Following on from Ignite 2021, Microsoft have announced exciting new capabilities for Microsoft Teams. Those include: more flexibility in how you view, present, and participate in meetings, additional voice commands, and apps that help you learn about the range of built-in features.
Check out some of these latest capabilities below.
Meetings
Dynamic View
Dynamic view is coming soon to Commercial and GCC customers. This new feature will intelligently arrange the elements of your meeting so that you receive an optimum viewing experience. As people join, turn on videos, start speaking or begin to present in a meeting, Teams auto-adjusts and personalises the layout. An example of this is, in a meeting with attendees who are deaf, the participants can pin a sign language interpreter, fit the interpreter’s video to frame and see the interpreter alongside any shared content throughout the conversation. This significant step forward makes certain that everyone can participate easily, including people with disabilities.
PowerPoint Live in Teams meetings
By using PowerPoint Live in Teams, presenters have all their slides, notes, meeting chats, and participant videos in one single view. This helps provide presenters with more confidence when they are presenting, making it easier to see chat comments, raised hands, and any reactions from those participating.
Other features
Whilst in your meeting, there is now the opportunity to respond to what the presenter is saying, with the addition of more reaction emojis. As well as the raised hand emoji, you will also find a thumbs up, smiley face, and a love heart, giving you the chance to share a live reaction expressing what you are thinking and feeling.
Live captions in languages such as Spoken Japanese, Korean, French, French-Canadian, Spanish, Spanish Mexican, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Hindi-Indian, Portuguese-Brazilian, and Russian can now be translated into captions available in up to 50 different languages. Event organisers can select up to 6 captioning languages, available for Commercial and GCC customers.
If you have ever been in a meeting and worried about loud background noise, you will be happy to learn that AI-based noise suppression is now available for Teams in desktop. Turn the background noise suppression on to make it easier for your colleagues to hear you in meetings where you may have activities going on around you.
Stay on track and stick to your timetable with end-of-meeting notifications, letting you know when there are 5 minutes left on the scheduled meeting time, helping you to not overrun.
Chat & Collaboration
Enhancements to the Teams mobile app allow you to automatically switch to dark theme when your device is set to dark mode and provides the ability to pin chats. These features are launching on iOS first and followed by Android.
Chat in multiple languages easily, with a simple click you can translate posts in channels and chats making it easier to communicate with different regions and helping facilitate global collaboration.
Personalise your notification settings with the redesigned notification setting in your profile, supporting you to keep track of those activities you find important.
Set your presence status duration so you can step away from work and let your team know without worrying when you will be back.
Microsoft Teams continues to add new features to make the platform more inclusive to those with disabilities and helping to make workplaces more productive and inclusive. So, watch this space!
