Microsoft is working on a new Teams feature called Spotlight that allows the meeting "presenter" to control what is shown to all participants.
Microsoft continues to expand Teams' meeting capabilities as it rolls out brand new features, such as the ability to see up to 49 video meeting participants on your screen.
The new “Together Mode” feature is also being launched, which will essentially bring users together on a common background, making them appear to be in the same place.
Microsoft's August preview updates weren't as impressive as these updates sound, but they do seem to help users gain more control over their video meetings.
The new Spotlight feature allows meeting “organizers” and “presenters” to set their video as the main view for all meeting participants.
"This helps the presenter control the main stream of videos that a participant sees during a meeting," Microsoft said in a blog post.
Teams admins are getting more capabilities for “meeting recordings.” “Teams meeting recordings” are disabled for customers whose Teams data is stored in a country where Microsoft Stream is not available. But now admins will be able to enable “meeting recordings,” with the ability to store their data elsewhere.
Once the feature is enabled, Teams meeting recordings will be stored in the data center closest to the admin. There are a few countries, including Germany and China, where Streams does not currently host data.
Microsoft is updating meeting policies to allow IT administrators to control how video in Teams Meetings. The current policy can only be configured to prevent outbound video, but Microsoft is expanding the Allow IP Video policy to prevent outbound and inbound video as needed.
Meanwhile, Teams education users are getting a public preview of expanded capabilities in the Education Insights feature that allows administrators to track student and aims to help teachers do their teaching better.
