Microsoft Teams will soon enable up to 49 visible on-screen participants, on calls. This expands the number of meeting attendees from the present limit of nine, which Microsoft announced last week. I reached out to Microsoft and asked about a timeline when the new feature would be available, and I'm told by a spokesperson for the collaboration company:
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“The Microsoft Teams roadmap does include increasing the number of people viewable during a Teams video call to 49.” In terms of timeline, things are still unclear, but this is a major enhancement for the collaboration company, which can now compete with Zoom and other comparable video conferencing systems.
Microsoft Teams extends group chat, instant messaging, as well as video/audio calling, and the solution's seen massive adoption because of the novel Coronavirus. Just last month, Microsoft announced two separate daily active usage figures, in April saying it had reached 44 million DAUs. Shortly after, in May, Microsoft said it gained 31 million new DAUs, pushing its new usage figure to 75 million DAUs.
This week Microsoft also rolled out Teams and Skype for consumer interoperability, making it easier to connect the two platforms. Zoom's video conferencing solution has too, grown at an exceptional rate, and Microsoft likely released the feature to compete with Zoom, as the Teams app has the potential to lose users to Zoom due to its current limit of nine on-screen participants.
Zoom has grown at faster rate of adaption than that of Microsoft Teams, with Zoom this week reporting its daily meeting participants had reached 300 million, up from 10 million in December 2019. This is 100 million additional users than the 200 million daily participants Zoom said it had in March 2020 during the start of the pandemic.
Microsoft newly added a feature that lets Teams users upload custom background images as well. The company said it would add another much-anticipated feature, enabling separate windows for meetings and calls within the Teams app. Right now, 'Teams' restricts users to single-window usage within the app at a time. This month, I'm told, "Multi-window experiences" will debut in Teams meetings and calls.
