COVID has caused many changes to our daily work lives. One of the biggest changes has come from a huge increase of users working from home. As the workforce has become more distributed the traditional in person meetings have gone the way of the VHS. Users have been switching to online meetings for everything from daily touch points to Corporate Happy Hours. In fact Microsoft has seen an astonishing increase in Teams usage over the last several months. With the increased usage Microsoft has doubled down on enhancing the capabilities of Teams and finding new and interesting ways to facilitate the meeting experience. If you have not had a chance to check out some of these new features please check out this article from Microsoft, Reimagining virtual collaboration. If you want to jump right in and start taking advantage of them as they roll out to your tenant please follow these directions.
Turn on the new experience
- Open the Teams app in Windows or Mac (These settings are currently only available for the Desktop App for Windows and Mac.)
- Click on your profile pic at the top of Teams and choose Settings > General
- On the General Section click the check box next to “Turn on new meeting experience (New meetings and calls will open in separate windows. Requires restarting Teams.)”
- Close out of the Settings and Restart Teams
- Right-click or Cmd-click the Teams icon in the Windows task bar or Mac System Tray
- Select Quit
- Open Teams back up as you normally would
What will you see now that it is on?
Meetings Pop Out
Once you turn on the new experience one of the first things that you will notice is that when you start a meeting it will pop-out in to its own window. This is especially useful when you need to continue to utilize the other features of Teams while on a call.
If by chance after following the procedure above you do not experience this please make sure you have the latest version of Teams installed. To do this go back up and click on your profile pic but this time select “Check for Updates”. This will check and download any updates to teams in the background for you. Once it is done updating please close and restart Teams following the same directions as above.
Meetings Controls Moved
The controls for your meetings have been moved to the top bar of the new Popped Out window. This is where you can turn on and off your camera as well as mute your mic among others.
Large Gallery View
When you are in a meeting where 10 or more users are sharing video you can turn on the “Gallery” view option which will let you see up to 49 video streams at one time. To do this click on the ••• in the control bar of your meeting and choose the Gallery option.
Here is an example:
Together Mode
Microsoft has been doing a lot of research on how to increase meeting efficiency and bring meeting participants together in all new ways. The new Together mode is a prime example. When you have 5 or more participants sharing video you can turn on Together mode. Together mode uses real time image processing to remove your background and then insert you in to a virtual seat like you were sitting in a conference room. According to Microsoft’s research by removing the backgrounds and putting everyone together on one screen users experience less meeting fatigue and find it easier to collaborate.
If you would like to get more information on how to get Teams for your organization please complete the form below and we will get back to you ASAP.