Windows 10: Microsoft Teams custom backgrounds, live captions, schedule meetings

Brink · Jun 13, 2020

Video capabilities, once a nice to have, have become a critical component of collaborative work.

In fact, when the world moved to remote work earlier this year, Microsoft Teams customers turned on video in Teams meetings two times more than they did before many of us began working from home full-time. We also saw total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March. These trends, along with daily conversations with customers navigating remote collaboration, inspired us to accelerate new features to customize your video experiences and make meetings more productive, comfortable, and fun.

Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams, along with new features in the free version of Teams. Itâs all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyoneâs well-being in mind. Letâs get into the details.

Microsoft Teams custom background effects are now available!

When joining a Teams meeting, you want the focus on youânot that messy bookcase behind you. Last year, we introduced background blur to help everyone preserve privacy and keep their attention on their teammates. Our design team also created a collection of preset images that range from professional (a modern office) to pretty silly (a cartoonish beach scene). Today, weâre expanding these options so you can customize your background by uploading your own images or choosing one of the collections of backgrounds now available online.

No need for a green screen, or even a blank wall. Teams uses a highly trained model that differentiates the subject from their background and can impose a custom background over everything else, making it easy and fast to start expressing yourself in all your meetings.

Background collections to check out

With the whole world turning to video, companies are getting creative with collections of backgrounds you can easily download and then upload to Teams. Here are some options.

From a booth at Bobâs Burgers to a mountain of LEGO building blocks, thereâs something for everyone in this collection from FOX.

If you want to be the coolest coworker when your colleaguesâ kids wander on camera, our Xbox collection has you covered.

Celebrate 30 years of Microsoft Solitaire, one of the most played games on the planet every day, and show your love for the game with either the blue or green Microsoft Solitaire background.

Look out for great event-specific collections too! Our Microsoft designers created 20 virtual backgrounds for you to show your pride and support for the LGBTQI+ community. Download their colorful creations on Tuesday, June 16, at microsoft.com/pride.

New features now available in the free version of Microsoft Teams

With so many people moving suddenly to remote work, the free version of Teams has become an important way for teams to meet and collaborate online. We want to help them continue to connect effectively, so weâre bringing several new features to this version of Teams.

Schedule your meetings in advance

Free version users are now able to schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance. This capability builds upon the existing ability to âMeet Now.â Meeting schedulers have the option of either copying the meeting link to send directly to other participants or sending an invite via Outlook or Google calendar. This much-requested capability is being rolled out to current users, while users who are just signing up now will be able to experience it soon. And right now, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teamsâso collaborate away!

Here is how you schedule and start meetings in the free version of Teams.

Use live captions

Teams free users can now turn on live captions during their calls and meetings. This feature makes meetings more inclusive, giving participants another way to follow along with the conversation and address the needs of participants with different hearing abilities or language proficiencies. Itâs currently available as a preview in U.S. English.

Note: If you are already a user of the free version of Teams, this update will automatically happen, and you will be able to schedule meetings, as well.

The free version of Teams also provides all types of organizations up to 500,000 users with:

Unlimited chat and search

Audio and video calling

Scheduled meetings

10 GB team file storage and 2 GB personal file storage per person

Ability to use the Office web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote)

Unlimited app integration

And much more!

And itâs all backed by Microsoftâs secure, global infrastructureâso all of our users can enjoy the confidence of a secure and reliable service. You can learn more and sign up for this free version today with just your email address here.

Thereâs no doubt that video is now a huge part of our daily work lives. With Teams, we want to provide video experiences that feel personal and comfortable to every customer, from students and teachers adjusting to remote work to globe-spanning corporate teams aligning around a tight deadline. Custom background effects help you design the video experience that works best for youâwhether you need to hide a mess of toys or just want a funny background photo to give your team a laugh. Meanwhile, new features in the free version of Teams bring important meeting-scheduling capabilities to every Teams user. Itâs all part of our effort to provide the best collaboration tool for every individual, team, and organization on the planet. I hope you enjoy these new features, and I canât wait to bring you more exciting feature news in the days to come.
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Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micr...able-personal/

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Brink · Jun 13, 2020

New Microsoft Teams app update released for Android and iOS

Microsoft Teams is your hub for teamwork in Office 365. All your team conversations, files, meetings, and apps live together in a single shared workspace, and you can take it with you on your favorite mobile device. Whether youre sprinting towards a deadline or sharing your next big idea, Teams can help you achieve more.

Microsoft Teams version 1416/1.0.0.2020031206 for Android

WHAT'S NEW

Turn on live captions during a meeting or group call

View shared content when you join a meeting via a cellular phone call

PSTN callers will hear music while they are on hold

Bug fixes and performance improvements

Source and download: Microsoft Teams - Apps on Google Play

Microsoft Teams version 2.0.4 for iOS

WHAT'S NEW

Turn on live captions during a meeting or group call

View shared content when you join a meeting via a cellular phone call

PSTN callers will hear music while they are on hold

Get a link to channels to share with others

Long press the app icon for a shortcut to make a call

Get a tone and vibration alert for incoming calls while on a call

Bug fixes and performance improvements

Source and download: Microsoft Teams on the App Store

Brink · Jun 13, 2020

Microsoft Teams meetings for the classroom

Over the last few weeks, schools have been working tirelessly to enable distance learning for their students and faculty. We’ve heard directly from many of you about engaging students in lessons, encouraging student to student collaboration, and facilitating staff professional development all while remote and we are inspired. We also know these last few weeks have not been easy as uncertainty continues to grow worldwide and the need for our tools to be safe and reliable has never been greater. In all of this, we want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on how we can improve Microsoft Teams for distance learning, especially at such a critical time.

While we work on these improvements, we encourage you to explore the many ways you can use Teams today for online classes and meetings. We have created several resources to support you and your class during remote learning.

In this blog we have outlined how students, educators, and IT can maximize Teams for distance learning.

Getting started

Resources for educators

Learning Management System (LMS) integrations

Guidance for IT admins

What’s coming soon

Getting Started with Teams meetings

Creating, attending, and running meetings while using Teams for distance learning

Teams for Education Quick Start Guide (PDF) that includes meetings and calls

Microsoft Teams meetings training

Resources for educators

A how-to video or short webinar are convenient ways to learn directly from trusted experts. Below are a few that we recommend to help you quickly ramp up on Teams meetings.

Quick tips videos: Alice Keeler's Teams meeting "micro-PD"

EdTech expert Alice Keeler has developed a helpful set of “micro-PD" YouTube videos in a Playlist so you can quickly ramp up on Teams meetings. Each video is :30 to :45 seconds long and designed for you to master tips for teaching in Teams in under a minute. See for yourself in the video below!

You can access Alice’s entire Teams meetings micro-PD playlist and for more training, here is her entire YouTube. Bookmark both so you can reference at any time.

Webinar - Online lectures and classes with all your students

Dominic Williamson from our product team goes over how to use Teams meetings for distance learning for both K-12 and Higher Education students in this .

Webinar - Using Teams Meetings in the classroom and what's coming soon

Gordon Chang from our product group demonstrates Teams meetings and discusses the future roadmap in this (you can also review the PowerPoint slides).

LMS Integrations

We recently announced that Teams meetings can now easily be integrated with the world’s leading Learning Management Systems (LMS). Learn how you can create a Teams meeting right from within Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology and other LMSs.
Are you an LMS developer who wants to enable Teams meeting creation from within your LMS? We’ve got you covered. Learn how to install the Teams app inside of your LMS here.

IT admin guidance

We want you to be aware of and familiar with the different policy settings for Teams as you deploy. Here are two essential articles that all IT Admins should reference to get the most out of Teams meetings.

IT Admin guidance for setting up meetings

Manage meetings policies in Teams

What's coming soon

We have been listening closely to educators and have already integrated your feedback into our product plans. Here are the features we are currently recently announced, and we have many more being active worked on in UserVoice for Teams and education that you can get the latest status on. Just look for the "Working on it" status in UserVoice items

[table][tr][td]Enhancing meetings for Instruction[/td] [td]• Raise hand • Custom video background[/td] [/tr] [/table]

As we work to improve the Teams meetings experience for instruction, our top commitment is reliable service delivery to each school and university using Teams. We are also prioritizing features that ensure student safety by making it easier for educators to manage their online classes in Teams meetings.

Thank you again for making time to share your remote learning experiences with us! It is through your feedback that we can build a more useful education tool. Please continue to share your feedback and ideas through UserVoice and feel free to track all of these features on the public roadmap. We’ll continue to share updates on what we’re working on and what you can expect in the weeks to come.
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...d/ba-p/1282906

Brink · Jun 13, 2020

New Microsoft Teams app update released for Android and iOS - May 5

Microsoft Teams is your hub for teamwork in Office 365. All your team conversations, files, meetings, and apps live together in a single shared workspace, and you can take it with you on your favorite mobile device. Whether youre sprinting towards a deadline or sharing your next big idea, Teams can help you achieve more.

Microsoft Teams version 1416/1.0.0.2020043003 for Android

WHAT'S NEW

Create tags to @Mention a specific group of people. On a team name, tap ... > Manage tags to make a tag.

Opt out of call queues

Notification reliability improvements

Meeting join reliability improvements

Bug fixes and performance improvements

Source and download: Microsoft Teams - Apps on Google Play

Microsoft Teams version 2.0.9 for iOS

WHAT'S NEW

Create tags to @Mention a specific group of people. On a team name, tap ... > "Manage tags" to make a tag.

Blur your background in calls and meetings

Turn on live captions during a meeting or group call

View shared content when you join a meeting via a cellular phone call

Notification reliability improvements

Meeting join reliability improvements

Bug fixes and performance improvements

Source and download: Microsoft Teams on the App Store

Windows 10: Microsoft Teams custom backgrounds, live captions, schedule meetings

Microsoft Teams custom backgrounds, live captions, schedule meetings

Microsoft Teams custom backgrounds, live captions, schedule meetings

Microsoft Teams custom backgrounds, live captions, schedule meetings

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