Microsoft Teams gains 49-person view and new calling and meeting experience

The new Teams meeting and calling experience makes it a bit easier to organize your virtual chats.

What you need to know

• A new calling and meeting experience is rolling out to Microsoft Teams.
• The experience pops out meetings and calls into separate windows and adds several new features.
• The experience is rolling out gradually over the next few days with some features rolling out over the next few weeks.

Microsoft Teams has a new calling and meeting experience that's rolling out over the next few weeks. The new experience pops calls and meetings into separate windows, brings a large gallery view of up to 49 people at once, and adds together mode. The new experience is rolling out over the next few days, but certain features such as together mode and the large gallery view will roll out over the next few weeks, according to a techcommunity post from Microsoft. The new experience is available on the desktop version of Teams on Windows and Mac.

Within the new experience, meeting controls are moved to the top of the meeting screen. These controls are docked there so you can access them without jiggling your mouse.

The large gallery view is available on any call or meeting with 10 or more people in it. You can enable the view by going to "More options (...)" and turning on "Larger gallery."

Together mode is similar to large gallery view, but instead of having separate boxes for each person, Teams places everyone together into a virtual room.

Meeting notes also move to a new spot with the new experience. Meeting notes now appear in the Meeting notes tab in the main Teams window. The new experience also brings Focus mode, which helps you pay attention by hiding video feeds.

Microsoft breaks down the features and answers some frequently asked questions in its techcommunity post. The post highlights that these features are rolling out gradually, so you might not see them yet.

Here's how to turn on the new meeting and calls experience:

1. Open Settings in Microsoft Teams.
2. Open General within Settings.

3. Select Turn on new meeting experience.

   

4. Restart Teams by right clicking its icon and selecting Quit.
5. Start Teams as normal.

Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams allows you to collaborate with colleagues, upload files, send messages, and chat through video. It integrates with Office 365 and several other cloud services.