540 – All Together Now

Posted on July 24, 2020 (Updated August 7, 2020) by ewand

Yet more updates have arrived for users of Teams; Jared Spataro did a good session at Inspire in July, outlining some changes that are already available for some and talked about new capabilities that are on the way. There’s a cool background noise suppression capability to remove the clamour that’s happening behind someone, and a load of transcription / captioning technology that works alongside meeting recording, to highlight who said what.

Jared also announced Team Room services (more on rooms.microsoft.com), providing a management and monitoring service for physical rooms that are equipped with Teams kit, as well as the performance of the meeting space. The intent is to make the meeting experience better when we have a mix of in-person and remote people, as the world transitions to some kind of normality.

While we’re still in a predominantly-remote working cycle, Together Mode introduces an intriguing way of displaying videos from a group of people – rather than the “Gallery Mode” of video boxes arranged in a grid, Together mode uses the same technology which can apply a custom background to cut out the user’s video of their person, and place that in a lecture / theatre type setting.

It takes some getting used to, especially if the meeting is one where there’s a predominant speaker – like a teacher – who appears in one of the chairs in the room rather than separate from it. Also, you might have some people who sit relatively close to their camera and will appear huge, while others look like they’d be sitting with feet dangling in the air.

To learn more about how to use Together Mode, and for some info on what is planned for the future, see here.

537 – Teams Mute shortcut

Posted on July 3, 2020 (Updated August 7, 2020) by ewand

We’ve all been there. Either as the source of background distraction on a Teams call, or one of the participants perhaps wondering how best to handle it. Sometimes it’s better to intervene if you can see who’s doing the heavy breathing or who’s sitting in a noisy environment, rather than making a fuss about it.

If you show the participant list during a team call, you’ll see who is muted, and depending on your own role in the meeting, you can mute others who might be unwittingly generating noise (identifiable by the “halo” surrounding their profile picture or initials, which flickers as they talk or as their mic picks up other sounds). The Organiser or any Presenter in the meeting can mute anyone else.

Muting a participant displays a notification in their Teams client to the effect that they have been shushed and can unmute themselves, and if they’re dialled in, they’ll be told by an announcer that they’ve been muted and told how to unmute themselves.

The person who’s been quietened doesn’t know who did the deed (one feature request is to log who’s doing it, as there have been reports of miscreants randomly muting and booting out participants from virtual classrooms during lockdown). If you’ve already muted a participant (or even all participants), it’s not possible to unmute anyone – only they can control that process, since an organiser unmuting someone could put them in an awkward position (#poorJennifer again?).

There are requests to allow finer control of muting in some circs, though – preventing people from unmuting unless given permission, for example – in a large meeting, it could be better to police Q&A by asking people to “raise their hand”, and only allow them to unmute when the presenter virtually gives them the mic.

If you’re going to do a load of noisy typing whilst on a call, one trick to memorise is to flick the focus from OneNote/Outlook/whatever to Teams by quickly tapping ALT+TAB, then tap CTRL+SHIFT+M to mute and unmute yourself – this is probably a lot quicker than trying to click the microphone icon within the Teams app.

Anyway, enough about muting – time to go make some noise. Have a great weekend!

536 – Spreading to friends and family

Posted on June 26, 2020 (Updated August 7, 2020) by ewand

There have been plenty of ToW missives over the last few months on the subject of remote working, video conferencing and the like. Businesses who have Microsoft 365 – the new umbrella name that includes Office 365 – already have access to Teams, though personal users and non-subscribers could still set up a free version.

Other chat, video and collaboration tools have clearly been finding many new users during the COVID-19 lockdown…

Slack, which established itself as a texty business collaboration tool (especially in the technology industry), has been overtaken somewhat by the rush to video calling and meeting. Slack’s partner AWS, who also have a video/audio/chat service called Chime, announced plans to integrate under the covers. Meanwhile, Slack thinks it’s finally time to ditch email and their CEO also has an interesting take on how remote working will evolve – will this be the end of the real estate bubble in the Bay Area, for example?

Salesforce has launched a new offering called Anywhere, which aims to take back collaboration and comms tasks from Slack or Teams. And in the “you can tell any story you like by using the right set of numbers” file, Teams has been reported as outgrowing the media’s darling, Zoom, as the feature battles between the two have intensified. Skype and Google’s ~~Hangouts~~ Meet have also added multi-party video among other new capabilities.

Teams will soon have the ability to show up to 49 people at once (having rolled out a 3×3 grid of video windows recently)…

… and has also released an updated free offer, aimed at friends and family communications.

Initially available in the mobile apps, the focus is on providing free collaborative functionality for groups you can set up, as well as being able to schedule video calls and meetings.

If you don’t already have the Teams mobile app on your phone, then go to iOS App Store or Google Play to install it. If you’re already using Teams through your work account, you can add a personal account by going to the settings icon in the top left, and at the very bottom of the list is “Add Account”.

This will guide you through the process of associating with an existing Microsoft Account, including signing up for free Teams service if you haven’t already.

At the moment, the service is in Preview, and it does involve switching between profiles when you need to, but offers a load more than just WhatsApp-style text chat and the odd call.

As well as file sharing, there’s even a “Safe” feature on its way, which will let you share WiFi Passwords or other more sensitive information that requires 2-factor authentication.

So, for once in the last 3+ months, now’s a good time to spread something to the rest of your family and your wider circle of friends…

531 – Spice up your video conferences

Posted on May 28, 2020 by ewand

The New Normal™ will be all about avoiding people and using technology to supplement and even replace behaviours in ways we’d never have expected before The Event.

Video conferencing has been used in tech circles for years, though it was foretold many years earlier. 1989’s Back to the Future II showed one vision of how the future might look, and it wasn’t the only wry prediction.

Now that you’ve frouffed-up your home office backdrop and maybe thought about how you look on video calls, even going for a custom background image, maybe it’s time to mix things up and jazz up your video feed itself.

One approach could be to play with Snap Camera, a PC or Mac software solution from SnapChat that takes the feed from your regular camera and applies some effects to it, before presenting that modified stream as a virtual hardware camera to any app that wants it.

If you install Snap Camera, you can then use a catalog of “lenses” to add attributes to your video, or to alter the lighting or background, even if your chosen video conferencing app doesn’t give the option of doing so natively.

Roots or dodgy haircut starting to show in the lockdown? Perhaps try a nice tint?

Want to practice online before going out to the shops? Maybe choose a groovy mask?

Whatever your choice, if you install Snap Camera and choose (or even create) a suitable lens, then the software will run in the background and if you choose the “camera” from your video conferencing app, then the software will augment the feed from your real camera and present that image to your chosen software.

So for Teams, if you want to prank your colleagues, you can set up the lens of choice using that software, then when you go to join a meeting, click the “PC, Mic and Speakers” settings cog, to get the Device Settings pane, and choose the Snap Camera as your source.

Just remember to switch back to the regular camera before you have an important customer meeting, OK?

526 – Collections in Edge

Posted on April 17, 2020 by ewand

As another week draws to a close, in a world which is starting to feel a lot less like a temporary aberration and a lot more like The New Normal, we continue to look for things that distract, entertain (lots of good stuff on Netflix – dat’s the fact, jack), educate and give us cause us to think of others. Sadly, we lost TBT and Stirling this week, as well as too many others.

But technology marches on, sometimes a bit more slowly than we’d normally expect, and sometimes accelerated – Teams has rolled out the new background effects feature (though not everyone can yet choose a custom image – that’s on its way too, though it’s possible to add your own under the covers – create or find a picture, ideally 1920×1080 pixels, then press Start and enter %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads – drop your pic in there and it’ll show up in the list of backgrounds, right at the bottom).

Microsoft Partner Hubdrive’s CTO has kicked off a competition on LinkedIn for the most original / amusing – see #TeamsBackgroundCompetition and maybe even join the fun…

If you’re using the new Chromium-based Edge browser then you might want to keep separate profiles for your distractions, and for your work.

You may also want to give Collections a try – a feature that was in preview and available for Beta users for a while, has made it into the mainstream release.

Collections allows you to quickly add groups of related sites/pages into a kind-of folder which you can add notes to, quickly open or share, and it also keeps a preview of the page so it’s smarter than just favourites or bookmarks.

Look on the toolbar for the + icon to open up the Collections, and it’s pretty self-explanatory from there.

If you’re an Office 365 user, check out Edge PMM Eric Van Aelstyn’s post with some good tips on WFH, especially if it’s not on a work computer, including setting up the Enterprise tab (so you get Office 365 content rather than Microsoft News clickbait).

Eric also espouses using the default Bing search engine with Edge, as it can generate Microsoft Rewards for you – and with a few clicks you can give the reward points to charity.

US based Bingers can switch to Give mode, but UK users appear to have a different method and only a few target charities, but it’s free money you collect by searching, so you might as well give it away to a good cause. Take a look on your rewards page and you can choose to Shop, Win or Donate – select the latter and see if you like the look of any of the charities listed.

525 – Day nnn in the Big Brother House

Posted on April 17, 2020 by ewand

As the developed world stays in and starts to go a bit stir crazy, life beginning to feel like an episode of Big Brutha, we’re increasingly turning to streaming and video conferencing apps typically used for business, to keep in touch with friends and family, go dating, virtually visit a museum and many other things.

When you’re only allowed one walk a day and you can’t go for a drive, turn to virtual tours and motoring videos instead. Allez!

Captain Slow is hosting an online pub quiz and there are plenty of others you can join or even run your own quiz offline.

Online conferencing app Zoom has seen huge take-up over recent weeks, though its security has been questioned & tested by Zoom Bombing, leading the company to quickly release updates to give more control.

Microsoft Teams has announced some feature updates too – though there’s still more to do. Custom Backgrounds will be rolled out very soon, so users can replace their messy kitchen backdrop with a scene of serenity.

It’s getting easier to schedule and join Skype video meetings, too – from within the Skype app or even in a browser, you can Meet Now and quickly generate a URL that can be shared with others, who can join as a guest without needing to have an account or signing in.

Skype still has a huge user base, with over 40 million daily users of late.

Teams and Skype have started interoperating more, too, though it’s a limited experience at the moment. Expect Teams for Consumer, due to arrive later this year, to have tighter integration – and perhaps may eventually replace Skype.

524 – I read the news today, oh boy

Posted on April 17, 2020 by ewand

With most of the world in lock-down and everyone staying at home, it’s easy to be fixated with the news, even though there’s really only one topic.

You could look at Microsoft News – a recently-updated app and website that serves up a mixture of curated news from 3^rd party sources that you can define, along with annoying click-bait adverts for sometimes dubious products that you are seemingly unable to block or hide.

The same guff pollutes the otherwise excellent new-tab experience in the new Edge browser, assuming you aren’t seeing the Office 365 tab.

There’s an FAQ that explains the rationale behind the advertising, though if you have time on your hands, you could always make your feelings known through the Feedback Hub app (here’s how), add your voice to the reviews tab on the Store, or join up to the Microsoft Old Timers group on Facebook and gripe about it while sharing photos of old t-shirts and stuff.

In the “good old days” theme, a new beta “News bar” app has been released, offering to display the same curated and presumably ad-filthy content on a sidebar reminiscent of a Vista gadget, or a ticker running along the top of the task bar like a 1990s website. Though it may be geo-locked so you can only get it in certain countries for now, read more on the News bar app here.

Whilst cooped up inside, spending your life on conference calls or Teams meetings, spare a thought for those who are new to the whole experience, and shed a tear for the technology they’re using. They could be Skyping.

523 – Raise your hand

Posted on March 27, 2020 (Updated March 27, 2020) by ewand

As more of the world is in lock-down and pretty much everyone who can is working at home, apps like Teams have taken a more central role in many lives. Alongside adding 12m users the other week, there was a substantial increase in resources dedicated to running the back-end – millions of additional CPU cores were provisioned to the Teams service.

Mobile Teams users are getting some new functionality, and the blog post about the 40% growth in usage teased some features that are coming later in the year, notably background noise-cancelling (to supress the tap-tap-tap of the typical team-mate’s typing), and a new action which lets attendees ask for help or offer to contribute by “raising their hand”. That might help avoid people talking over each other.

This feature is in test currently and is expected to appear a little later this year, along with a raft of other improvements, like having custom backgrounds (in addition to blurring of the existing background), and the ability to break out chats into separate windows rather than have everything in one.

When the hand-raising feature is rolled out, assuming you can see the People pane to the side of the Teams window, anyone who has their hand raised will be listed with a hand icon, meaning the organiser could ask them to chime in.

On the COVID-19 pandemic – the WHO publishes a view of the spread of the disease, with the help of Microsoft’s ISV partner ESRI, using their ArcGIS platform. See the global WHO dashboard, or look at the county-by-county map of the US, here. It’s all very sobering. There’s a Coronavirus Tracker on Bing and a load of other resources on Microsoft.com.

522 – Teams best practices for WFH

Posted on March 20, 2020 by ewand

In these uncertain times, many organisations are scrambling to enable their workers to be able to carry on even when the rest of the world is seemingly losing control. At least the meme creators are busy.

Ex-Microsoftie Allister Frost has some wise words to share about Working From Home, and given that he was Chief Puppy Controller for a well-known marketing team, he knows things that are currently relevant.

Microsoft Teams may have had a couple of bumps since the Covid-19 virus started to cause people to stay at home; early in the week there were a couple of outages that have been swiftly resolved, but it’s since been announced that the service added 12 million daily active users in the last 7 days – that’s a 40% increase in usage, so it’s no surprise if the infrastructure creaked a little as it grew.

There are many tips for making good use of Teams –

Microsoft.com’s Stay productive when working remotely (and easy to follow instructions for participants who might not be familiar with the software – there’s a handy Quick Start guide too)
A plea to switch on your webcam as standard practice, to help combat social isolation
How to position your camera properly when recording (or even how to record using your phone)

Stay at home, stay safe, and follow Buzz Aldrin’s advice.

516 – More Teams Sharing

Posted on March 20, 2020 by ewand

When you use online meeting technologies, there are usually ways to share content with attendees. Even years and years ago, lots of people felt the easiest way to present a PowerPoint slide deck was to “share their screen” while running the PowerPoint application.

Some folk have the good sense to “present” that PPT fullscreen while screen-sharing, whereas others would merely flick through the slides within the PowerPoint app, consuming 30% of the screen real estate with menus, slide sorter, and other visual detritus of not only the app, but their host operating system as well.

Top tip – when you’re presenting, don’t be a doofus – please present, don’t share your screen then move through slides.

PowerPoint itself, OCS, Lync, Skype for Business – they’ve all tried to provide easy ways to present content online or through a meeting. Not wanting to throw in the towel to the screen-sharing crowd just yet, Teams has a few more tricks up its sleeve too.

Try for yourself – go to the Calendar node (remembering that you can switch between them by pressing CTRL+ the number from the top, so CTRL+4 in this case will jump to Calendar – though current versions of the Teams client will allow you to reorder the nodes by dragging & dropping them), and on the top right of the screen, click Meet now. This will give you a one-person playground to try stuff in. Read more here.

When you’re in a meeting, if you wave your mouse around or click/tap on a blank area within the main window, you’ll see the meeting controls toolbar, which you’ll use to control your audio/video, look at the text chat or participants list within a meeting, and also the Share option.

Rather than sharing Desktop or Window, check out PowerPoint – if you don’t see the slide deck you want to present in the list of the most recently used ones, click on Browse and you’ll be able to navigate to it throught Teams channels and libraries (if your content is already in there), or you can upload it from your elsewhere.

The Teams client will render your presentation on each viewer’s machine, using less network bandwidth than screen-sharing does, and allowing more seamless multi-user control – so if you have multiple presenters in a single meeting, they can take over presenting the deck without having to be given overall control of the original presenter’s computer.

If you decide to put your PowerPoint file into a Teams channel and share / present it from there, it’s worth double-checking the formatting though; under the covers the Teams client will use the same rendering as if were previewing the file in a web browser.

You may find some slide transitions, animations or even some text layout will be a little different to how you’d see it in full-blown PowerPoint – to check that everything is OK, just navigate to the file within the Teams channel, and preview it from there.

If you do find the slides get mangled, you may be able to tidy them up within the Teams preview, or else you have permission to do the dastardly desktop sharing method.

For more information on sharing content within Teams meetings, see here.