Teams will now prioritize people with video within meetings

You'll now see more people with video within Teams meetings.

What you need to know

• Microsoft Teams has a new experience that prioritizes video participants within meetings.
• The view will fill a grid of participants with people who have video.
• Previously, Teams would show a mixture of audio and video participants.

Microsoft Teams will now make sure that you can see people with video more frequently within meetings. A new video-only meeting stage is available within Teams that prioritizes video-only participants. The feature has already been rolled out and should be available now.

Before this update, when you had a meeting with audio and video participants, Teams would show a mixture of participants within the grid. People without video would be shown as either a profile picture or their initials. People without actual video feeds took up quite a bit of room on the screen, so having a way to prioritize video participants makes sense.

If you have a meeting with more than nine participants, the ones with video are prioritized and shown within the grid, and those without video are grouped together below the video feeds.

The feature was spotted by Phil Worrell, an IT professional who shared a screenshot about it on Twitter (via OnMSFT).

Oopsie #MicrosoftTeams. A change gets out without prior notification.

On the plus side no waiting for it. pic.twitter.com/K8hKYH1IjC

— Phil Worrell #Re365 Regarding365.com (@Worrelpa) February 25, 2021

The phrasing from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center says that "participants with audio are clubbed and shown below the videos." In this case, "clubbed" refers to grouping them together.

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.