Windows 10: New AI based noise suppression in Microsoft Teams meetings

Brink · Dec 16, 2020

Whether it be multiple meetings occurring in a small space, children playing loudly nearby, or construction noise outside of your home office, unwanted background noise can be really distracting in Teams meetings. We are excited to announce that users will have the ability to remove unwelcome background noise during their calls and meetings with our new AI-based noise suppression option.

Users can enable this helpful new feature by adjusting their device settings before their call or meeting and selecting "High" in the "Noise suppression" drop-down (note this feature is currently only supported in the Teams Windows desktop client). See this support article for details about how to turn it on and more here: https://aka.ms/noisesuppression.

Our new noise suppression feature works by analyzing an individualâs audio feed and uses specially trained deep neural networks to filter out noise and only retain speech. While traditional noise suppression algorithms can only address simple stationary noise sources such as a consistent fan noise, our AI-based approach learns the difference between speech and unnecessary noise and is able to suppress various non-stationary noises, such as keyboard typing or food wrapper crunching. With the increased work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, noises such as vacuuming, your childâs conflicting school lesson or kitchen noises have become more common but are effectively removed by our new AI-based noise suppression, exemplified in the video below.

The AI-based noise suppression relies on machine learning (ML) to learn the difference between clean speech and noise. The key is to train the ML model on a representative dataset to ensure it works in all situations our Teams customers are experiencing. There needs to be enough diversity in the data set in terms of the clean speech, the noise types, and the environments from which our customers are joining online meetings.

To achieve this dataset diversity, we have created a large dataset with approximately 760 hours of clean speech data and 180 hours of noise data. To comply with Microsoftâs strict privacy standards, we ensured that no customer data is being collected for this data set. Instead, we either used publicly available data or crowdsourcing to collect specific scenarios. For clean speech we ensured that we had a balance of female and male speech and we collected data from 10+ languages which also include tonal languages to ensure that our model will not change the meaning of a sentence by distorting the tone of the words. For the noise data we included 150 noise types to ensure we cover diverse scenarios that our customers may run into from keyboard typing to toilet flushing or snoring. Another important aspect was to include emotions in our clean speech so that expressions like laughter or crying are not suppressed. The characteristics of the environment from which our customers are joining their online Teams meetings has a strong impact on the speech signal as well. To capture that diversity, we trained our model with data from more than 3,000 real room environments and more than 115,000 synthetically created rooms.

Since we use deep learning it is important to have a powerful model training infrastructure. We use Microsoft Azure to allow our team to develop improved versions of our ML model. Another challenge is that the extraction of original clean speech from the noise needs to be done in a way that the human ear perceives as natural and pleasant. Since there are no objective metrics which are highly correlated to human perception, we developed a framework which allowed us to send the processed audio samples to crowdsourcing vendors where human listeners rated their audio quality on a one to five-star scale to produce mean opinion scores (MOS). With these human ratings we were able to develop a new perceptual metric which together with the subjective human ratings allowed us to make fast progress on improving the quality of our deep learning models.

To advance the research in this field we have also open-sourced our dataset and the perceptual quality crowdsourcing framework. This has been the basis of two competitions we hosted as part of the Interspeech 2020 and ICASSP 2021 conferences as outlined here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/rese...hallenge/home/

Finally, we ensured that our deep learning model could run efficiently on the Teams client in real-time. By optimizing for human perception, we were able to achieve a good trade-off between quality and complexity which ensures that most Windows devices our customers are using can take advantage of our AI-based noise suppression. Our team is currently working on bringing this feature also to our Mac and mobile platforms.

AI based noise suppression is an example of how our deep learning technology has a profound impact on our customerâs quality of experience.
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...i/ba-p/1992318

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Brink · Dec 16, 2020

New Meeting and Calling Experience in Microsoft Teams

You may have seen the recent announcement of new meeting features in Teams in Reimagining virtual collaboration for the future of work and learning (if not, check it out!). Today, we’re pleased to share that we’re making several of these features available to most users of Teams over the next few days.

We’re gradually rolling the features out. Once you’ve got the build that has the new experience (Teams desktop app only), you’ll have the option to turn it on. Read on to learn how to turn it on, what comes with it, how to use it, and answers to some common questions. Let’s get right to it!

Turn on the new experience

You do this via a checkbox in Teams Settings. Here’s how:

Select your profile pic at the top of the Teams app, then Settings > General. (General should be what’s showing when you open Settings, so you probably won’t have to select it.)

Select Turn on new meeting experience.

Restart Teams by doing the following:

a. Right-click or Cmd-click the Teams icon in the Windows task bar or Mac System Tray.
b. Select Quit.
c. Start Teams again like you normally would.
You might also see a notification that announces the new experience or reminds you to turn it on. Then it’s even easier—in that notification, choose Turn it on now if you’re ready at that point, or Maybe later if you’re in the middle of something.

What happens after you’ve turned it on

After turning on the new experience and restarting Teams, the biggest thing you’ll probably notice is that any calls and meetings will pop out into their own window, separate from the main Teams window. Like this:

If you’re still seeing calls and meetings in the main Teams window after turning the setting on and restarting, go to your profile pic again and select Check for updates. Once that is done, do the same quit and restart procedure per above. That should do the trick.

But wait, there’s more

Here are the other new things you’ll see and can try out:

Meeting controls are moved to the top of the meeting screen. They’re docked there so you always have access to them (without jiggling your mouse) and they’re out of the way of the content and video that’s being shared.

Large gallery view lets you see up to 49 video streams at once. This view is available when there are 10 or more attendees who are sharing video. To switch to large gallery, go to More options (…) in the meeting controls > Large gallery.

Here’s what it looks like—pretty cool to see all those faces!

Together mode lets you feel like you’re in the same shared space with everyone in the meeting. (It might be even more fun than Large gallery.) It’s in the same menu as Large gallery, just below it. Here’s Together mode:

Together mode is available when 5 or more participants are sharing video.

Both Large gallery and Together mode are being rolled out gradually over the next few weeks. If you don’t see them right away, check again later.

Meeting notes are now taken directly on the meeting’s Meeting notes tab in the main Teams window. (This is one of the benefits of having the meeting in a separate window.) To access or take notes from within the meeting window, select More options (…) > Show meeting notes and you’ll see the usual side pane come up. In the pane, there is a Take notes button that brings you to the Meeting notes tab.

Focus mode is available when content is being shared. If you’d like to pay close attention to content, without the distraction of seeing video feeds, Focus mode is for you. It’s available in the meeting controls under More options (…) > Focus mode. Give it a whirl!

Common questions

Has screen sharing changed? How do I share my screen?

No big changes here. In the meeting controls at the top, select Share screen. The screen choices you have will come up from the bottom of the meeting window just like they did before.

To stop sharing your screen, select Close screen share in the meeting controls. It’s the icon next to the Leave button.

Why are message extensions grayed out? I like to send polls in meeting chat.

We’re working on it! For now, if you want to send a poll or use other message extensions in the meeting chat, go back to the main Teams window, select the meeting chat (either via the Calendar or the list in Chat), and do it there.

What about InVision Freehand whiteboard?

Yup, we’re working on that, too.

Will live events also open in their own window?

No, not yet—that functionality is coming soon.

Focus mode is nice, but what about Full screen view?

We like Full screen view, too! (It’s available currently in meetings that happen in the main Teams window.) We’re working on bringing that to the new experience as well. When we do, you’ll have both Focus mode and Full screen view to choose from.

Is this available for any license type?

The new experience isn’t available for Teams for Government or Teams free just yet. But soon.

Which platforms?

The new meeting and calling experience is available for the Teams desktop client on both Windows and Mac. It’s not available for Teams on the web. (If you need to download the desktop client, go here.)

What if I don’t turn the new experience on?

We’d love for you to try it out. We’re making it available in this way partly because in the near future, we’ll turn the experience on by default. Eventually, the setting to turn it on and off will go away. At that time, the experience of meetings in separate windows, with the meeting controls at the top, will become the norm. So we want you to have ample time to get familiar with it.
That’s our overview and how-to for this new meeting and calling experience. We hope you’ll try it. Remember to check for updates and restart the Teams client after you turn it on. Enjoy!
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...s/ba-p/1537581

Brink · Dec 16, 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 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqa7N83LLptyHiUNIrdFB11tacCLcvVpy. 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 · Dec 16, 2020

New Microsoft Teams app update released for Android and iOS - Nov. 21

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 1416/1.0.0.2020111001 for Android

WHAT'S NEW

Search the way you talk. Natural language support when searching for messages.

Spelling suggestions for search terms that might be spelled incorrectly.

Caller ID for voicemail messages.

Use the operating system PiP when in calls and meetings.

View up to 49 participants in a meeting with ’Together mode’ and large gallery mode.

View spotlighted participants in a meeting.

Source and download: Microsoft Teams - Apps on Google Play

Microsoft Teams version 2.1.0 for iOS

WHAT'S NEW

Set your status to Offline and be invisible while working in Teams

Improved and simplified notification settings

Block notifications while in meetings to reduce distractions

Manage the channels you're notified about in one place

Swipe left on an account to delete any cached info and remove it from your list of accounts

Source and download: Microsoft Teams on the App Store

Windows 10: New AI based noise suppression in Microsoft Teams meetings

New AI based noise suppression in Microsoft Teams meetings

New AI based noise suppression in Microsoft Teams meetings

New AI based noise suppression in Microsoft Teams meetings

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