Department of Information Technology

What’s New in Microsoft Teams - May 2021  

Dynamic view
Dynamic view automatically arranges the elements of your meeting for an optimal viewing experience. As people join, turn on video, start to speak, or begin to present in a meeting, Teams auto-adjusts and personalizes your layout.

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Presenter mode
Presenter mode empowers presenters to customize how their video feed and content appear to the audience with powerful professional layouts. The first layout, Standout, is now available to show the speaker's video feed as a silhouette in front of shared content. That way, you can easily direct your audiences' attention through hand gestures and facial cues, without making the viewer choose between the speaker and the content. Stay tuned for the next two layouts coming soon: Reporter and Side-by-side.

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Large meeting support
Hold interactive meetings and webinars with more attendees—up to 1,000 people, including chats, polls, and Live Reactions. If you go over that limit, your meeting seamlessly scales to accommodate up to 10,000 people in a view-only experience. During this time of increased remote work, you can take advantage of view-only broadcasts for up to 20,000 attendees through the end of this year. Learn more.

Custom attendee registration
Add a custom attendee registration page to your meetings or webinars to better manage attendance before your virtual event starts. You can add custom questions and images to learn more about your audience and promote your brand. Once your attendees finish registering, they’ll automatically receive a confirmation email with a calendar invite to join the event.

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Improved experience for sharing content in a meeting
The new share content experience helps presenters find their desired content more quickly and easily. Windows are consolidated into a single bucket to provide a concise view and all PowerPoints are automatically organized to present with PowerPoint Live. Now you can focus on the content of what you’re sharing instead of rummaging through the correct content to share in your meeting. Learn more.

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Include computer sound when sharing on Mac
Mac desktop users can now include audio when sharing their desktop or window during a Teams meeting. This is great when sharing a video with voiceover and music. It allows everyone to watch simultaneously without echoes or sync issues. You can find this setting in the share content. Learn more

Breakout room timer
Organizers can now set a timer for Breakout rooms from the Breakout Room settings. Once the timer has expired, rooms will automatically close, and participants will return to the main meeting. Learn more.

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Edge and Chrome browser meeting updates
Edge and Chrome browser users are now able to change the Teams meeting layout to 2x2 Gallery view, Together mode, and Large gallery. With the ability to see up to 49 participants in a single screen, you can enhance your virtual meeting experience where participants feel closer together even when you are apart.

Updated settings for attendees video
There are three new ways that you can now manage your attendees’ camera. First, meeting attendees are able to turn their camera on or off to share video by default. You can also configure to have all attendees’ camera disabled by setting Enable camera for attendees to Off from the Meeting Options web page before the meeting. Next, once this new setting is turned Off, you can also reverse this setting during the meeting to allow all attendees to turn their camera on. Finally, you can also enable or disable the camera for individual attendees. Note that these settings do not automatically turn on attendees’ camera or affect presenters and meeting organizers. This feature aims to focus on attendees to prevent disruptions during a meeting and help create a safe meeting environment. Learn more.

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AI-based noise suppression for Mac users
In November, we launched AI-based noise suppression for Windows. Now, we are expanding this feature for Mac users. Real-time AI noise suppression feature automatically removes unwelcome background noise during your meetings. Your audio feed is analyzed to filter out the noise and retain only the speech signal. You can also control how much noise suppression you want, including a high setting to suppress more background noise. This feature is now available for all Mac users except devices with M1 ARM processor. Learn more.

Improved participant list
The participant list is now broken out into three sections: Lobby, Presenters, and Attendees. For Lobby, you can now review the full list of people waiting before admitting them all into the meeting. Attendees are sorted in alphabetical order and those who raise their hands are elevated to the top of the participant list.

Search in meeting participant list
You can now search by name or PSTN within the meeting participants roster. The user can continue to search for participants outside the meeting and request for them to join. Whether you are trying to admit a specific attendee into the meeting or pin someone during the meeting, this new search feature makes it easy to quickly locate a specific participant and perform the desired action.

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Multiple Choice Quiz option for Microsoft Forms Poll in Teams Meetings
Now, you can launch multiple-choice quizzes (previously known as “Correct Answer Choice”) in your Teams meetings. For this new type of poll question, perfect for trivia questions or knowledge checks, you can mark one or more choices to be correct. After your meeting participants vote, the correct answer(s) to the multiple-choice quiz are shown in the Results card. You can also reference these polls results in read-only mode where all your forms are normally stored. This feature exists not just for Teams Meeting polls (in the pop-up window), but also for polls in Teams Chat both inside and outside of meetings.

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New Calling Experiences
Simplify the calling experience with a streamlined view that shows contacts, voicemail, and calling history together. Previously, you had to select each of these in different tabs. Now, it is consolidated in the same screen, making it easier to initiate or return a call with a single click.

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Teams casting with Mobile Phone for Microsoft Teams Rooms
For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t necessarily require setting up a formal meeting, people can use Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room running on Windows, and display content from their mobile phone. Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored locally on their device or accessible via Office 365. Learn more.

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Group chat with external users
Chat with up to 250 participants across multiple organizations in a single chat. This makes it easy to start a chat with external partners, just like how it’s done today within an organization. External group chat is expanding on the existing ability for Teams users to find, participate in 1:1 chat, calls, and set up meetings with external Teams users in federated organizations. This feature is part of Microsoft Teams Connect, which enables users to share a team with guest users, and share channels as well as chat with people from multiple organizations right from their own tenants.

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Categories: Science and Technology