Microsoft Enhances Microsoft Teams on Windows 11 with Discord-Like Communities and AI Art Tool Support
GroupMe Adds Microsoft Teams Calling Feature
Microsoft is making significant enhancements to the free version of Microsoft Teams on Windows 11. The integrated Teams app will now include support for Microsoft’s communities feature within Teams, aimed at providing an alternative to Facebook and Discord. Additionally, Microsoft is introducing support for Microsoft Designer, an AI-powered art tool that enables users to generate images using text prompts for various purposes, such as event invitations or social media posts.
Originally introduced in December, Microsoft Teams communities allowed family and friends, small community groups, and businesses to organize through meetings, calendars, and chat. This feature aimed to offer similar functionality to popular platforms like Facebook, Discord, WhatsApp, and Reddit for group organization. Until now, communities were only available on mobile devices, but with the latest expansion, Windows 11 users can create and manage communities within Teams. Community owners will have the ability to create communities, invite and share them with members, host events, moderate content, and receive notifications about important activities. Microsoft plans to extend community support to Windows 10, macOS, and the web in the near future.
The built-in version of Microsoft Teams on Windows 11 will also include a preview version of Microsoft Designer. This tool will be useful for communities to create visually appealing event invitations and banners. Microsoft Designer, which incorporates elements from DALL-E and Adobe Express, offers basic AI-powered image generation and is also being integrated into Microsoft Edge.
Furthermore, Microsoft is introducing mobile and general usability improvements for communities in Teams. Users can now record videos from mobile devices with markup tools and filters. Additionally, featured communities will soon be discoverable across iOS, Android, and Windows 11. Microsoft is also adding the capability to conduct polls within Teams communities and enhancing moderation features to provide more control over community membership.
In addition to the enhancements in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft is updating GroupMe, a mobile group messaging service acquired by Microsoft through the Skype acquisition in 2011. GroupMe, still widely used by millions of people daily, now supports Microsoft Teams calling. This integration allows users to initiate Teams calls within GroupMe chats and participate in group video calls.