Despite a relatively spotless earnings report where the company, by all accounts, beat its own expected guidance, Slack saw a post-market trading slide in its stock of almost 16%.

However, a new multi-year deal with Amazon may do wonders to help regain investor confidence while also better positioning the company to take on its emerging rival in Microsoft Teams.

According to a report from The Verge, Slack has chosen to partner with Amazon to roll out its communications platform to an undisclosed percentage of the company’s 840,000 employees. On the backend of the Amazon and Slack deal is that the latter will adopt the former’s Chime platform for its video conferencing feature set, along with the internal adoption of more AWS services for the company.

Slack has been a long time customer of AWS for various cloud services related to chat and the move seems only logical given the nature of industries the Amazon and Slack preoccupy. In addition to adopting Chime, Slack will also leverage its Amazon partnership for analytics, machine learning, compute, storage, AI, security, and scale for the foreseeable future.

Underscoring the entire deal is Slack’s newfound ability to address the elephant in the room, Microsoft, more directly. While Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield took a more tribalistic stance in proselytizing that Microsoft is “unhealthily preoccupied with killing” the company, vice president of Slack, Brad Armstrong took a more business-minded approach to discuss why adopting Chime allows Slack to ratify its mobile video conferencing features the platform arguably lacked in comparison to Microsoft Teams.

For now, we’re just focused on shoring up the back end. As Chime has additional features, we’re looking at bringing the mobile experience to include video, which it doesn’t today. We’re also looking at transcription.

Earlier today, Slack reported that of the 750,000 organizations making use of the chat service and that 122,000 users are paid customers signaling a 28% year over year increase. Meanwhile, a little over a month ago Microsoft reported 75 million daily active users pulling from a pool of 258 million paid Office 365 seats that have access to Teams.

The new deal allows both Amazon and Slack to bolster areas of their services that have proven to be weak spots individually when competing with Microsoft. Amazon gets to offer its customer a flexible and interoperable leading chat service while Slack gets to scale expeditiously while also getting access to Amazon clients they may not have otherwise been exposed to.

Arguably, the deal is a win for Microsoft as well which will allow the company to aim its competitive efforts at a growing, but increasingly singular target in the enterprise cloud services and communications sector.

The free version of Microsoft Teams, which Microsoft launched back in July 2018 to compete with Slack, is getting the ability to create video meetings. Until now, anyone could be invited to a Teams meeting without the need for a Microsoft or Office 365 account, but creating a meeting was restricted to Microsoft Teams commercial customers.

That’s finally changing this month, with Microsoft finally allowing Teams users logged in with free Microsoft account to create meetings. According to a support article, Microsoft has started rolling out this free Meetings feature on June 2, 2020.

Meetings are one of the key features that will allow you to collaborate easily and efficiently while working from home. Now thousands of freelancers and small businesses can now use the free version of Microsoft Teams to create and attend free online meetings with high-quality audio and video. Microsoft said that in response to the coronavirus crisis, there are currently no limits on meeting size or length.

As a quick summary, Microsoft has listed a couple of ways you can use meetings in Teams with a free Microsoft Account:

Create an instant meeting with Meet now

You need to navigate to the left side of Teams, select Meetings, and then click Meet now. Microsoft Teams will prompt you to complete a number of steps before you start your meeting. Next, write a title for your meeting, choose if you want to use video, and select your preferred audio source. Finally, hit Join now, and you are good to go. Once you’re in, you can now send invites to other people to join your meeting.

Schedule a meeting

To schedule a meeting, head over to Meetings on the left side of Teams, then select Schedule a meeting.

Now you will have to choose a title and select a range of time in the calendar on the next screen. Once you fill out these details, click Schedule. Now you will see a couple of options to share the invite with other people. You can either use Outlook or Google Calendar or simply copy the meeting invitation and share it with others by using any of your preferred messaging apps.

Share your content during a meeting

In order to share your screen in a Teams meeting, you need to select the Share screen button in your meeting controls, and then you can choose between the entire desktop, a window, a PowerPoint file, or a whiteboard to present. Once you’re done, go to your meeting controls and select Stop sharing to end the presentation mode. It is important to note that you should be using Google Chrome or the latest version of Microsoft Edge to share your screen while using Teams on the web.

Chat with meeting participants

To chat with meeting participants during a meeting, go to Show conversation in your meeting controls. Once you click the button, the meeting chat window will appear on your screen, and you can type a new message or respond to other messages as usual.

Use live captions

Microsoft Teams provides real-time captions to make your meeting more inclusive to participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. To turn on live captions in a meeting, head over to your meeting controls and select the More options button > Turn on live captions (preview).

Once you are done, you can stop live captions by selecting the Turn off live captions (preview). It should be kept in mind that Live captions are a preview feature in Microsoft Teams, and they are currently available in English (US) language.

If it’s great that Microsoft Teams is improving its free tier by making video meetings available for everyone, the company is also working on new consumer features for Microsoft Teams. Soon, Teams users will be able to add their personal Microsoft account to the app to chat with and collaborate with close friends and family.

If you’re one of the many people who attended last month’s virtual Build for free, be sure to keep your eye on your email that you used to register for the conference. Microsoft is sending out invites for Build attendees to sign up to buy digital items from the Microsoft Company Store at highly discounted prices.

We received our email last night and can confirm the signup process is easy. Just click the link in the email, log in with the pre-set password, add your credit card information, and create a new password to log in again. That will give you access to some very good deals and 60-80% off all things digital for Windows, Office, and Xbox.

We noticed 1-year Microsoft 365 Personal subscriptions for $14 instead of the usual price of $70. Additionally, a Windows 10 Pro license is $40, and Windows 10 Home $24 — instead of the usual prices of $200 and $139. Even Xbox games and subscriptions are discounted.  24 months of Xbox Live Gold is $50, 12 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is $90, 12 months of Xbox Live Gold is $30, and 6 months of Xbox Game Pass is $30. There also discounts on some Xbox exclusives like Forza, Halo, and more.

There is a purchase limit, though, as you can only buy up to $250 in items. The offer will also expire on August 1, 2020, so be sure to act fast.

My first experience with Lenovo’s foray into 2-in-1 ChromeOS tablets comes at a time when the OEM has refined its hardware offerings so much that it can produce an arguably well-built device for sub $300 pricing, and where Google has built enough on top of ChromeOS to offer a decent desktop experience for my workflow.

Out of the box, the Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet comes with all the trimmings needed, albeit a piecemeal approach, but appreciated none the less. Customers get the 10-inch tablet as well as magnetic back cover that doubles as an adjustable kickstand assembly and the keyboard which connects via proprietary pogo pins at the bottom of the device.

While not the best judge of quality, there is a certain hefty craftsmanship that comes with the Duet that feels sturdy and assuages the fears of immediate breakage or the need for delicate handling 24/7. The two-tone grey and powder blue design are also reminiscent of Google’s other Pixel devices. There is a single USB port representing the whole of the I/O offered on the device, but fortunately, Lenovo packages a USB-C to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter for most people who still don wired headphones when operating a desktop or presumptive desktop replacement.

Lastly, there is the screen which offers a crisp 1080p viewing experience with pretty decent color reproduction, while leaning on the color side of tones. I’m not a pixel peeper nor a resolution diva so it’s been a pretty uneventful time viewing YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, and other streaming cinema content on the device.

With just a few hours under my belt, the device works and feels like a charm. I haven’t fully loaded with my preferred workflow yet, just some light app downloading, web browsing, and the occasional game of Marvel Puzzle Quest and the whole package comes together quite well.

For $279, I’d say it’s a steal for anyone needing a secondary screen, especially for parents finding themselves in need of a device for homeschooling, dedicated Zoom conferencing and entertainment when all other screens are pre-occupied by family members who were usually out and about prior to COVID-19 quarantine measurements.

I’ll have more on the functional use, longevity, and whether or not ChromeOS or the processor holds the Duet back from being a no-brainer as an iPad, Surface Go 2,  Windows, or even full Chromebook replacement later as I get it fully set up and use it more regularly.

Microsoft is apparently working on a revamped Xbox Store that uses the same design language as the new Xbox app on Windows 10. If the new Store codenamed “Mercury” could soon be available in preview for select for Xbox Insiders, Russian website Community managed to get early access to it and published some screenshots of the redesigned storefront today.

Windows Central, which previously reported on the “Mercury” app, confirmed the authenticity of the screenshots today. The redesigned Xbox Store is apparently running on a Windows 10 PC, but it shows Xbox One games as well as other sections dedicated to Movies & TV and Xbox One apps.

Overall, this new design looks much better than the current Xbox Store on the console, with a better Fluent Design implementation and rounded corners that are consistent with the new Xbox app on Windows 10. We’re glad to see Microsoft starting to harmonize Xbox experiences across platforms, and it would actually be great if the Windows 10 Microsoft Store could get a similar revamp.

In addition to a fresh coat of paint, we also hope that this revamped Xbox Store will be faster to navigate than the current version, which could use some performance improvements. Anyway, there are some exciting times ahead for Xbox enthusiasts, and Microsoft may have more to share soon during the June Xbox 20/20 Update, which will be dedicated to Xbox platform improvements.

Microsoft is currently working on a new Microsoft Edge feature that will run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) at startup on your PC. First spotted by Techdows, the feature is currently hidden behind an experimental flag on the Microsoft Edge Canary channel, and once enabled will bring an option in the installation prompt of the PWAs to automatically run them on your system’s startup.

If you’re running the latest version (85.0.535.0) of Microsoft Edge Canary, you can access this experimental flag by heading to edge://flags, search for the “Desktop PWAs run on OS login” flag and enable it. Finally, you need to restart your browser to apply the latest settings. Once you enable this flag and check the PWA installation prompts, Microsoft Edge will automatically move your PWAs to the startup folder located on your PC. Apparently, this feature will work on all platforms including Windows and Chrome OS.

Considering that some PWAs are now just as good as native apps, this new feature should be pretty handy for Microsoft Edge users. Do you think that having a couple of PWAs that automatically launch when you first boot your machine will eventually improve our workflow? Sound off in the comments down below.

If you’ve been using Microsoft’s Xbox Console Companion UWP app this week, you may have noticed that the latest update added a giant ad for Microsoft’s new Xbox app that launched with Xbox Game Pass for PC last year. The message mentions that “the new Xbox app is replacing the Console Companion,” so it looks like the days of the old UWP app are now numbered.

Microsoft’s Xbox Console Companion app debuted as the universal “Xbox” app on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile back in 2015. This app has been pretty much neglected in recent years, though it still has some exclusive features such as the ability to stream games from your Xbox One to your PC.

The Xbox Console Companion app also integrates Xbox Lives features that the new Game Pass-focused Xbox app lacks, such as Clubs or Looking for Groups. However, the new Xbox app remains a better experience overall, adopting the same design language previously seen in the new Xbox Game Bar. The app also received a speed and performance boost earlier this year after dropping the Electron framework in favor of React Native.

It’s not clear yet when the Xbox Console Companion UWP app will be officially replaced by Microsoft’s new Xbox app. The latter still has to be installed manually via the Microsoft Store, and even if it recently dropped its “beta” tag, it still lacks some of the Xbox Live social features still present in the Xbox Console Companion app. Anyway, it’s nice to see Microsoft consolidating its Xbox experiences on Windows 10, and the new Xbox app is already a pretty solid game launcher and digital store for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

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Xbox

Developer:
Microsoft Corporation

Price:
Free

Like the rest of the (quarantined) world, I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons quite obsessively the past few months. Decorating my island and home with furniture and items, talking to my favorite island residents, digging up fossils, and catching bugs and fish has been quite addicting for me.

Admittedly, that means I’ve spent over 100 hours in the game. But, it also comes at the neglect of my Xbox and other game consoles. Games I’ve meant to finish like Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 were all put to the side. With the release of Minecraft Dungeons, though, that changed.

My colleague Laurent recently reviewed the game, and with it being part of Xbox Game Pass, I thought I’d give it a try, too. It helped me put down Animal Crossing for a while, and make Minecraft Dungeons my newest gaming addiction.

A satisfying game, just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

I’ll admit it, I’ve never been a fan of Minecraft. The game’s mechanics were always hard for me to understand. Gathering materials and pushing a combination of buttons to craft was a bit too frustrating for me. I never found myself going too far in the game. Minecraft Dungeons, though, changed that. It’s the Minecraft game for the rest of us that is satisfying to play.

Although the genres of the two games I am comparing are completely different, just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it doesn’t take much understanding to play Minecraft Dungeons. This is what makes it so fun and addicting. You can just pick it up, play, and enjoy yourself.

Indeed, as Laurent said in his review, the game is all about accessibility and simplicity. This is a dungeon crawler without complex RPG mechanics, and there is no class system for your character. Defeating dungeons in the game is as simple as moving the analog stick, pressing the A button to melee, and using arrows and timing your moves to defeat enemies. You’ll get different loot from defeating certain enemies, and you’ll also get certain artifacts that will help boost your powers. As you level up, meanwhile, you’ll unlock better weapons and get enchantment points to power up these weapons to make the game easier to play.

For me, someone who played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the past few months, that’s what is most satisfying about Minecraft Dungeons. As you progress through a dungeon and clear enemies, you get to visually see the progress you make. A bar on the bottom of the screen will even fill up and show you your status to your next level up.

This is all similar to the satisfaction of playing Animal Crossing. In that game, you get to make friendships, add items to your home, and island, with the goal of getting a 5-star island rating and an increasing score from the Happy Home Academy every week.

The second point is that as you level up in Minecraft Dungeons you get better weapons and more enchantments. That’s similar to the Nook Miles program in New Horizons where, as you spend more time playing the game, you get Nook Miles to redeem for certain items to decorate your island — or a pass for Nook Miles adventures for finding fruit, bugs, and more. Both games reward you as you play more.

The idea of the comparison is that Minecraft Dungeons is a game that is easy. Just like Animal Crossing, there’s not much to it. Anyone can play it, there’s a co-op mode with friends, and you get satisfaction and fun exploring dungeons and leveling up your character without worrying about crafting and the complicated mechanics of the other Minecraft games.

I play it anywhere my laptop goes

One of the biggest selling points of Animal Crossing and the Nintendo Switch is being able to play the game anywhere you go. As a portable console, the Switch is able to go everywhere you do. Well, for me on Xbox and Windows 10, the same applied to Minecraft Dungeons, too.

Being an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber ($15 per month,) I have access to the game on both my PC and my Xbox, for no additional cost or extra purchase. At night, I explored the game’s mysterious dungeons while sitting in bed and playing on my Xbox One. During the day, and after work, I played the game on my Surface Laptop 3. The game still doesn’t support Xbox Cloud Sync, though, which means I had to replay some levels between switching devices, but it’s not something that ruined the experience since I’ve been playing the game slowly and haven’t gotten too far.

It’s this level of accessibility that made Minecraft Dungeons quite great for me, and fun to play. I didn’t have to sit in front of a TV to enjoy the game. Plus, the game isn’t that graphically demanding and runs great on a Surface Laptop 3 — getting about 20-30 frames when the settings are turned down, and a playable 15-20 when setting to high settings. It’s plenty playable, even without a dedicated graphics card.

The game that keeps on giving

Animal Crossing doesn’t really have a story mode, and it’s rather about replaying the game consistently and repeating the same tasks each day to get satisfaction and reward of building up your island to a 5-star rating. This gives it big replay value, and oddly enough, this is another area where Minecraft Dungeons gets me.

Although Minecraft Dungeons does have an underlying story of putting an end to the Arch-Illager’s reign of terror, there’s a lot of replay value to the game, too. You can replay certain missions at higher levels and get better weapons and loot. I found myself trying the higher levels just to challenge myself and to get some higher weapons. I also went looking for hidden entrances to secret dungeons, where you can find the best loot.

Though I slowly played the game, I am close to finishing the main story in less than seven hours of playing. It’s a far cry from the hundreds of hours I’ve put into Animal Crossing, but I do find myself trying to beat all the difficulty levels in Dungeons before trying new levels. There’s still a lot of replay value and it’s the game that keeps giving.

More DLC on the way, and I am glad

As you probably heard, there’s more DLC on the way for Minecraft Dungeons, soon. This adds additional replay time and new levels to the game, and I am glad. These will be included at no additional cost with the $30 Hero Edition of Minecraft: Dungeons, too.

It’s a bit like how Nintendo treats Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this means they’ll always be something to do in the game. For no extra cost outside the $60 of the game, Nintendo is adding seasonal events to Animal Crossing each month. So far, this includes the Bunny Day event, International Museum Day stamp hunt, and Wedding Season. Each of these events offers new items and new gameplay opportunities, just like the DLCs in Minecraft offer new worlds to play.

Looking at everything all together, Minecraft Dungeons is quite enjoyable. It’s really fun to pick up and play, and it will likely become your next addiction. With $15 per month GamePass or the game’s low price of $20, there’s also the added bonus of being able to play it on most modern PCs — without having to go out and buy a console, like the Nintendo Switch.

Give it a try and play today by buying it via the links below, but you can also get it on the PlayStation Store here and Nintendo Switch here.

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Minecraft Dungeons

Developer:
Xbox Game Studios

Price:
Free

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Minecraft Dungeons for Windows

Developer:
Xbox Game Studios

Price:
Free

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to increased competition between Microsoft Teams, Slack, and the video conferencing app Zoom. The latter clearly outshined Microsoft’s own Skype app due to a killer feature: the ability to display up to 49 participants in a single screen of the gallery view.

Microsoft recently updated Teams and Skype to make them display up to 9 thumbnails during video calls, but Microsoft Teams will soon match Zoom’s ability to show up to 49 participants at a time. Jared Spataro, CVP of Microsoft 365 announced the news to the Wall Street Journal, though there’s no ETA for this feature yet.

If Microsoft will likely keep iterating fast on Microsoft Teams in the coming months, The WSJ report included other interesting details about Microsoft’s attempts to outclass its Slack and Zoom rivals. As an example, Microsoft reportedly sent a team of 50 staffers to help the New York School district, which was already an Office 365 customer, transition from Zoom to Microsoft Teams.

A team of 50 Microsoft staffers worked around the clock with administrators and teachers across New York’s school district, the nation’s largest, to convert them to Microsoft Teams, the company’s rival conferencing and collaboration software. Microsoft also gave the district expedited access to features that made Zoom so instantly popular, such as the ability to show more people on the screen at once and a raise-your-hand button. Microsoft counted more than 110,000 Teams users inside the district a month later, when the department allowed Zoom access again.

Slack’s CEO recently complained that Microsoft was “unhealthily preoccupied with killing us,” though really Microsoft isn’t the first company to copy a popular feature from a competitor. Facebook infamously copied Snapchat’s popular Stories format after failing to acquire the company a couple of years, and this wasn’t the end of Snapchat. However, Microsoft’s key advantage with Teams is that the app is bundled with several Microsoft 365 subscriptions, so commercial customers already using Office 365 apps have no reason to use Slack or Zoom when they have a free, versatile alternative with Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft has started to roll out an update for the Outlook for Windows client that will let you store some settings into the cloud. According to an update posted in the Microsoft 365 Admin center (via Petri), this new feature will bring the possibility to configure your Outlook settings, save them in your cloud profile, and get them synced to the other Windows devices connected with the same account. Starting this month, the rollout has begun with Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel, and the feature will go live for all Windows desktop clients in late June.

The feature, once it finally arrives on Outlook on your PC, will bring cloud syncing support for a handful of settings including, Calendar, Ease of Access, General, Groups, Mail, People, Search, and Tasks. To enable this feature on your machine, you’ll need to head over to File > Options, and then click General under Outlook Options. Finally, you’ll need to check Store my Outlook settings in the cloud, and hit the OK button to get started. However, once the rollout process completes within the next few weeks, this feature would be enabled by default for everyone, and it will be up to IT admins to disable it manually via roaming settings in the Outlook group policy template.

Last month, we reported that Microsoft is also working on syncing Outlook signatures to the cloud, and the feature was expected to release this month. However, the software giant has now delayed this feature to the end of July for the Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel, and everyone else should get it in late August. Once it becomes available, Outlook will read your existing default local signatures to make them available across devices. Moreover, the capability will be enabled by default, and third-party add-ins that provide a similar functionality will no longer work.

Build 85.0.531.1 rolled out to Edge Insiders in the Dev Channel earlier today. This build mainly contains fixes and refinements but does add a new setting that allows the browser to predownload websites so that they load faster when visited.

Here’s the release notes:

Added features:

• Added a setting to enable preloading of certain webpages for faster searches and browsing.

Improved reliability:

• Fixed an issue on Mac where new installations of Edge sometimes crash on launch.
• Fixed an issue where closing the browser too soon after importing data from another browser sometimes causes a crash.
• Fixed an issue where pasting content when Information Protection is enabled sometimes crashes the tab.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to restart Edge on Mac to apply an update gives an error message instead of updating the browser.

Changed behavior:

• Fixed an issue where tabs sometimes appear at their minimum width, even when there’s space for them to be larger.
• Fixed an issue where scrolling down a page sometimes causes it to jump back up to the top.
• Fixed an issue where unpinning and re-pinning Edge to the Taskbar sometimes creates a shortcut to the wrong profile.
• Fixed an issue where the … menu button sometimes disappears at small window sizes.
• Fixed an issue on Mac where Shy UI sometimes disappears while being interacted with.
• Fixed an issue where the highlighted word sometimes doesn’t match what’s being dictated when reading PDFs aloud.
• Fixed an issue where printing a PDF sometimes doesn’t center the content on the printed page, leading to cut-off content.
• Fixed an issue where the default printer is sometimes forgotten or reset.
• Fixed an issue where the Immersive Reader toolbar sometimes disappears when the window isn’t wide enough.
• Fixed an issue where translating content in Immersive Reader sometimes leaves grammar markings from the previous language on the page.
• Fixed an issue where Youtube videos embedded on webpages aren’t shown in Immersive Reader when they should be.
• Fixed an issue where clicking the “Complete sign in” button sometimes doesn’t enable sync until the browser is restarted.
• Fixed an issue where Application Guard windows sometimes don’t get proxy settings applied properly.

Known issues:

• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load.  This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
• Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before.  Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available.  However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.  We hope that this will be improved now that version 81 is released to Stable.
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black.  Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it.  Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window.
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other.  Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices.  This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it.  In another, restarting the browser fixes it.

Edge Insiders are basically volunteer testers that opt-in to try out new Microsoft Edge features before they’re added to the public version. Are you an Insider? Let us know what you think of this latest build in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Microsoft content.