Have you tried these new MS Teams features?
The last few months have been eventful and exciting for Microsoft teams as the number of users who use the software has increased due to the global pandemic that has restricted people from meeting physically. During this period, Microsoft has added and improved several features of the Application making it more user-friendly, work-friendly, and a tool that helps to achieve productivity for the user. We will take a look at some of these features.
Meetings & Calling
The latest update of Microsoft teams has a new large gallery view video of up to 49 participants at once on a single screen (7×7) rolled out with the unique multi-window experience. To take advantage of this new view, users need to turn on the new multi-window meeting experience. How can this be achieved?
- While in a Teams meeting, select the three-dots icon, if not grayed out and if there are ten or more active video fees, then select Large gallery.
- The meeting window changes to show more live video feeds of up to 49 feeds.
Spotlighting someone’s video
Do you know that you can now spotlight someone in a Team’s meeting, pinning their video to be the main video people see? So if that person is making their presentation and you want only their video to be the main video people see. This helps to keep everyone focus on the meeting and not be easily distracted by things around them. To enable this during a video,
- Right-click on the person’s video itself and select Spotlight from the menu. Alternatively, you can select Show Participants to see a list of everyone in the meeting. Search for the person whose video you want to highlight in the list, right-click their name, and select Spotlight,
When you’re ready to end the Spotlight, right-click again and choose to Stop spotlighting.
To highlight your video for everyone else,
- Select Show participants. Under Participants, right-click on your name and select Spotlight.
Right-click again and choose to Stop spotlighting to exit.
Search within a chat or channel
Looking to recollect some details in the Teams channel or chat, you can now search for it in the Teams chat or channel. How? Go to the chat or channel, press Ctrl + F (or Cmd + F for Mac), then type what you want to search for. You’ll get results from just that channel or chat. This also works for one-on-one and group chats!
Preview New Meeting
With the new experience in Teams, when you join a call or meeting in the Teams desktop app, it will pop out in another window, allowing you to continue to use the main window without losing the view of the meeting and calls. Interested in trying this out? See how to see a list of what you’ll get to preview.
- Select your profile picture at the top right of Teams, then Settings
- On the General tab under Application, select Turn on new meeting experience. Then close Settings
- Finally, restart Teams so the changes take effect.
Channel meetings and access information
Got to meet almost immediately, and everyone is online? You don’t need to schedule a meeting; the latest update in Teams allows anyone to start a meeting almost immediately. You can also use this feature, and you will get the same options for setting your audio and video as you do with a scheduled meeting. To do this,
- Select the Meet button at the top of a channel and choose to meet right away or to schedule a meeting
- When you choose to Meet now, you’ll get the same options for setting your audio and video up before joining as you do for other meetings.
To view Access Channel Information,
- Click the Channel Info; you’ll get the About section, a list of all the members who have access to the channel, and people who’ve recently contributed to the channel.
