No water-cooler gossip, but you may soon get the feel of your office in WFH

Through its Together Mode, Microsoft Teams lets participants share a virtual space like conference room, auditorium and coffee shop in a group video call meeting

Microsoft has announced several updates for its digital collaboration service Microsoft Teams at its annual developer meeting Ignite. The updates include additional scene in Together Mode that let you get into your office’s conference room for meeting but in virtual environment. Apart from that, the update brings custom layouts, breakout rooms and automated recaps. Besides, the Microsoft Teams will soon allow up to 1,000 participants to connect through a group video meeting.

From October, the Microsoft Teams will support breakout rooms in a group video meeting that will allow participants to form a smaller group without leaving the meeting. Moreover, the group meeting presenters will have the option to make announcements to all sub-meeting rooms, check the breakout rooms, and close them to bring back all the participants into the main meeting.

Besides, the Microsoft Teams will get automated recaps feature, which will include a recording of the meeting, a transcript, chat information and all the files shared in the meeting. In coming months, Microsoft will integrate Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Teams that will allow users to save automated recaps data in OneDrive for easy sharing.

The update also brings additional scenes to Together Mode. Designed to help people feel connected and, thureby reduce meeting fatigue, the 'together' mode is a new meeting experience that uses artificial intelligence segmentation technology to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it appear as though they were sitting in the same room with everyone else. As for the update, the Together Mode will get an auditorium, conference room and coffee shop view.