Teams," Microsoft wrote in a blog post late on Monday. The added integration with Cortana's digital voice assistance could give Microsoft an edge in its battle with Slack as the importance of voice-based computing in the workplace and within business productivity applications grows. "Will enable you to easily make a call, join a meeting, or add other people to a meeting in Teams using spoken, natural language. This functionality will extend to IP phones and conference room devices," the company added.

Other features that would be rolled out throughout the year include Cloud recording, background blur on video, proximity detection for Teams Meetings and mobile sharing in meetings. Inline message translation would allow Microsoft Teams participants to automatically translate messages in channels and chat messages.

(With inputs from IANS)