Coming Soon to Microsoft Teams

Any company that experiences relative success today will mostly agree on one thing; listen to your customers. Today, feature requests are not uncommon, and many times, companies first hear of genius product enhancements from those seeking a simpler user experience.

So, who better to tell collaboration platform developer Microsoft how it should enhance Teams? Teams users themselves, of course. Aside from being masters at building anticipation, Microsoft is actually quite active on forums where it often offers a glance into its development road map, giving users often real-time progress reports on what it’s working on.

One user on Microsoft’s forum for feature requests, UserVoice, recently complained, “When in a video chat, it only shows the active video for the last four people who have spoken in the chat. At the bottom of the Teams client, it shows icons for all those in the chat, if it could show of small video for all those in the chat who have their cameras turned on, it would be beneficial.” The same user further pointed out, this was a problem with most video conferencing applications, leaving Microsoft to respond:

“We’re rolling out our first update to view nine participants simultaneously by the end of April. In parallel, we are continuing work to increase this limit even further”

The same user also noted, offerings like the freshly re-branded ‘Google Meet,’ are one of the few platforms that do show all video participants on the screen. Microsoft will soon also roll out multi-window chat support, and the ability to log into multiple Teams accounts on desktop. “The ability to use multiple Teams accounts at the same time is supported on iOS and Android today.” Now, the company’s planning to step up its desktop experience.

Microsoft, more recently announced the first collaboration bar for Microsoft Teams. Today, the Yealink VC210 is generally available, and the Poly Studio X30, as well as Poly Studio X50 – aren’t be far behind, according to Tom Arbuthnot, Principal Solutions Architect, Modality Systems, and Microsoft Certified Master/MVP. The Yealink also has a 4k auto framing camera, USB speakerphone, along with remote control (for non-touch screens).

“Poly’s Studio X30 similarly has a 4k camera and auto framing. Its mic and speakers are built into the bar”

Control for non-touch screens via a touch panel or controls on an optional speakerphone are too, included with the latest mashup. Right now there’s a sale, and the VC210 retails for $899 (actual retail price $1,299) through the Microsoft Teams device store when you use the promotional code ‘Yealink4Teams.’ Next month, Microsoft said it’s releasing another update for Microsoft Teams. It said it will place meeting controls at the top of the Microsoft Teams client for a better user experience.

This feature seems small, but the implications of it are significant. It should signify Microsoft’s push toward dominating the consumer side of collaboration as well, as it further enhances the platform’s user-friendliness to accommodate the number of users who now use Teams for personal communications. No longer is Microsoft solely in the business of connecting enterprises.

We’ve already seen the company making strides toward this when it released its first-ever customer facing version of Microsoft Teams amid the COVID-19 epidemic.