Microsoft Teams Updates Increase Meeting Options

Microsoft Teams is the hub for all things Microsoft 365 and productivity. Enhancements announced at Microsoft Ignite will continue to push the platform along this development path.

Richard Hay, Senior Content Producer

September 29, 2020

4 Min Read
Microsoft Teams Updates Increase Meeting Options
The new Together Mode in Microsoft Teams.Microsoft

This year’s Ignite – a virtual event, as many tech shows are in 2020 – has reiterated one message: Microsoft is here to help with “the new way to work.” The company’s collaborative workspace platform, Teams, is on the vanguard of that new way to work. Within the Microsoft 365 platform, which Microsoft announced just three short years ago, Teams has become the de facto hub of all activity for team members across a company.

The Microsoft Teams updates coming to the service, announced this week by Microsoft 365 Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro, take into consideration the significant increase in virtual meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to shift their workforces to a work-from-home posture. The goal, according to Spataro, is to “unlock new forms of collaboration, help people and teams stay connected and engaged, and ensure fluid communication across organizations.”

Microsoft Teams Meetings Together Mode

The familiar virtual meeting view, which displays square images of those attending a virtual meeting, is by now remarkably familiar to most organizations. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced their Together Mode for meetings in Microsoft Teams to help battle against meeting fatigue. The idea was to create a virtual meeting space that could make the team feel like they were in the same room and not just looking at a screen full of squares where everyone’s background and focus were different.

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microsoft-teams-together-mode

Later this year, new auditoriums will be added along with conference rooms and a coffee shop. Microsoft already uses AI-powered tools to remove backgrounds and get meeting participants into the virtual meeting space but that will be used further automatically scale and center participants to make sure all participants present a balanced appearance in Together Mode.

Custom Layouts

Microsoft Teams is already capable of dynamically adjusting the view in the meeting window based on the number of participants and the current presentation mode. Available with the latest round of Microsoft Teams updates, new layouts will enable presenters to customize this view to control how meeting content shows up for viewers.

microsoft-teams-custom-layouts-microsoft-ignite.gif

microsoft-teams-custom-layouts-microsoft-ignite

Options include the presenter’s video being overlayed in front of the presentation content. This utilizes the same AI/ML that is part of Together Mode and Background Blur to create these unique effects. The presenter’s facial reactions and some gestures are fully in view alongside of the content being presented.

Breakout Rooms

This feature, expected by the end of 2020, enables a large group meeting to break up into separate groups without leaving the current virtual meeting.

Once meeting participants are in their separate breakout rooms, the moderator can easily move between rooms, make announcements to all of the existing rooms, and close the rooms to return everyone back to the main meeting.

From a productivity perspective, these Microsoft Teams updates mean no more ending one meeting just to start smaller meetings for the assigned work. Plus, everyone can come back together easily to report out about their breakout work.

Meeting Recap

Rather than having all of the varied elements of a meeting scattered across the Microsoft Teams channel, now a meeting recap will be created following each meeting.

microsoft-teams-meeting-recap-microsoft-ignite.png

microsoft-teams-meeting-recap-microsoft-ignite

Now in one spot the meeting recording, transcript, chat, shared files, and other meeting elements will be shared with all meeting participants in chat. It will also be accessible when viewing the meeting details tab.

This should save a lot of time for team members by having all the pertinent information for a meeting in one place and nicely packaged.

Other Enhancements

In addition to the features already mentioned, the latest Microsoft Teams updates include improvements in these areas:

  • Live captions with speaker attribution during meetings

  • Support for 1,000 meeting participants

  • Support for up to 20,000 participants in view-only meetings (requires the Advanced Communications plan in Microsoft 365).

  • Attendee registration for meetings with automated emails and a reporting dashboard to track meeting engagement by participants.

  • Team templates help with the setup process for new teams. Custom templates of existing teams can be saved and used to standardize team creation for configuration within a company.

  • Info pane provides quick summary of active members, key posts, and other important information about a Teams channel. This information can help new team members come up to speed very quickly and keep current members up to date.

  • Maximum size of 25,000 members for teams coming later this year.

Microsoft continues to invest in Microsoft Teams as the hub for all team activity – and this intentional expansion of the service's capabilities reinforces the company’s plan to give customers a single pane of glass to see nearly everything they need for their job.

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About the Author

Richard Hay

Senior Content Producer, IT Pro Today (Informa Tech)

I served for 29 plus years in the U.S. Navy and retired as a Master Chief Petty Officer in November 2011. My work background in the Navy was telecommunications related so my hobby of computers fit well with what I did for the Navy. I consider myself a tech geek and enjoy most things in that arena.

My first website – AnotherWin95.com – came online in 1995. Back then I used GeoCities Web Hosting for it and WindowsObserver.com is the result of the work I have done on that site since 1995.

In January 2010 my community contributions were recognized by Microsoft when I received my first Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for the Windows Operating System. Since then I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP each subsequent year since that initial award. I am also a member of the inaugural group of Windows Insider MVPs which began in 2016.

I previously hosted the Observed Tech PODCAST for 10 years and 317 episodes and now host a new podcast called Faith, Tech, and Space. 

I began contributing to Penton Technology websites in January 2015 and in April 2017 I was hired as the Senior Content Producer for Penton Technology which is now Informa Tech. In that role, I contribute to ITPro Today and cover operating systems, enterprise technology, and productivity.

https://twitter.com/winobs

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