With office environments becoming increasingly “hybrid” post-pandemic, Microsoft is readying multiple improvements to its software to facilitate remote meetings.
Specifically, the company announced coming perks for users of the Microsoft Teams collaboration service, as well as Microsoft Viva, Microsoft’s relatively new “employee experience platform.”
Software improvements also are coming for Microsoft Whiteboard, a screen app used for collaboratively sketching ideas during meetings. Emerging Microsoft 365 “fluid components,” used to facilitate collaborations on the fly in applications, also are coming.
More Natural Remote Meetings
Microsoft’s meetings enhancements support the current work-from-home trend, dubbed “hybrid work,” Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, in the announcement suggested that Microsoft’s solutions bring organizations “a new operating model for people, places and process.”
The future improvements announced on Thursday aim to make remote meetings seem more natural. Microsoft concluded from its research findings that offering “a good view of the in-room participants” to remote viewers and “normalizing the sizes of people’s remote video feeds” would make remote meetings seem less fatiguing to viewers.
Fluid Components Expansion
Microsoft had introduced a preview of fluid components for Microsoft Teams in its May 2021 Build event. Fluid components enable messaging from software components, such as action items, lists or tables, when using the Teams service. Microsoft’s Thursday announcement explained that fluid components also are now coming to “OneNote, Outlook and Whiteboard to make it easier to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously across Teams and Office apps.” The exact timing when these fluid components will be integrated, though, not yet announced.
Fluid components are new Microsoft 365 solutions built on the Microsoft Fluid Framework, a Web-based “componentized document model for shared, interactive experiences” that was first introduced at the 2019 Microsoft Build event. These fluid components will are expected come to the Microsoft Teams and Whiteboard applications sometime this summer,
Front Row View in Teams Rooms
A major improvement for enhancing remote meeting experiences is its new “front row” feature for Teams Rooms.
With the front row feature, remote meeting participants appear in a row at the bottom of a screen, which is supposed to be at the same eye level as would be experienced if they had actually been seated in a meeting room. The top of the screen can then be used to display presentation materials. There’s also screen room on the sides to display other materials, such as a meeting agenda and a chat window.
The new front row feature “will be supported across both single and dual display configurations,” Microsoft explained in a Teams Rooms announcement. It’s expected to arrive “over the course of this year.”
New Whiteboard App
The Microsoft Whiteboard application, which lets people draw diagrams collaboratively using digital inking, is now described as being “completely new.” It has a new “Fluent toolbar” and improved inking capabilities when using a mouse. Drawn shapes get automatically straightened with a “shape recognition” capability.
The new Whiteboard app has various collaboration improvements. “Collaboration cursors” appear to identify people working together on a whiteboard. Microsoft added a laser pointer tool. It also added a “follow along” feature and new templates.
