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Immersive spaces for Teams can be accessed through a PC or VR headset
Published: May 23, 2023
Kieran Devlin
Teams is introducing immersive spaces, allowing users to make meetings more engaging by injecting “a sense of natural co-presence”.
The offering was announced as part of Microsoft’s Build update. Powered by Mesh, Microsoft’s holographic virtual collaboration platform, users can access the immersive spaces feature through either a PC or VR headset. Users can connect with other participants regardless of whether they join a Teams meeting using video, as a virtual avatar or in the immersive space directly.
Microsoft’s accompanying Build report read:
New Microsoft Mesh-powered immersive spaces for Microsoft Teams, in private preview, will let users add an immersive experience to any Teams meeting, giving everyday meetings a sense of natural co-presence.”
The intention behind immersive spaces is to mimic many elements of real-life interactions. These include the ability to walk over to a group of people a user might want to catch up with or to wave at other users in the meeting room.
The feature can also be combined with spatial audio. In that case, users can experience an authentic-sounding general dialogue with multiple conversations, or a brief side chat can occur without interrupting the central discussion.
The feature will launch in private preview next week.
The Build report also revealed that Avatars for Microsoft Teams would be generally available for 365 Business and Enterprise licenses starting this week via the Teams desktop app on Windows and Mac. These virtual avatars intend to offer an alternative to the current “binary” option of video or no video, as the report describes it. The feature includes customizable avatars and reactions.
Mesh avatars were a feature available for Teams users in private preview since late last year. It maintains Microsoft’s interest in the XR space over the last couple of years, with Mesh representing the vendor’s metaverse for collaboration.
During 2022’s Enterprise Connect, Meta revealed it was partnering with Microsoft and Zoom to bring the communication platforms to its VR workspaces. Meta had announced the Meta Quest Pro, a VR headset designed with collaboration and productivity in mind. The ambition was for the headset to be used with Meta Horizon Workrooms through Zoom and Teams integration to enable businesses to connect and collaborate in a VR space.
There have been myriad updates to Teams in recent months that have refined the user experience beyond the vendor’s explorations of extended reality.
Earlier this week, the official 365 Roadmap indicated that a new Teams feature would allow users to share links to specific messages in group chats so colleagues can find information more easily. The ambition is to make finding essential information more efficient by eliminating the obstacle of searching through blocks of text in the group chat for the exact message that users need to find.
Last week, Teams introduced a capability for users to create “offline” meetings. The feature means users can generate a calendar invite within Teams for events such as personal appointments, in-person meetings and lunch break slots. These events will register users as offline without having to be in a scheduled video meeting. This is similar to an “offline” feature already present in Outlook.
Teams also recently added a variety of features to allow users to express themselves more during meetings. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it was refreshing Teams’ virtual backgrounds library with animated versions so users can present their individuality. A fresh set of still images have already been added to the Teams collection and will be followed by the animated versions in June.
Last month, in another decision to empower meeting participants to express themselves creatively mid-call, Microsoft added Snapchat Lenses to Teams. Microsoft partnered with Snap to utilise Snap’s Camera Kit SDK capabilities, enabling Microsoft to implement 26 Snapchat AR Lenses into Teams without requiring a separate add-on.
Microsoft also added multiple meeting-centric quality-of-life improvements in a general Teams April update. These encompassed automatically lowering a user’s hand after speaking and green screen integration. Echo detection and automatic muting of nearby Teams devices that create an audio feedback loop were also included. Closed Captions were integrated into embedded videos in PowerPoint Live for Teams.
A more niche solution was a Teams Payments app to help small and medium businesses (SMBs), in partnership with Stripe, PayPal and GoDaddy, to support Teams Payments with commerce features. This allowed SMBs to manage and collect payments for their services over Teams — including classes, webinars and appointments — during meetings within the Teams platform.
The Teams Premium licence announced this year will introduce a new variety of AI-powered features that extend beyond Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered productivity tool. These include Intelligent Recap of missed meetings, Live Translation of meeting dialogue, and conference templates allowing admins to create so their users can have the correct settings automatically.
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