Microsoft has announced a lot of new Microsoft Teams features that are coming shortly. Here is a rundown of them all.
Microsoft has also published a study on the future of work – the good, the challenging and the unknown you can read it here
Microsoft Team Together mode
This uses artificial intelligence technology to place multiple peoples video feeds into a shared background designed to make you feel you are all in the same meeting.
This scales tp to 49 people at the same time. More room types to follow.
Microsoft Teams Large Gallery View
Up to 49 meeting video feeds will be rolling out in august
Example of 49 people
Microsoft Teams Dynamic Stage
Dynamic layout of video feeds will maximise screen usage and optimise the layout for those on the video call. Raising your hand will create a yellow box around the person raising their hand. There will also be chat bubbles which will make meeting chat appear over the top of your video. This means you won’t need to have the chat pane open reducing the screen size available for meeting participants.
Microsoft Teams Video Improvement Filters
Filters will improve the quality of the video dynamically. The adjust lighting levels and soften the focus to customise your appearance.
Live captions
Previously live transcriptions never showed who was talking, in a large meeting this can sometimes be confusing to follow. It will now show the name of the speaker
Live Transcript
There is a live transcript of what is being said in the meeting. This will also be available for review after the meeting. We all remember the PA / Receptionist taking shorthand so those board meetings were documented no Microsoft does this for you. Can’t remember who was tasked with each objective now you can look back and check.
Support Meetings of up to 1000
Microsoft recently moved up to 300 active participants and intends to move up to 1000 in the future. Some of the previous changes mentioned above will allow everyone to feel part of the meeting and cope with larger numbers of people whilst still making the meeting efficient and productive.
Suggested Replies
Google and LinkedIn use a lot of automatic replies, this will be coming to Teams, they have suggested this will be available on the mobile application. This will be really useful if it comes to the desktop as well.
Conclusion
At the beginning of the year Teams was just another app in the Office Suite. Since the change to remote working it has become a valuable application to allow us to work from anywhere whilst still communicating with our teams. There are many other applications out there such as Zoom and Google meet, somewhere ahead of Microsoft in this area. Microsoft have put a lot of development time into Teams to ensure it adapted to users requirements. These new features coming will be a game changer and in my opinion push Microsoft Teams to the top of the pile when your looking at video calling and remote working.
