In August, Teams will simultaneously display up to 49 participants in its video conference. Microsoft started rolling out this 7 by 7 grid this month and is planning this feature for all users in public preview by the end of August.
In March, Teams only displayed four people on the screen. Microsoft then launched a 3×3 gille in May, which still left it far behind Zoom (which has a 7×7 grid), and Cisco Webex (5×5). This shortcoming had led some Teams customers to use Zoom for meetings with large numbers of people. The arrival of a 7×7 grid could convince them to no longer use other videoconferencing tools in this context.
Microsoft will also soon allow 1,000 people to participate in a webinar, up from 250 so far.
On the official Teams feedback forum, over 56,000 users had request Microsoft to support a larger group video display. That is more than twice the number of votes for the second most popular request, namely to be able to log into multiple Teams accounts simultaneously.
The 7×7 grid will however be a “preview”, to be considered as such. And companies that want to benefit from it will have to activate it.
Immersive experience
Microsoft also unveiled a new, one-of-a-kind meeting device called “Together Mode”. This function allows participants to be placed in seats in a virtual auditorium.
“Together Mode puts participants in a shared virtual environment, giving them the impression of being seated in the same room,” Microsoft sums up. “It aims to recreate the conditions of a face-to-face meeting and makes it possible to better understand who is speaking, to interpret facial expressions, and to facilitate the detection of non-verbal clues that are important for better understanding and better interaction. “.
Microsoft plans to eventually add other environments, such as the coffee room for example.
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Later in 2020, Microsoft will also change its traditional view of meetings by placing the most active participants in the most important positions, and putting users who only have audio enabled on the UI side.
Among the other improvements to come, the publisher promises jumbled real-time transcription of exchanges (but it does not say that French is among the first available languages), subtitling with attribution to the speaker (for accessibility to the hearing impaired), reactions with emoji or even video filters that allow you to adjust the light levels and the camera point.
With all these new features, Microsoft is clearly targeting Zoom, which has “stolen” several large accounts for several months, like LVMH.
Beyond Teams videoconferencing, new features should also enrich instant messaging with automatic suggested responses, a Tasks tab (“a consolidated view of tasks that are assigned (Microsoft To Do, Planner and Outlook) to a user », Explains Microsoft), or integration with the voice assistant Cortana.
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