Windows 11 may not be quite ready for primetime, but Microsoft does not let it stop it from launching its newest feature for Hybrid workplaces, including updates for teams and new fluid support in more applications. For meetings that are mutually mixed directly and remote participants – which tend to survive well beyond 2021 – Microsoft has a new video call feature in the team to give all the equivalent people.
This is called the front row in the team’s room, and basically adjusts the application’s application interface so that everyone is treated equally. Described as “the layout of the immersive space that makes the interaction feel more natural and gives participants in the room which feels more relations with remote participants,” by Microsoft Jared Spato, Corporate VP for Microsoft 365, it would mean a big change for the team. Your UI may be familiar now.
For example, the video gallery is now at the bottom of the screen, so those who connect long distances are more likely to be on the facial level with those who are in the physical meeting room. Meeting content takes the center of the screen, but is flanked by contextual information: agenda, task, and notes. Persistent chat for all, whether remote or old.
But there will be other video layouts that can change all that. If there is no shared content, for example, it will be possible to spread virtual participants so they are bigger. The team room also gets a direct reaction, spotlight, the ability to pin some video streams, and bubble chat. There will also be a new team room on the surface hub experience, and the Microsoft whiteboard experience that is updated on this autumn surface hub.
Meanwhile, the liquid component will also play a greater role in a hybrid workplace. They expand team meetings, OneNote, Outlook, and blackboards, to make it easier to create agendas, take notes, and assign tasks during team meetings. It will be automatically integrated with the OneNote meeting record too.
Chat, meanwhile, shifted from just a real-time communication approach, with the ability to reach messages and reply to certain messages from the start in the chat.
What we were very happy to see was a way not only to get involved with the team, but to close it all outside working hours. Microsoft Viva Insights gets the ability to set the “quiet time” period later this year, for example, where the cellphone notices the view and the team will be silenced. It will also give you feedback about how well you really do when disconnecting.
