Published: 17 June 2020
Following on from our last update on new Teams features, the platform has continued to forge ahead with its accelerated development schedule in response to the current increase in homeworking due to COVID-19.
Having already increased the on-screen view to nine people in April, Teams is now expanding this number further to 49, to match Zoom. This feature will be previewed later this month, before being rolled out to all users by the autumn.
Teams has also increased the maximum number of group call participants from 100 to 250, as well as improving the privacy settings for anyone joining a Teams meeting by dialling in via phone – phone numbers are now obscured from any meeting participants who are outside your organisation.
You’ll remember that Teams introduced a selection of video call backgrounds to choose from back in April, alongside the existing background blur option. Building further on this, Teams has recently added new background collections to choose from, plus the ability to upload your own custom background image from your personal photo library.
Another useful feature which has been added in the past few weeks is the option for pop-out chat windows, improving your ability to multitask and navigate to other areas of Teams while maintaining multiple chats at the same time.
