These Microsoft Teams updates will be music to your ears

Microsoft has offered fresh details about the steps it is taking to improve the quality of video meetings in Teams, from both a technical and user experience perspective.

In a blog post, the company highlighted a series of features recently introduced to Teams, and announced upcoming additions to the collaboration platform.

For example, Microsoft says that the introduction of background noise suppression to calls has resulted in a 31% decline in noise-related complaints. Already available via the Teams desktop clients, background noise suppression is set to roll out for iOS soon (although there has been no mention of Android support).

High fidelity

The company also took the opportunity to touch on the new high-fidelity music mode, which optimizes Teams for music playback as opposed to dialogue. According to the blog post, Microsoft is set to announce further functionality that “allows users to optimize sound for music, performances and media” within the next few weeks.

Finally, Microsoft Teams users now benefit from a series of automatic adjustments and alerts designed to limit meeting disruptions. 

For instance, Teams now automatically mutes the microphones of anyone that arrives late to a meeting, and if the platform detects someone has accidentally muted either their speakers or microphone, it will serve up an alert.

Microsoft Teams call quality

As Microsoft battles with offerings from the likes of Google, Slack and Zoom, the firm is looking to make a number of small optimizations to maximize efficiency and streamline the user experience.

The strategy will be two-pronged, consisting of new features that will add new functionality to the Teams platform and behind-the-scenes changes designed to improve performance.

“As more organizations adopt Microsoft Teams, the most common customer feedback we hear relates to increased efficiency and productivity from enabling more capabilities and workflows through a centralized experience. When colleagues, apps, and data come together in Teams, it opens new opportunities to connect and collaborate,” wrote Microsoft.

“With the rise of virtual meetings and hybrid work becoming the new norm, the quality of calling and meeting experiences on Teams becomes that much more important. We’re committed to ongoing improvements to Teams audio and video quality, through user-facing features and settings, to cutting-edge codecs and AI.”

Although Microsoft has remained tight-lipped with regards to specifics, the firm has promised to provide concrete information in the coming weeks.

If you’re looking to improve your video conferencing setup, check out our lists of the best business webcams, best business headsets and best business monitors.

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