Microsoft Teams adds a bunch of powerful new features to boost your productivity

Although Microsoft Teams is a widely popular communication tool in businesses and organizations, many of us at XDA have a strong opinion against it, primarily due to its resource-hogging nature, which leads to performance issues. On the brighter side, however, Microsoft is hard at work improving it across different platforms by either adding new features or improving what's already available.

Microsoft's latest attempt to enhance the overall Teams experience comes in the form of a slew of new features and some notable improvements to existing functionalities. The software giant has also claimed that all its newly introduced features are designed to boost everyone's productivity. And what's also exciting for Teams users is that all these features are now available in public preview.

What new features is Microsoft Teams getting?

As announced by Microsoft in its official Techcommunity blog post, three major changes for Teams are a new threads feature, multiple emoji reactions, something we first reported Microsoft is working on, and what the company calls "emoji-triggered workflows." It also announced improvements to the Slash commands capability and a keyboard feature that brings more customization to Teams.

The threads feature is for the channel section of the app, and it works as you'd expect. It'll let you reply directly to specific messages, which, in turn, makes it easier to track related conversations. Not only that, but Teams now also has a "Followed threads" view that lets you see all your followed conversations in a single place, eliminating the pain of visiting different channels to access your threads. You'll have to follow a thread before the conversation appears in the Followed threads section of the app, and then unfollow when you're done.

Moreover, Teams now requires you to choose a layout between "Threads" and "Posts" when creating channels. If you select the Threads layout, it'll show chat with replies on the side on the side in threads, while the Posts option reorders by most recent reply. Apps, Bots, Channel meetings, and 'meet now' are supported in the threads layout. All of this is currently available in Teams channels as public preview for desktop and mobile users.

Another major change Microsoft introduced to Teams is the ability to use emoji reactions to start automated workflows. As highlighted by Microsoft, one of the use cases of this is reacting with an exclamation emoji to escalate a support issue. You'll be able to use this feature to 'automate DevOps, incident response, team collaboration, and more with the Workflows app.'

Additionally, Teams' Slash commands feature also gained support for "multi-step inputs," which now allows you to use it for searching for a GIF or jumping directly to a channel without leaving a chat. Lastly, Teams also lets you customize your keyboard shortcuts, so you can now set shortcuts that you're most comfortable with to complete a specific action. This is also available in public preview.