What has happened for meetings during this summer? I raised five fairly new features for making meetings more engaging and staying in control. In this blog, I’m covering
- New presenter modes
- Locking up the meeting
- Automatic recording
- Chat bubbles
- Attendee camera control
New presenter modes
Presenter modes bring the presenter’s video along with the presentation to make it more engaging as participants can also see the presenter.
Preseter modes can be selected when starting the presentation and during the presentation with presentation controls.
Currently, Standout presenter mode is available generally. Standout mode brings the presenter on top of the content in the lower right corner.
On Teams Public Preview, there are two new modes available: Side-by-side and Reporter. Both modes are having a background image, which can be selected from predefined backgrounds by clicking Customize when starting the presentation.
In side-by-side mode, your video is shown on a separate window on the right side of your presentation. It also shows your background or the background filter you are using.
On reporter mode, presenter is shown in the lower right corner and shared content is shown on a window of the left.
Lock the meeting
The meeting organizer can now lock the meeting, which denies access for new participants to the meeting. New joining participants will get a notice that the meeting is locked. Also, notification for meeting participants is shown, when the meeting is locked. If a participant drops out of the locked meeting, he/she cannot access it anymore. The organizer can use the Request to join option on the Participants pane to invite people to the locked meeting. Organizers can always access the locked meeting.
Locking and unlocking the meeting is done on the Participants pane by clicking three dots and selecting Lock the meeting / Unlock the meeting.
Meeting lock is very useful when you want to really make sure that the meeting is limited for the people currently attending or to control how many attendees can join in. It’s is also a way to educate people to join meetings in time, for example locking the meeting after five minutes.
Automatic meeting recording
Sometimes you just don’t remember that this meeting needed to be recorded. With Record automatically setting in meeting options organizers can set meeting to be recorded automatically, when meeting is started.
Meeting options can be accessed from Teams calendar or from the calendar invitation using Meeting options link.
Chat bubbles
Chat bubbles show messages from the meeting chat on the top of the meeting window so that organizers and participants can see and react to chat activities.
Participants can choose, if they want to see chat bubbles, from the meeting settings.
Attendee camera control
Some events may require that only presenters are allowed to open their cameras. Attendee camera setting can be controlled for the meeting in meeting options either during the meeting or before the meeting.
Camera setting for individual attendee can be controlled on Participants pane. It is possible also to allow camera to a single attendee and keep others disabled with meeting options.
Attendee will get a notification when camera is disabled.
Afterword
Meetings have been in focus for 1,5 years now, and new features are introduced in quite a rapid phase to support better meetings. Presenter modes and chat bubbles are making meetings more engaging. New settings are enabling organizers to stay in control. For example in large meetings, it’s really useful to have options to block attendees from sharing, speaking, and sharing their camera, accidents always happen and mics are not always automatically muted by the user.
When these new features land, it is important to communicate and educate users on how to use them. Also managing organization-wide policies is important, for example setting default meeting lobby settings.
Matti Paukkonen 