Microsoft’s Teams app for work is about to get overpowered. At today’s Ignite conference, the company announced a series of updates to its video chat tool to make it more useful and customizable. He also unveiled new speakers made for teams with special features for transcriptions.
First, since we are clearly not going to return to large-scale face-to-face events anytime soon, Microsoft is making Teams a more powerful webinar platform. You can now have up to 1,000 participants per meeting, both inside and outside your organization. There will also be more tools, such as personalized registration, host controls to disable the participant’s chat and video, as well as “rich presentation options”. You will also get post-event reports to see how your webinar has performed.
If you need to reach even more people, teams can switch to a view-only broadcast mode that will support up to 10,000 participants. From now until June 30, 2021, Microsoft is increasing that number to 20,000. He is also integrating Dynamics 365 Marketing with teams to make it easier to manage and review participant information so you can better interact with them before, during and after each event.
The company is also debuting Teams Connect, which will allow you to share channels with people outside your organization. In these shared workspaces, users can chat, meet and share documents, as well as collaborate on applications and co-authored documents in real time. Teams Connect is available in a private version today, and Microsoft said it will be “widely released later this year.”
Microsoft
One of Microsoft’s most beloved products is PowerPoint, which is increasingly integrated into Teams. With the new PowerPoint Live, which is now available on Teams, presenters can advance their slides whenever they want, while viewers can privately advance or rewind at their own speed. It is important to note that participants can also use the screen reader on their own to examine the presentation at their own pace. Presenters will be able to see your content, notes, meeting participants and chat on a single screen.
Microsoft also wants to make it easier for you to see what you need in Teams. He is adding a Presenter mode for presenters to “customize how their video feed and content appear to the public”. There are three options here – Highlight, Reporter and Side by side. Standout places the announcer’s video feed in front and in the center, while Side-by-side shows the presenter’s video next to his slides. Finally, the Reporter will display the content “as a visual aid over the announcer’s shoulder, as during a news segment”. This feature will be launched with Featured mode this month, and Microsoft says the Reporter and Side-by-side will be available soon.
If you can’t decide which mode to choose, you can also let the teams decide. Microsoft is officially introducing Dynamic View, which was introduced in January. With this, the application will adjust and move frames and speaker windows as people speak, start presenting or turn on their cameras. There is also a new option to place the participants’ gallery at the top of the meeting, closer to where your laptop’s webcam is, so you can “keep it looking natural,” Microsoft said. Dynamic visualization is coming later this month.
Microsoft
When we return to meetings in physical meeting rooms, teams will have new gallery views to make things easier to see. A new Together Mode and a large gallery will allow people to see everyone in one room. In addition, if multiple screens are available or if people are calling remotely, everyone will be able to see the same content.
Finally, in addition to all these updates to its software, Microsoft is also announcing new hardware. He unveiled new smart speakers for teams that look like previous Echo Dots with a pop-up control panel. Microsoft says its speakers can identify the voices of up to 10 people speaking in a Teams room for more accurate assignment in meeting transcripts.
With video conferencing clearly going to remain the primary way we work with our colleagues for some time, it is Microsoft’s cunning to continue to improve teams. These integrations with Office applications and new tools can make Teams a more powerful service than its competitors, such as Meet, Zoom and Google’s Webex.