No Teams admin, no worries. You can start annotations soon

Here’s some good news for you. Teams, Microsoft’s popular communication and collaboration platform, has announced an exciting update that empowers all meeting participants to start collaborative annotations. 

This feature, recently added to the Microsoft Teams roadmap under Feature ID 89975, aims to enhance engagement and foster collaboration for users across various industries and organizations.

So, in short, now, everyone can initiate collaborative annotations during meetings.

When the annotation feature first arrived in preview, the exclusive power to initiate annotations in Teams meetings lies solely with the presenter, potentially impeding collaboration.

Moreover, the presenter needs to know how to share their entire desktop instead of a single window, along with enabling collaborative cursors.

Plus, the capability to start annotations—powered by Microsoft Whiteboard—is limited to Windows and Mac desktop users, excluding web users, at that time.

When will collaborative annotations in Teams meetings be available to everyone?

The rollout of this highly anticipated feature is scheduled to commence in July 2023, starting with a targeted release for the entire organization.

This phased approach allows Microsoft Teams to gather valuable feedback and insights from users, ensuring a smooth transition to general availability.

To ensure inclusivity and accessibility, this feature will be available across multiple cloud instances, including DoD, GCC High, GCC, and Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant). Furthermore, participants can leverage collaborative annotations on both Mac and desktop platforms.

Speaking of Teams, we’re also thrilled to cover the highly anticipated new generation of the collaboration app. Referred to as Teams 2.0, Microsoft assures users that this updated version will deliver significantly improved speed and resource efficiency.

The new app is currently in the preview release phase and some insiders have begun seeing the Try the new Teams toggle in the upper-left corner of their screen.

What do you think about the potential rollout of this feature that lets you start collaborative annotations in Teams meetings? Let us know in the comments!