New features in Microsoft Teams

The closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up growth opportunities for increasingly powerful online classes. Using Microsoft Teams as a platform to teach and manage school activities is one of the great options. In this article, the Teaching Manual will share with teachers and friends some new features in the newly updated and announced Microsoft Teams.

1. Closing the meeting for everyone

Meeting organizers can now optionally end their meeting for all attendees. If you're a teacher, this is a great way to ensure that all your students aren't left in the Teams classroom to work on their own when the teacher leaves. This new feature in Microsoft Teams was officially announced on April 10, 2020.

To end the meeting, click  More Options   >  End Meeting . Teachers will receive a confirmation message, and immediately after confirmation, the meeting will end for everyone.

2. Notification when someone joins the meeting

Now, if you're the one organizing the meeting, you'll have the option to notify when someone joins or leaves a group meeting, so you always know who's in your online meeting.

To access, select  Meeting options  and toggle on to  notify when someone joins or leaves . This feature was announced on 17/04/2020

3. Integrated tab analysis of group activities.

Team performance parameters are displayed in the Analytics Tab. The data were analyzed over a 90-day period.

From the teacher's group list select the group and select  More Options  >  Manage Teams >  Analytics

3. Show 3×3 attendees

Currently, teachers can observe 9 students at the same time on the Teams screen during their lesson.

4. Quick attendance.

The meeting organizer can now join the meeting. To receive the attendance report of the teachers, select  Show Participants > Download list participants . The report will download a CSV file that can be opened in Excel. The file will contain the names, joining times, and leaving times of the students or meeting participants. This new feature in Microsoft Teams was announced on May 15, 2020

5. Raise your hand feature in the meeting

When you want to contribute ideas or raise your hand to speak about an exercise, you can use this feature.

6. Schedule a meeting

Along with instant meetings, teachers can now schedule a meeting for a future date

7. Microsoft Teams increases the number of participants to 300

With this limited update, we can now hold a meeting, a larger class.

8. Change your background for the meeting

If you want to change what appears in the background in a video conference, you can blur your background or replace it entirely with whatever image you want. 

8.1. Change the background before starting the meeting 

When teachers are setting up their video and audio before joining a meeting or class, select  a background effect   . Your background options will show up on the right.

Choose  blur  to blur your background. Teachers will feel more confident with their image when everything after you is subtly hidden. 

Teachers can also replace their background with one of the images provided or with one of their own selection. To use your own images, select  Add New  , then choose one to upload from your computer. Supported image formats include. JPG,. PNG or . BMP file. 

8.2. Change the background in the meeting

To change the background after a teacher has joined a meeting, go to the meeting controls and select  More action   >  show background effect .

Choose  blur  to blur the background or choose from pre-made images to replace it. To upload your own images, select  Add New  and select JPG, . PNG or . BMP file from the teacher's computer.

Teachers can preview the selected background to see how it will look before applying it. 

Above are sharing about some new features of Microsoft Teams which have been updated recently, hope teachers and friends will enjoy those features.

Reference: Use Insights to track class activity in Microsoft Teams