July-August developments
Microsoft Teams is implementing significant updates in July and August to improve platform functionality and user experience. The new meeting gallery feature offers a more straightforward and consistent presence during meetings in this monthly Teams update. The new meeting gallery in Teams displays participants in equally sized tiles, with the option to adjust the number of visible participants (up to 49). It automatically prioritises active speakers and participants with raised hands for better engagement.
With a new update, event hosts can now organise the order of presenters on the webinar event page using the drag-and-drop feature, allowing for a precise arrangement according to the intended sequence of presentations. As for events-related updates, event organisers can turn presenters on and off during town hall events and webinars on the Manage screen. Presenters will now have a ‘live’ indicator on their video feed when brought to the screen.
Teams have announced a new update, including the introduction of speaker recognition and the availability of Copilot features for all Teams rooms on Windows. Microsoft has enhanced Teams by adding a feature called Copilot, which uses speaker recognition technology to provide detailed meeting summaries. This feature identifies speakers based on their voice characteristics and offers valuable insights.
Google Meet is updating its in-call controls with a modern design, featuring refreshed colours and dynamic shapes. The updates will be visible when using Meet on the web, in picture-in-picture mode, or within other apps like Docs or Slides, and when watching a live stream or using meeting room hardware in conference rooms.
The ‘”Take Notes for Me’ feature in Google Meet, which uses AI to generate meeting notes automatically, will be launched soon. Before its availability to end users, administrators can pre-configure access to this Google AI note-taking feature via a new setting in the admin console.
Zoom is adding new features to its AI Companion this month, such as in-meeting chat integration and optical character recognition (OCR). AI Companion will improve the meeting experience by delivering more precise, dependable, and thorough results by combining content from screen shares and chat communications. Zoom is also introducing a feature that lets meeting hosts save and retrieve transcripts produced by the AI Companion Meeting Summary. This option, which allows hosts to download transcripts as VTT files, can be enabled by administrators. Hosts can use these transcripts to generate Zoom Docs, with AI Companion helping with content creation and changes, even if they cannot be shared directly through Zoom.
Another valuable addition to Zoom’s latest update is the introduction of smart name tags. This feature highlights individual participants in a Zoom room by displaying their names directly in the meeting video. Once enabled, Zoom detects participants’ faces and applies either generic tags like ‘Participant 1’ or automatically assigns names to those who have pre-enrolled with an image. These smart name tags can also be edited during the meeting using the Zoom Rooms Controller, making it easier to identify and interact with participants in real time.
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