Microsoft Teams is now available for personal communication with family and friends for free, offering a lot more features than WhatsApp.
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After having worked from home for over a year, I can’t stress the importance of a stable internet connection for the team video calls. Yes, service shutdowns are inevitable, and these are occasions where mobile data comes to the rescue. But cellular connectivity can be patchy too, and a 30-minute group video call can easily end up eating a GB or two of data, so it’s not easy on the wallet either. To tackle some of those issues, Microsoft Teams is adding a new Low data mode to its online collaboration platform that will allow users to limit the data usage for video calls.
Low data mode for Microsoft Teams is now rolling out
Additionally, users will be able to adjust the video call settings based on the network bandwidth available. As per the official Microsoft 365 roadmap database, the status of Low data mode feature in Teams is currently listed as ‘Rolling out’ with a March 2021 release date. Here’s how Microsoft describes the new tool in Teams:
Teams will soon allow you to transfer an ongoing call between two devices
Coming back to Teams, Microsoft has also been working on a new tool that allows users to transfer an ongoing call from one device to another. This feature will be rolling out for commercial customers this month, and will be widely available in April. Of course, in order to transfer calls, you need to be logged in with the same Teams account on the two devices.
But Microsoft is not the only one caring about low bandwidth issues for remote workers. A few weeks ago, Google also announced that its Meet video chat service will make adjustments in the background to ensure that users have a smooth experience if they are plagued by slow internet speeds or system resource issues. Meet will make changes such as reducing the video resolution and frame rate, and temporarily turning off some video feeds if you’re on a congested network.
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Microsoft has today announced a host of meaningful updates for its Teams collaboration platform during the Microsoft Ignite 2021 conference. The most notable one is the arrival of end-to-end encryption support, just, like WhatsApp and Signal. Microsoft says that Teams will enable end-to-end encryption for one-to-one VoIP calls. This feature will make its way to paid customers as a preview in the first half of 2022.
Support for E2EE adds a much-needed layer of security to conversations over the platform, and also brings it on par with Zoom. However, Zoom has promised to roll out end-to-end encryption for both free and paid users, while Microsoft is keeping it exclusive to paid Teams users, at least in the preview phase that goes live later this year. As for the other key competitor – Slack – it doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption at the moment.
Listed below are a few other changes coming to Teams:
1. Microsoft Teams will allow users to conduct webinars with up to 1,000 attendees, and once that number is reached, the limit will be raised to 10,000 attendees. And if that number also comes up short, Teams will further extend the attendee range to 20,000.
2. Microsoft has also launched a new feature called Microsoft Teams Connect that will let users share a channel with people that are from a different organization, complete with capabilities such as chat, app collaboration, and co-authoring documents simultaneously. Microsoft Teams Connect will be out for all users later this year.
3. Microsoft Teams is also getting a new feature called Microsoft PowerPoint Live that will give presenters access to tools such as notes, slides, and participant cards, all on the same screen. As for attendees, they can choose to go through all the content at their own speed during the online presentation. This feature is already live in Teams.
4. There is also a new presenter mode that offers multiple formats such as Standout (presenter appears in front of the content), Reporter (content appears above the speaker’s shoulder), and Side-by-side (video feed of presenter appears alongside the content).
5. Teams will automatically adjust the layout of the video call as more people join the meeting, begin presenting or speaking. Additionally, attendees can now react using emojis.
6. For the Teams experience on mobile, UI elements such as headers, icons, and styling have been updated, and the app now automatically switches to dark mode based on system settings. The ability to access files while offline is also here, alongside pinning chats, a wider emoji catalog, and the ability to trims GIFs directly. The changes will arrive first on the iOS app, followed by the Android version.
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Teamwork is something hard to corroborate in real life. Technology provides us with plenty of liberty to telecommute and telecommunicate with our colleagues. And a lot of those offices in those companies (some 28 out of the FORTUNE 100 companies, actually) use Slack to connect through conversations about projects and places for files associated with said projects. As an independent service, it only brings in a daily active user base of 4 million users.
Microsoft is keen on pushing cloud services these days, so you probably should’ve guessed that it was going to wield a sword over Slack. That sword is called Teams.
The service is available as a preview right now to those with Office 365 commercial subscriptions for all desktop and mobile platforms (including Windows 10 Mobile, Android and iOS) Microsoft serves and is meant to “bring together chat, meeting, notes, Office, Planner, PowerBI, and a host of extensions and applications” to let work be known and shown, according to CEO Satya Nadella.
The chat stuff seems pretty standard with threaded convos, all the image, photo, GIF and emoji libraries you need to be witty, options for voice and video and sharing direct views with Microsoft Office docs. From the groups, one-on-one or limited subgroup conversations can be parsed. Tabs keep track of what documents and applications are on the docket. Some third-party apps like Zendesk and Asana can be tabbed. Notifications as served by Exchange can also be served. Microsoft’s Bot Framework is also accessible to help with users’ needs.
Ins and outs of Teams are protected by multifactor authentication and all data is encrypted passing through the system. Security measures will be compliant with standards of the EU and the US government.
Once again, the Microsoft Teams Developer Preview is available in 181 countries and 18 languages right now to the 85 million Office 365 customers right now. An official release is due next quarter.
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