Microsoft Teams - View Participants Hi there, When I'm in a Microsoft Teams call, I can only see the person who is speaking, with the others just dots but others can see everyone. Microsoft's upcoming release also includes a change that will reserve the nine-person display for users that have their webcams turned on. Currently, Teams shows on its display the four most recent people to make noise in a meeting. If a user's webcam is off, the person's name or phone number occupies one of the four slots. Microsoft is adding a lot of new features to Microsoft Teams. A new Together Mode uses AI to place everyone in a meeting in a virtual auditorium. Teams is also getting emoji reactions, a dynamic. Microsoft Teams is the hub for team collaboration in Microsoft 365 that integrates the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. Microsoft Teams vs Zoom: We're working on 49 on-screen video-callers too, says Microsoft. Microsoft reckons it's got 49 Teams video-call participants on its roadmap, but there's no timeframe for.
Microsoft says it will soon address one of the biggest limitations for its Teams video calls when compared to other popular conferencing tools such as Zoom.
The company disclosed it's working to develop a larger gallery view so that users will be able to see more of the participants on a call simultaneously. Currently, Teams users can only see the last four participants who have spoken, in a 2 x 2 grid.
[Related: Zoom Outage Tests Limits Of Cloud Videoconferencing]
By the end of April, Microsoft is promising that Teams will support up to nine visible participants at a time on video calls. An image shared by Microsoft suggests Teams will have a 3 x 3 grid for viewing nine participants simultaneously.
'In parallel we are continuing work to increase this limit even further,' a Microsoft representative posted in a Teams user feedback forum.
Teams saw explosive growth in March as countless businesses shifted to work-from-home deployments amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the forthcoming Teams video update, 'the increase of visible participants will continue to keep Microsoft competitive against other options like Zoom,' said Travis Adair, principal partner and vice president of Columbia, Mo.-based InfiniTech Consulting, in an email to CRN.
Microsoft says that Teams added 12 million users during a single week in March, bringing the number of daily active users to 44 million. Teams video calls grew by more than 1,000 percent last month, Microsoft reported.
However, online meetings tools that are primarily geared toward video, such as Zoom, appear to have garnered more widespread attention recently when it comes to video conferencing. Zoom's advantages include the ability to view up to 49 participants at a time.
Along with plans to add an expanded gallery view, Microsoft is rolling out other updates on video features for Teams.
Custom backgrounds for Teams video calls are now generally available, as is a capability for meeting organizers to instantly 'end meeting' by clicking a button in the control bar, Microsoft announced last week.
'With the upgrade to more concurrent visible screens and the new background customization feature, this puts Microsoft Teams up there with Zoom and GoToMeeting,' said Miguel Zamarripa, CIO of Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Simpleworks IT.
Meanwhile, a 'raise hand' feature--to let meeting participants send a visual cue when they want to speak--will debut this month, Microsoft said.
At InfiniTech Consulting, Adair said the solution provider has been doing a 'massive amount of work' with Teams in recent weeks.
Use cases that InfiniTech has seen include schools using Teams to assist with remote learning and staff meetings, municipalities using it for broadcasting city council meetings, and even some adoption by health care organizations for telemedicine, he said.
'Many clients are rapidly adopting Teams for internal and external communications and are loving the identity integration and app integrations with their existing Office 365 stack,' Adair said.
Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16. Register for the AI event of the year.
Microsoft Teams is expanding the number of video call participants shown on the screen from up to nine participants (3×3 grid) to up to 49 participants (7×7 grid). The change is rolling out in preview this month and will hit general availability in the fall. The announcement comes as part of a bigger update for educators — Teams for Education is getting Breakout Rooms so students can meet and collaborate in small groups, a hand-raising feature for students, Attendance Reports, and Class Insights. It will also get new options to prevent students from starting meetings unattended and limit who can present, as well as a lobby to verify who is trying to join.
Microsoft Teams 9 Person View Video
Microsoft Teams is the company's Office 365 chat-based collaboration tool that competes with Slack, Facebook's Workplace, and Google Chat. But lately Microsoft has shifted its competitive focus to Zoom, which has exploded during the pandemic to lead the video calling space. Indeed, Microsoft's grid view will match Zoom's, which currently has a 49 on-screen participant limit. It will also hurdle over Google Meet, which supports up to 16 video call participants shown at one time (4×4 grid). The maximum number of participants on a video call is 100 for Google Meet, 250 for Microsoft Teams, and 500 for Zoom.
Microsoft Teams is the company's fastest-growing business app ever. That was true in 2018, long before lockdowns started juicing up remote work and learning numbers. Microsoft's Jeff Teper recently told VentureBeat that Teams 'will be even bigger than Windows.' As of April, Microsoft Teams had 75 million daily active users, up 70% from just six weeks prior. That month, Microsoft saw more than 200 million meeting participants in a single day. By comparison, Google Meet saw 100 million meeting participants and Zoom saw 300 million daily meeting participants. (Unlike daily active users, 'meeting participants' can count the same user more than once.) In a bid to overtake Zoom, Microsoft is chasing businesses, consumers, and educators alike.
Teams features coming this summer
Teachers who have been forced to use Microsoft Teams over the past few months have been frustrated when it comes to controlling what students can do in the app. This summer, Microsoft is adding meeting options that prevent students from starting meetings unattended and let teachers determine who can present in a meeting. Teachers will also gain the ability to create a Meeting Lobby so only assigned students can join a meeting.
The fact that these features did not exist before is a stark reminder that Teams was not designed with the classroom in mind. Nonetheless, that's one of the ways it's being used. If Microsoft wants to ensure school boards don't ditch Teams in droves come next school season, it has to keep up.
Use cases that InfiniTech has seen include schools using Teams to assist with remote learning and staff meetings, municipalities using it for broadcasting city council meetings, and even some adoption by health care organizations for telemedicine, he said.
'Many clients are rapidly adopting Teams for internal and external communications and are loving the identity integration and app integrations with their existing Office 365 stack,' Adair said.
Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16. Register for the AI event of the year.
Microsoft Teams is expanding the number of video call participants shown on the screen from up to nine participants (3×3 grid) to up to 49 participants (7×7 grid). The change is rolling out in preview this month and will hit general availability in the fall. The announcement comes as part of a bigger update for educators — Teams for Education is getting Breakout Rooms so students can meet and collaborate in small groups, a hand-raising feature for students, Attendance Reports, and Class Insights. It will also get new options to prevent students from starting meetings unattended and limit who can present, as well as a lobby to verify who is trying to join.
Microsoft Teams 9 Person View Video
Microsoft Teams is the company's Office 365 chat-based collaboration tool that competes with Slack, Facebook's Workplace, and Google Chat. But lately Microsoft has shifted its competitive focus to Zoom, which has exploded during the pandemic to lead the video calling space. Indeed, Microsoft's grid view will match Zoom's, which currently has a 49 on-screen participant limit. It will also hurdle over Google Meet, which supports up to 16 video call participants shown at one time (4×4 grid). The maximum number of participants on a video call is 100 for Google Meet, 250 for Microsoft Teams, and 500 for Zoom.
Microsoft Teams is the company's fastest-growing business app ever. That was true in 2018, long before lockdowns started juicing up remote work and learning numbers. Microsoft's Jeff Teper recently told VentureBeat that Teams 'will be even bigger than Windows.' As of April, Microsoft Teams had 75 million daily active users, up 70% from just six weeks prior. That month, Microsoft saw more than 200 million meeting participants in a single day. By comparison, Google Meet saw 100 million meeting participants and Zoom saw 300 million daily meeting participants. (Unlike daily active users, 'meeting participants' can count the same user more than once.) In a bid to overtake Zoom, Microsoft is chasing businesses, consumers, and educators alike.
Teams features coming this summer
Teachers who have been forced to use Microsoft Teams over the past few months have been frustrated when it comes to controlling what students can do in the app. This summer, Microsoft is adding meeting options that prevent students from starting meetings unattended and let teachers determine who can present in a meeting. Teachers will also gain the ability to create a Meeting Lobby so only assigned students can join a meeting.
The fact that these features did not exist before is a stark reminder that Teams was not designed with the classroom in mind. Nonetheless, that's one of the ways it's being used. If Microsoft wants to ensure school boards don't ditch Teams in droves come next school season, it has to keep up.
Teams features coming this fall
Microsoft says its 7×7 grid will be particularly useful for the school setting because teachers report seeing all their students' faces simultaneously 'makes a big difference in student engagement, as well as social and emotional connection.' But that's not the only feature coming this fall.
Educators will also be able to create virtual Breakout Rooms so students can meet and collaborate in small groups. This is similar to a Zoom for Education feature that teachers use when they want students to do group work.
Teams for Education will also let students 'raise their hands' during class, mimicking the physical classroom. (If this sounds familiar, that's because it's the same raise-hand feature that was announced for all of Teams in March — Microsoft is just highlighting it for teachers today.) Attendance Reports will help teachers keep track of which students show up, which is a lot harder to do when you're trying to wrangle students virtually.
Finally, Class Insights will take this further with an 'intelligent data analytics breakdown showing how students engage with the class.' That includes assignments turned in, activity metrics and grades, and a new trends view.
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