Walkie Talkie Feature Made Available On Microsoft Teams

(RTTNews) - Microsoft Inc. (MSFT) is making the Walkie Talkie feature of Microsoft Teams available to all users of its communications app on Wednesday. Walkie Talkie lets Microsoft Teams users turn smartphones or tablets into a walkie-talkie that works over cellular data or Wi-FI. It was originally announced two years ago, and has been in preview until now.

Microsoft has mainly designed this for frontline workers and employees who are customer-facing and are on the move managing day-to-day operations inside companies. Microsoft collaborated with Zebra Technologies to add a dedicated push-to-talk button on a range of Zebra mobile devices. These devices are used widely by frontline workers, the employees that have helped the world through the ongoing pandemic.

Walkie-talkie features are still rare in communications apps. WhatsApp lets you record snippets of audio than can be sent and received, and Slack announced its Discord-like Huddles feature last year to let people drop in and out of calls easily. Apple did launch its own walkie-talkie feature on the Apple Watch in 2018, making use of push-to-talk over a FaceTime Audio call.