Microsoft 365 Roadmap Weekly: Teams will add a way to archive channels and more

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It's Sunday, so its time to look back at what the Microsoft 365 Roadmap added to its ever growing list of upcoming features for its services. We've already reported that the roadmap showed Microsoft Teams will be adding a way to create custom backgrounds for channel announcements sometime in November, but that's not the only major thing the roadmap revealed this past week.

Microsoft Teams - Archive old channels and more

Microsoft Teams had quite a few new entries on the roadmap this week. One of them will roll out in December and will give web and desktop users a way to save some unused content.

With Archive Channels, owners and administrators can archive channels that are no longer in use while preserving their content, including messages, files, and tabs. The archived channel is removed from the active teams and channels list and no more actions will be allowed. If needed, the channel can be restored.

Another new Teams feature coming in December for Windows and Mac users will give frontline managers some extra features:

In the Shifts app, we are rolling out the ability for frontline manager to control additional functionalities through our Shifts settings page. Frontline managers will gain the ability to enable and disable swap shift request, offer shift request and/or time off requests for their teams.

In February 2024, Microsoft Teams will be replacing its current "Recording & Transcription" tab on Windows, Mac, and the web:

Now, the “Recap” tab for scheduled meetings will include access to the recording and transcript. For meetings that have a “Recap” tab, the previous “Recording & Transcription” tab will be removed since the “Recap” tab will replace it. For meetings that don’t have a “Recap” tab, users can continue to access the recording and transcript from the “Recording & Transcription” tab.

Teams will also roll out a user interface update to its in-call user experience in December for its iOS and Android apps.

Microsoft Outlook - Sort emails by category and more

The Microsoft 365 roadmap states that in December, Outlook users on the web and desktop will gain new email sorting features:

This feature allows users to sort their emails by categories in inbox and other folders. It will help users stay focused and organized by allowing them to group related emails together directly in the message list. This update will be available in the new Outlook for Windows and web.

Later this month, Outlook web users will get a new feature related to Teams: