Microsoft Kaizala rolls out to Office 365 customers globally and will become part of Microsoft Teams

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft Kaizala Blog articles.

Today, we are pleased to announce that Microsoft Kaizala is rolling out to all eligible Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial customers worldwide, making it generally available in 40 languages across 180+ markets. We are also announcing plans to bring Kaizala capabilities into Microsoft Teams and several new capabilities in Kaizala.

Kaizala – a simple, secure work management and messaging app

Kaizala brings unique capabilities to Microsoft 365, with its ability to connect and engage people both inside and outside of an organization’s directory – including contract workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, customers, and citizens – using large and flexible group types. Kaizala enables phone number-based identity for easy onboarding, and a simple user experience for messaging and work management through the open directory. Kaizala Pro gives you the ability to create and manage organizational groups, gather rich analytics, build custom integrations and workflows, and offers enterprise-grade security and compliance.

Kaizala delivers on three key promises:

• Connect with anyone using the Kaizala open directory, enabling people to sign up with just a phone number, and is scalable to millions of users
• Secure work management integrated with messaging and video - Built-in action cards such as survey, poll, job, training, and location sharing enable you to coordinate work and securely collect information
• Digitize business processes – Kaizala’s extensible platform enables you to build custom line-of-business action cards and gather business insights using in-built reporting and analytics

Since its initial launch in India in November 2017, and subsequent roll out to select markets, thousands of organizations are using Kaizala, including Philippines Airlines, Apollo Hospitals, M-Kopa Solar, McDonald’s Turkey, Narayana Health, UEM Edgenta, Government of Andhra Pradesh, and many more across multiple industries. Based on these success stories and feedback from customers, we are making Kaizala Pro available to all Office 365 customers globally.

Bringing together Kaizala and Microsoft Teams

The capabilities of Kaizala complement the robust communication and collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. Teams improves workplace collaboration by helping organizations move from an array of disparate apps to a single, secure hub that brings together what teams need, including chat, meetings, and calling, all with native integration to the Office 365 apps. More than 500,000 organizations use Teams to collaborate across locations, time zones, and languages. Many of our customers, including M-Kopa Solar and UEM Edgenta, use both Teams and Kaizala to empower and engage their internal workforce and the extended network outside their directory.

Enabling every member of an organization’s network with digital communication and collaboration tools – whether they are inside or outside of the company directory – can transform the way work gets done. We also believe that every organization should have the ability to own and manage their company data. Based on this vision, and on feedback from customers, we will be bringing Kaizala capabilities into Microsoft Teams as an integrated offering. We expect the integration to happen in phases over the next 12-18 months, and we will provide more details about the Kaizala and Teams integration roadmap later this quarter.

Additional new Microsoft Kaizala capabilities

 Today, we are also announcing several new capabilities in Kaizala that have been top requests from current customers.

New features for Kaizala users:

•  @mentions enable you to tag individual members in a chat so you can call their attention to things that matter.
• Delete messages: You can now delete a message in a 1:1 or group chat within an hour of sending it. If you are a group admin, you can delete any message at any point in time.
• The Kaizala web app allows managers and admins to easily access and search chat conversations, send documents, action cards and more from a desktop (PC/laptop). It is now available in public preview and will be generally available to all Kaizala users later this quarter.

Kaizala web app is in public preview and lets you access chats, documents, action cards and more from the web

• Image annotation provides a rich inking experience, so you can markup images before sharing in chat
• Video calling enables you to connect face to face using rich 1:1 video calling.
• The new Kaizala me feature is a private chat space just for you, where you can send yourself chat messages such as meeting notes or reminders, or try new action cards

Chat with yourself to keep your notes organized, and connect face to face using video calls

New group and data management capabilities

• Updated Kaizala Management Portal: We have updated the Kaizala Management Portal so business users can manage their groups more effectively. The management portal now also supports a single sign-on experience for Office 365 users.
• In-region data residency: For new customers, Kaizala will store customer data at rest within the customer’s region (US, APAC, India and EU). Customers will also benefit from a robust failover and disaster recovery support.  Learn more.

What’s next?

We are excited about the Kaizala to Teams integration and the opportunity this provides our customers and partners, to securely connect users both inside and outside their organization. We are delighted about the momentum Kaizala is gaining, and are working on several additional capabilities that have been requested by customers to be released over the coming months, including:

• Support for right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic
• The ability to invite users using their email
• The ability to sync your organization’s Azure Active Directory (AAD) within Kaizala
• A new Kaizala admin role so you can assign dedicated admins to manage Kaizala policies

You can download Microsoft Kaizala today from the app stores and get started. Join the Kaizala Tech Community to give feedback, vote on feature requests, and engage with an awesome community.

Note: Microsoft Kaizala Pro is included in Office 365 F1, E1, E3, E5, Business Essentials and Business Premium, Office 365 Education A3 and A5 and Microsoft 365 F1, Business, E3, E5 and Microsoft 365 Education A3 and A5.