2020 was the year of the video meeting, and 2021 is looking to continue this new trend of necessity. With the pandemic forcing everyone inside, video conferences have allowed people to still conduct business virtually face-to-face.

Platforms like Microsoft Teams have gained millions of users over the past year. Between Nov. 2019 and Oct. 2020, Teams daily users went from 20 million to 115 million.

One challenge that companies have had is which video meeting platform to use. There are many to choose from, including those that used to only be used in the enterprise space. Now they all are fighting to gain the important SME and work-from-home market.

One video conferencing service that continues to evolve beyond just a meeting space is Microsoft Teams. This robust platform continues to grow, bringing several cloud productivity tools into one space to power a modern office.

Some of the key Teams features include:

• Video and audio conferencing
• Channeled messaging
• Alerts & @mentions
• File sharing
• In-app file co-authoring & collaboration
• Company Wiki
• VoIP phone system add-on
• Training & employee experience add-on
• And more

If you’ve been looking for the best video conferencing service to use for your business, Microsoft just announced several updates to Teams that might make your decision easier.

New MS Teams Meeting Features Announced at the Recent Microsoft Ignite 2021 Event

In March of 2021, Microsoft held its annual Ignite event. Teams video conferencing was a major highlight, and the company announced multiple features to make video meetings more professional, engaging, and powerful.

Addition of Webinar Registration

One of the challenges when adopting cloud solutions is to keep your cloud ecosystem streamlined. The fewer apps you can use in your workflow, the easier it is for your users and the lower your SaaS costs are.

But one big issue in the video conferencing world has been that many apps don’t have webinar capabilities. And webinar apps don’t have all the video meeting capabilities of tools like Zoom, Teams, and others.

Teams is breaking out of that mold by adding webinar registration support. You can now plan your webinars inside Teams and create a custom registration page for sign-ups. Attendees receive an automatic email with a webinar link (just like in webinar-specific apps). You can also view post-webinar reports.

All Teams images are from Microsoft

Presenter Mode for More Professional Presentations

Giving a presentation over video can be problematic. You have little control over how your video appears in relation to your shared content, so if you want to interject something visually or use your hands to motion for point emphasis, it can be lost.

Presenter Mode is a new feature coming to Microsoft Teams that will allow you to choose from three professional-looking display modes for a presentation.

You can choose from:

• Standout: Your video feed is overlaid on top of the presentation.
• Side-by-side: Your presentation & video feed are horizontally aligned.
• Reporter: Your video feed is larger, with your presentation over your shoulder.

Microsoft Teams Connect

Have you been wanting to invite clients or vendors to collaborate with you on projects inside Teams? Teams Connect is going to make this easier for everyone.

You can share a Teams channel easily with anyone inside or outside your organisation. When you do this, that channel then appears in their primary Teams tenant alongside their other channels, making for a fluid integration.

They don’t have to go anywhere special to jump to your shared channel to collaborate, chat, meet, and share content.

Task Managing in Teams

Another disconnected workflow that many businesses deal with is using one app for their team communications and another for task management. This is another feature MS Teams is adding to enable a more streamlined and integrated workflow.

Users will be able to integrate their task management app with Teams to add, publish, track, and manage employee tasks without leaving the Teams environment.

Live Reactions for More Engaging Presentations

When someone is screen sharing in a video meeting and going through a presentation or training, there can be a lack of feedback because most participants will have their mute enabled.

Without real-time feedback, presenters can be unsure whether a point is being taken in or if their pace is too fast or too slow. On the other side, those watching the presentation can get bored and begin multi-tasking, which leads to a lack of information retention.

Live Reactions is designed to give users a way to engage and feel like a part of the presentation, as well as provide instant feedback to presenters. Feedback is in the form of emojis that users can click and that float up the screen and then disappear.

This makes for more collaborative presentations where the person speaking can interject questions such as, “Does that make sense?” or “Are you ready to move on?” and have feedback instantly that doesn’t involve people talking over each other.

Looking to Migrate to a Great All-in-One Team Solution?

NMX IT Solutions can help your Thames Valley area business migrate and streamline your cloud tools for the most productivity, lowest costs, and best user engagement.

Contact us today to schedule your consultation! Call 01628 232300 or reach out online.