In what feels like a very un ‘new Microsoft’ move the Microsoft Teams team announced new calling features overnight including support for Apple Car Play. Conspicuous by it’s absence was any mention of integration with Android Auto. Considering Microsoft’s new mantra of be where the users are, we hope this is only temporary.
For those of us who spend more of their life in meetings then we would otherwise like to the advent of digital first meetings has actually been a bonus. I have fully embraced the last meeting of the day being done in my car, not only do I actually concentrate on the content better due to no other distractions (eg. emails etc), it actually allows me to leave work at my supposed finish time.
With Car Play integration iOS users will be able to get simple control over teams calls via their head unit, making the whole integration even less distracting for the driver. While we know that Teams calls will sometimes connect to Android Auto as a Bluetooth media stream it doesn’t always, and is finicky at best.
Getting first party integration with teams, and especially calling integration with Assistant to mirror the Siri integration would be a revolution in vehicle based teams communication. Come on Microsoft, you have your own Android phone now…. get with the program.
Teams messaging recently started working in Android Auto, so I’m sure calling is in the works too.
Android Auto now has support for receiving and responding to Teams messages, which is something Carplay doesn’t do