Microsoft Teams to let you transfer calls between desktop, mobile

Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to transfer calls between desktop and mobile, allowing them to move around inside their homes or offices during the video meetings.

Introducing several ways to create a streamlined calling experience, Microsoft said late on Tuesday that starting in early 2021, "you will be able to shift your calls between your mobile and desktop endpoints with an easy-to-use interface on the Teams app".

A new calling interface will show contacts, voicemail and calling history in a single location in Teams which now has 115 million daily active users globally.

"The enhanced Calls app brings the most important calling elements—the dial pad, call history, voicemail, contacts, and settings—into a single location, making it easier to stay connected in the flow of your work," informed Nicole Herskowitz, Microsoft Teams General Manager.

The company also announced CarPlay support for Teams calling.

"With CarPlay, you can use your vehicle's built-in controls to operate Teams, including using Siri to place and answer calls".

The Teams users can also save call recordings in OneDrive and SharePoint.

Teams Admins can take advantage of the tight Teams and OneDrive or SharePoint integration and elect to make OneDrive or SharePoint the default recording storage location, in lieu of Stream.

This new capability provides powerful capabilities such as sharing with external guests, quicker access to transcripts, and greater storage capacity, Microsoft said.

The company said that Teams will not only identify potential spam calls but also digitally attest outgoing calls to prevent these calls from being rejected by external recipients.  Other capabilities include call merging, low-data mode and enhanced reverse number look-up.

According to Microsoft, the use of Teams Calling has skyrocketed as well, with users making over 650 million calls in October, up 11 fold over from March this year.