We’re starting over for another week and, as usual, Teams is one of our recurring themes. The Microsoft app continues to enhance the remote meeting experience in Microsoft Teams with better camera support and other enhancements. These will allow us to stay in the meetings as long as we want.
Teams turns to hybrid work and Apple CarPlay
After implementing the Together mode last year, and a vision for the future of meetings earlier this year there is still a lot to improve. Microsoft Teams will soon be updated to support smart cameras. These cameras will be supplied by partners such as Jabra, Neat, Poly and Yealink and will enable active AI-powered speaker tracking, multiple video streams, and people recognition.
These types of cameras are the peripherals that Microsoft expected to evolve meetings. Allowing cameras in meeting rooms to use audio, facial movements and gestures to detect who is in a room and talking. These cameras are designed to enhance and bridge the gap between remote and face-to-face meetings, as more and more companies seek to balance the two formats.
Microsoft Teams also improves on smartphones including quick access to chat, live reactions, and the Microsoft whiteboard. This updated companion mode will also include easier access to controls how to mute or turn on / off the camera and it will be available “In the coming months”, according to Microsoft.
The presentation trainer, inherited from PowerPoint, will arrive in 2022. It will help us monitor our pace during Teams meetings. This feature will come alongside automatic lighting correction for Teams video meetings.
Finally and as we had indicated, the support of Apple CarPlay from Teams this month. This will allow us to take a call while driving. We can join calls from the car hands-free using Siri, but we will only join in audio mode to avoid distractions.