In the new age of remote and “anywhere” work, tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom are emerging as the ultimate tool for team engagement. With these collaboration applications, companies can ensure better interactions between employees through things like video conferencing, screen sharing, messaging, and more.
Innovators like Microsoft and Zoom, two of the most popular tools for collaboration today, are even going above and beyond with next-level disruptive features. Immersive scenes that pull users into a more user-friendly and engaging experience are quickly grabbing attention on Zoom. At the same time, Microsoft’s Together Mode offers a unique way to bring employees together in a shared virtual environment on Teams.
What is Zoom Immersive Scenes?
Announced alongside a slew of updates to the Zoom meeting experience at Zoomtopia, Zoom Immersive Scenes aim to boost video call engagement. With these scenes, meeting hosts can place people into virtual settings like courtrooms, classrooms, and digital office spaces. The functionality mirrors the Together Mode offering from Microsoft Teams, which launched in July 2020.
The Immersive scenes experience aims to reduce the feelings of meeting fatigue that users are struggling with by creating a meeting space that’s closer to “real life”. These solutions can also improve the productivity in meetings, by getting team members more involved in the conversation.
Zoom Immersive scenes arrived at the same time as a variety of other tools to improve meeting room experiences, such as enhanced high-fidelity audio with background noise suppression. Zoom also marked the arrival of new meeting reactions and animations that allow people to react non-verbally to comments.
How Does Microsoft Teams Together Mode Compare?
Microsoft Teams Together mode was the original solution for creating more meaningful meeting moments through the use of virtual shared environments. Together modes connects people from around the world in a digital space by removing the grid format for video meetings and replacing it with a shared environment.
Together mode uses intelligent technology to pull an image from a video stream and create avatars for users. These avatars can then sit beside other people in a meeting room auditorium, to make everyone feel more connected. Together Mode came up with the solution as part of a strategy to help tackle the feelings of isolation that many employees were struggling with during the pandemic lockdown.
Microsoft believes that with Together mode, companies can encourage better connections between lager groups of people, and support more natural conversations in the business environment. If your team has a hard time staying focused in frequent video meetings, Together mode can help. The tool helps to keep people actively involved in conversation, while showcasing user sentiment.
A New Style of Video Conferencing
Both Zoom and Microsoft are successfully creating exciting and more immersive experiences for users who want to get the most out of the video conferencing landscape. With either Immersive scenes or Together mode, you can make your employees feel as though they’re closer together, without compromising on the benefits of remote and anywhere working.
For many business leaders, the arrival of these shared virtual environments in the video conferencing landscape could be the next step towards more effective meetings.
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