Microsoft Teams, which is one of the main collaboration platforms, has revealed tools that are already available in 2024 and are specifically geared to improve the hybrid meeting experience. These tools improve interactions between participants who may either be physically present or remote to make contributions toward the project effectively, no matter where its individuals are located. In this post, we will discuss some of the newest Microsoft Teams tools to improve hybrid meetings within your organization. This will include a few helpful resources about Microsoft Teams training, like what is available from Custom Guide which offers Microsoft courses.
New Features to Drive Inclusiveness
Front Row Layout: Probably the most significant improvement to hybrid meetings, Front Row places distant participants at eye level on your screen. The feature makes meetings feel much more natural and inclusive. Front Row increases engagement by bringing virtual attendees up to the same level as those in the real room, making distant team members feel much more connected.
Smart Cameras: Microsoft Teams introduces smart cameras that track and zoom in on the speaker, allowing remote members to effortlessly follow the debate. The cameras employ artificial intelligence to focus on who is speaking and dynamically move the emphasis, providing a more colorful experience for all attendees.
Speaker Coach: The Teams’ Speaker Coach is another feature that makes hybrid meetings productive. This application provides presenters with real-time feedback on tempo, tone, and even filler words. Speaker Coach helps presenters enhance their presentation style, ensuring clarity and effectiveness across the audience.
Enhancing the Ability to Collaborate in a Meeting
- Collaborative Annotations: Maintaining interactivity is undoubtedly one of the most difficult aspects of hybrid meetings. People can use Microsoft Teams’ new collaborative annotations tool to draw, highlight, or annotate directly on shared displays during a meeting. Collaborative annotations make it easier to obtain real-time inputs from everyone, no matter where they are, whether it’s for brainstorming or working through very difficult challenges.
- Meeting Recap: Very often, everyone misses something that happened during a meeting. At the conclusion of each meeting, Teams generates an automated summary that includes a recording, a transcript, and all documents presented during the meeting. Although this function is quite valuable, particularly in hybrid scenarios where some participants were unable to attend live meetings, Meeting Recap ensures that everyone is up to date and can catch up on conversations.
- Live Reactions and Raise Hand: These features are further improved to increase interaction in hybrid meetings. Participants will now express themselves during meetings with emojis and use the raise-hand feature to raise their hands when it is their turn to speak. These tools make hybrid meetings more interactive, allowing all opinions to be heard.
Conclusion
Microsoft Teams is expected to improve further for hybrid work, particularly in 2024. With Front Row Layout, Intelligent Cameras, and Collaborative Annotations, hybrid meetings have become more inclusive, participatory, and productive. Using these new tools will encourage firms to ensure that their hybrid meetings are as effective and interesting as possible to bridge in-person and remote work.
