Forum Discussion
Allow muting a person only for me
Sometimes I am in a meeting where one of the persons in the meeting is actually near me in the world outside the screen. In this case the sound is a bit maddening since there is a small delay between the sound from the person and the sound through the teams interface. In these cases, I would like to mute the person only for me since I am sitting near and can hear the person fine without headphones. Right now I need to takeoff headphones when the person is talking and putting it back as the person finishes talking.
146 Replies
- This would be a fantastic addition to Teams. I know I have definitely been weirded out by having a colleague in the same room in the same meeting and hearing them twice.
This feature exists in other voice apps, there's no reason why Teams shouldn't have it. Like others have said, in a hybrid office/wfh environment it can get very annoying without having this option.
Yes, please add this feature! It is very frustrating, when one (or more) team participants is sitting right in front of you and you are hearing his voice with a slight delay.
- +1, it's a really bad experience to be in the same room. and we all have good headsets.
I strongly recommend implementing this feature as well, we switched from Discord to Teams at work for meetings and muting other people for myself is not negotiable. I even use noise cancelling headphones but I can still hear people in the same room. Hybrid office work with home office and in house presence is very common these days!
- Created an account just to concur with this. I actually kept muting my co-worker who thought he was having an hardware issue because I thought it was obvious in a modern group call program that muting a person i just for the person who mutes. (If anything, I can't imagine many use cases for the currently implemented call-wide mute.)
We have hybrid meetings where some are connecting remotely and others are in the same room talking into a room mic. The people working locally are having a face-to-face meeting and remote workers can chime in through the call. If I could mute the room mic, I could listen the remote workers through my earbuds and local workers regularly in the room.
The current solution in our case has been broadcasting the call sound through one computer's speakers and using a room mic to record everyone in the room (while the rest of people who are in the meeting locally mute themselves), which has worked decently enough, but I suspect it's causing some feedback for the remote workers when the room mic picks up the speakers. It would be nice to hear the remote workers through earbuds though, especially when a larger meeting is happening.- "Created an account just to concur with this." Same!
Concurring here does little, instead visit https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/6259eda6-272e-ec11-b6e6-00224827b493?q=mute+individual+people and vote there.
- Please implement this. It would be very apreshiated!
I'm not subject to this problem personally, but there's nothing on the roadmap for this as far as I'm aware or can see. There is a feedback item though which is drastically short on enough votes to get it onto said roadmap. Upvotes this way; https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/fa54134d-e50c-ed11-a81b-6045bd864d4f
This is serious issue in our office. It's impossible to mute and unmute personal headphones physically since then you will miss some of the conversation from remote people.
The main issue is that on the meetings, where whole team is present(as well as remote people), the person that is talking is hearing multiple echoes with delay of it's own voice in the headphones all around.
This makes it impossible for the person to speak.
I don't imagine everyone muting and unmuting their systems sound every half a second as a viable workaround.
This feature would save hundreds of people a lot of headache if you only care about this.
So please, start caring.- "This makes it impossible for the person to speak." Actually not. I do it all the time.
The example that you are using is the exact reason why everyone should be using headsets. Let's take it to a little more extreme, and that's having all the same people in one conference room, everyone with their speakers and microphone on. It honestly just won't work. That's why there are room meeting systems, to handle the situation.
Having noise cancelling microphones also helps the situation, by reducing the audio feedback from other speakers.
Yes, someone mentioned that "this is the way that we used to do it" and they are absolutely correct, that's why call centers mandate the use of headphones, for that exact reason.
And when you were using the old telephones, you used a handset (basically same as a headset) as opposed to a speakerphone. Using Speakerphones in a cubicle area is generally considered to be rude.
If use on the ear headphones, then others won't hear your speaker and feedback and echo is greatly reduced. If you use noise cancelling microphones, then this helps that even more.
If you use over the ear headphones and/or noise cancelling headphones, this will reduce you hearing the other people and mitigate the delay issue.
These are well know and expected issues and that's one of the reasons why Microsoft has created the Teams compatibility program for headsets, to make sure that they work best for users.
You could even switch back to Teams phones and go back to using handsets if you want to.
There are a number of solutions out there, using your PCs microphone and speakers don't fall in line with Best Practices. I'm in an office by myself and I know how much better I sound on a headset than on the computer's mic and speaker, that's why I NEVER use them. I always use a headset. Even cheap ones are generally much better then the computer mic/speaker.
And so many folks have earbuds that are paired with their phone and can also pair with their PC.David is right. It takes a very good set of headphones to completely cancel out the voices of other people in the room and I can assure you that call centers and companies in general are not in the business of giving those headsets to employees.
Most call centers are running on £10 Plantronics or Jabra headsets with a single boom mic and packaging foam as an ear cup.
And, even if what you suggested were accurate, it does not account for those people who speak very softly, whose voices we cannot turn up, and those that shout who we very much need to be able to turn down.
- +1 for this feature
