New Features in Teams

 

More Video Feeds

Microsoft has begun rolling out some new features for Microsoft Teams.

As you can see above, one of those new features is that Teams will now support up to 9 video feeds! This is the first step in moving beyond the 2 X 2 grid that Teams was limited to previously.

You won’t need to enable anything and you won’t be able to control the number of videos unless you decide to pin video feeds (which only affects your view.) This feature started rolling out last week but will take a couple of weeks to roll out everywhere. So you might have  it already or you might have a to wait a bit.

Raise Your Hand

Another new feature that should be most of the way rolled out now is the Raise Your Hand feature.

This new feature allows participants in a meeting to notify the presenter that they would like to speak. Everyone in a meeting will see a new button with a hand on the video tool bar. If you want to get the attention of a meeting presenter just push the button. This will trigger a notification on the presenter’s tool bar and put a hand next to your name in the participant view.

Edit Cross Channel Posts

Multiple Channel posts are my favorite time saver and now they work even better. If you forgot to include some vital info or want to update a post you made to multiple channels, simply find one of those posts, click the more dots to edit, make your changes and then click the check mark to send out the updates. Teams will then update the post on every channel you sent it to. You can also add more channels to the post if you want.

End the Meeting

Microsoft also added the ability for an organizer of a meeting to end the meeting for everyone. To do this (if you are the organizer) click on the three dots on the tool bar and then choose End Meeting. An ‘are you sure’ prompt will check to make sure you really want to do this. Click it and the meeting will be ended for all attendees.

Background Effects

In addition to the background blur, you can now choose from about 12 different background options, including a couple of Minecraft options (my favorite!) Your students will be interested in these options and I encourage you to embrace the fun.