By Alice Chambers |
Ilya Bukshteyn, corporate vice president of Microsoft Teams calling, devices and premium experiences at Microsoft, used his keynote at Unified Communications Expo (UCX) to outline Microsoft’s three-pillar strategy for Teams, built around security, simplicity and AI. He also reflected on the wider technology trends that are reshaping the way people work, drawing on more than three decades at Microsoft.
Bukshteyn joined the company a year before the launch of Windows 95, which he said “led a wave of making computing more accessible and easier. We saw computing become ubiquitous and then the mobile made computing not just ubiquitous, but portable. The cloud made computing arguably free, drove the price of computing power down so that we are all now used to having [easy access to technology]. Computing is not just ubiquitous but relatively free.”
Now, he said, AI is set to spark another transformation.
“It’s sometimes hard to wrap my mind around what the impacts of AI would be,” said Bukshteyn, likening its potential to that of electricity. “AI is taking knowledge and intellect and making it as available, as ubiquitous, and as low cost as we have seen happen with computing and information. It is truly intelligence on tap.”
Bukshteyn predicted that AI agents will soon play a central role in the workplace: “It is realistic to expect agents to run full work weeks in the next 12 months – agents will become long-lived and will equal or in some cases surpass human experts in their area.”
“We know that this is a more cyber-dangerous world than it’s ever been today,” said Bukshteyn. “AI can be used for good but also to enable far more sophisticated attack vectors. And so, over half of our resources still go to security.”
Bukshteyn outlined new features in Microsoft Teams designed to protect users against threats including brand impersonation protection where external messages are clearly labelled so users can preview a message before they start to communicate with that person.
Microsoft has also made it easier for users to report suspicious activity. “You can now report a security concern in a single click and help make the platform continually smarter around security threats.”
Other measures include automatically updating the sensitivity of meetings depending on the information shared, and detecting sensitive data such as credit card or personal identification numbers during screen sharing. “We’re going to be extending this into the transcript and recap summaries and working to automatically redact sensitive information from those articles,” Bukshteyn said.
Microsoft’s second major area of investment in Teams is making the platform easier to use. “If users prefer to see chat and channels combined with various sections to organise their information, they can do that,” said Bukshteyn. “If they want chat and channels to be separate, they can configure Teams that way as well.”
Threaded channels are another new feature that allow users to follow conversations more easily. Plus, Microsoft is redesigning the Teams calendar to mirror the Outlook experience, with added features such as location.
Teams Phone continues to evolve too. “We work with our contact centre partners so that our customers can have one phone infrastructure used by both information workers and contact centre workers,” said Bukshteyn. “So now, if I’m a contact centre agent who lives in Dynamics 365, I can not only see Copilot and AI as part of that experience but also have Teams phone right in the same experience. When I get an incoming call, I don’t have to leave the Dynamics environment.”
Finally, Bukshteyn highlighted how AI is being embedded across Microsoft Teams for both administrators and end users.
The ‘Queues’ experience in Teams is being expanded with AI-powered capabilities like analytics and insights. And for administrators, Copilot is streamlining tasks such as assigning phone numbers, checking policies and surfacing information from the admin centre.
“Teams brings AI into all parts of your collaboration, channels, meetings, calls and chats,” said Bukshteyn. “We started with bringing AI there for personal productivity. Looking ahead, we think that the power of Teams will be realised when it becomes the place where you collaborate not only with your human coworkers but also with your AI coworkers. Teams will become the place where you lead a team that is both digital and human.”
Examples include Facilitator, which can take notes, keep meetings on schedule, and remind hosts how much time is left, and automatic recaps of missed meetings, which users can listen to during their commute to the office.
Bukshteyn concluded his session by stressing Microsoft’s mission: “We aim to simplify complexity so that people can focus on collaborating with others and with agents, and not have to think about user experience and interface. And we aim to infuse AI throughout all of those experiences.”