Mumbai, Feb 17 Microsoft Teams recently released four new updates to improve user experience.
The new updates include a mute icon on the Windows taskbar and features for better managing breakout rooms and limiting disruptions, among others.
The mute icon on the taskbar will let users mute and unmute themselves directly from the Windows taskbar without opening the Teams window.
The new feature was released in the recent Windows 11 Build 22000.526 (KB5010414) for Windows Insiders in the Beta and Release Preview Channels. It’s available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel in build 22494.
It has also added new support for better managing breakout rooms that lets organisers extend the management of breakout rooms to up to 10 presenters during a meeting.
While only one manager can take control at a time, the designated breakout room manager will be able to perform several in-meeting functions such as assigning users to rooms, adding/deleting rooms, opening/closing rooms, reassigning users to rooms, sending announcements, re-creating rooms, setting timers, adjusting other breakout room settings, joining open rooms and sending announcements.
Organisers can now also reassign participants even when rooms are open. Further, assignments will persist across subsequent sessions and for recurring meetings.
For users on low-end hardware as well as those on high-end workstations and high-resolution monitors, Microsoft is ensuring that Teams meetings are as energy efficient as possible, regardless of setup, it said.
“This involved measuring power consumption, evaluating processes, and identifying opportunities to optimise the efficiency of each. Isolating and optimising each of these processes enabled the reduction of power consumption up to 50 per cent for energy-intensive scenarios such as having over 10 users in a meeting when everyone has their video turned on,” it explained.
In order to limit disruptions, the platform will now allow users to mute participants and manually disable their camera and/or microphone during meetings.
“This new feature is especially useful if you want to completely avoid distractions coming from someone’s audio or video throughout your entire meeting,” it said.
Another disruption might occur when someone who was not expected is in a meeting, has overstayed their invitation, or is being distracting.
Users and other presenters can now also remove attendees causing disruption. They can find these in-meeting controls by opening “More actions” (the ellipses) next to the attendee whom they want to manage and selecting the action needed.
Published on
February 17, 2022
