Enhancing Inter-organizational Collaborations: Microsoft Teams Resolves Cross-Version Conferencing Predicament while Introducing the Illuminating Light Theme

Microsoft Teams has announced plans for a major update that addresses the most crucial issue of cross-meeting compatibility between Microsoft Teams (free) and Microsoft Teams for organizations. This has been a long-standing problem that has caused confusion for users.

In the February update, users of both types of Microsoft Teams will be able to collaborate together within their own Teams client. This solves the issue of not being able to join cross-version meetings through the client and having to access them as guests through a web browser instead.

Other new features that will be updated in Teams include:

– Light Theme: A bright alternative for those who do not prefer the Dark Theme.
– Gallery Display: The display of participants in the gallery will now be uniform, allowing users to choose grid sizes of 4, 9, 16, or 49 tiles (default is 16).
– Highlighting of Participants: Participants who raise their hand or are speaking at the moment will have a highlighted frame to make them more visible.
– Hide Self-View: The option to hide our own video feed on the screen, preventing distractions and self-consciousness (a new “Hide me” menu will be added), while others can still see our video.
– Shorter Meeting Invitations Link: Meeting invitation links will be shorter, making it easier to share.

In the case of meetings where participants join through Teams Room devices with a panoramic view of the entire room, the grid layout of the meeting room will automatically expand to ensure that remote participants can see everyone clearly. The size can be adjusted as needed.

For meetings with participants who toggle their cameras on and off, Teams allows us to reduce the size of tiles for participants with their cameras turned off, displaying them as separate zones.

Furthermore, the settings screen for microphone, speaker, and camera during meetings will be redesigned with a drop-down menu for easier configuration.

TLDR: Microsoft Teams plans to update its platform, solving the issue of cross-meeting compatibility and introducing new features such as Light Theme, uniform grid display, highlighting of participants, the option to hide self-view, shorter meeting invitation links, and improved settings for audio and video devices during meetings.