New Meeting and Calling Experience in Microsoft Teams!
Published Jul 22 2020 08:00 AM 2.1M Views
Microsoft

You may have seen the recent announcement of new meeting features in Teams in Reimagining virtual collaboration for the future of work and learning (if not, check it out!). Today, we’re pleased to share that we’re making several of these features available to most users of Teams over the next few days.


We’re gradually rolling the features out. Once you’ve got the build that has the new experience (Teams desktop app only), you’ll have the option to turn it on. Read on to learn how to turn it on, what comes with it, how to use it, and answers to some common questions. Let’s get right to it!


Turn on the new experience
You do this via a checkbox in Teams Settings. Here’s how:

  1. Select your profile pic at the top of the Teams app, then Settings > General. (General should be what’s showing when you open Settings, so you probably won’t have to select it.)
  2. Select Turn on new meeting experience.
  3. Restart Teams by doing the following:

a. Right-click or Cmd-click the Teams icon in the Windows task bar or Mac System Tray.
b. Select Quit.
c. Start Teams again like you normally would.


You might also see a notification that announces the new experience or reminds you to turn it on. Then it’s even easier—in that notification, choose Turn it on now if you’re ready at that point, or Maybe later if you’re in the middle of something.

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What happens after you’ve turned it on
After turning on the new experience and restarting Teams, the biggest thing you’ll probably notice is that any calls and meetings will pop out into their own window, separate from the main Teams window. Like this:

2.1.png

If you’re still seeing calls and meetings in the main Teams window after turning the setting on and restarting, go to your profile pic again and select Check for updates. Once that is done, do the same quit and restart procedure per above. That should do the trick.

 


But wait, there’s more
Here are the other new things you’ll see and can try out:

  • Meeting controls are moved to the top of the meeting screen. They’re docked there so you always have access to them (without jiggling your mouse) and they’re out of the way of the content and video that’s being shared.

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  • Large gallery view lets you see up to 49 video streams at once. This view is available when there are 10 or more attendees who are sharing video. To switch to large gallery, go to More options (…) in the meeting controls > Large gallery.

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Here’s what it looks like—pretty cool to see all those faces!

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  • Together mode lets you feel like you’re in the same shared space with everyone in the meeting. (It might be even more fun than Large gallery.) It’s in the same menu as Large gallery, just below it. Here’s Together mode:

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Together mode is available when 5 or more participants are sharing video.


Both Large gallery and Together mode are being rolled out gradually over the next few weeks. If you don’t see them right away, check again later.

 

  • Meeting notes are now taken directly on the meeting’s Meeting notes tab in the main Teams window. (This is one of the benefits of having the meeting in a separate window.) To access or take notes from within the meeting window, select More options (…) > Show meeting notes and you’ll see the usual side pane come up. In the pane, there is a Take notes button that brings you to the Meeting notes tab.

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  • Focus mode is available when content is being shared. If you’d like to pay close attention to content, without the distraction of seeing video feeds, Focus mode is for you. It’s available in the meeting controls under More options (…) > Focus mode. Give it a whirl!

 

Common questions

  • Has screen sharing changed? How do I share my screen?

No big changes here. In the meeting controls at the top, select Share screen. The screen choices you have will come up from the bottom of the meeting window just like they did before.

8.png

To stop sharing your screen, select Close screen share in the meeting controls. It’s the icon next to the Leave button.

 

  • Why are message extensions grayed out? I like to send polls in meeting chat.

We’re working on it! For now, if you want to send a poll or use other message extensions in the meeting chat, go back to the main Teams window, select the meeting chat (either via the Calendar or the list in Chat), and do it there.

 

  • What about InVision Freehand whiteboard?

Yup, we’re working on that, too.

 

  • Will live events also open in their own window?

No, not yet—that functionality is coming soon.

 

  • Focus mode is nice, but what about Full screen view?

We like Full screen view, too! (It’s available currently in meetings that happen in the main Teams window.) We’re working on bringing that to the new experience as well. When we do, you’ll have both Focus mode and Full screen view to choose from.

 

  • Is this available for any license type?

The new experience isn’t available for Teams for Government or Teams free just yet. But soon.

 

  • Which platforms?

The new meeting and calling experience is available for the Teams desktop client on both Windows and Mac. It’s not available for Teams on the web. (If you need to download the desktop client, go here.)

 

  • What if I don’t turn the new experience on?

We’d love for you to try it out. We’re making it available in this way partly because in the near future, we’ll turn the experience on by default. Eventually, the setting to turn it on and off will go away. At that time, the experience of meetings in separate windows, with the meeting controls at the top, will become the norm. So we want you to have ample time to get familiar with it.

 

  • What happens to the new meeting experience if I sign out of Teams or switch to a different Teams org?

If you sign out or switch to a different Teams org (also known as a "tenant"), you'll have to turn on the new meeting experience again. Follow the instructions for turning it on in Settings and restarting Teams.

 

That’s our overview and how-to for this new meeting and calling experience. We hope you’ll try it. Remember to check for updates and restart the Teams client after you turn it on. Enjoy! 

385 Comments
Copper Contributor

I have a question - what happened to the Record option for attendees when using the new meeting experience? We cannot seem to find it anymore.

 

Thanks,

Greg

Copper Contributor

@Greg_Luckett - perhaps whomever is managing your tenant install disabled it? The recording features can be enabled/disabled.
Silly question - depending on your experience with Teams if you were used to seeing the record option in the call control bar at the bottom of the screen it has now moved to the top of the meeting window. 

 

Copper Contributor

@Roman_Lindt - maybe, but if that were the case, I don't think the meeting organizer would be able to record either, would they? Also, if you go back to the old meeting experience, the Record option is still there for all attendees.

Copper Contributor

Since this rolled out we've had to instruct users of Phone System to disable it, as it affects the menu options for transferring inbound (landline/mobile) voice calls - please look into that before you make this mandatory.

Copper Contributor

microsoft teams is very helpful, hope more added features to come...

Brass Contributor

Update from my end, the new meeting experience is back in my account. Going to test if there are still issues.

Brass Contributor

NME seems to be back now, App has automatically reverted and the option is available under settings again. Thanks Team.

Copper Contributor

Likewise the option has returned but still appears to be patchy over the tenant as some users still don't have the option.  Guess it will arrive at some stage.

Copper Contributor

One item of note. If your organization is using Microsoft Enterprise for Office.  These new features may not be available.  I'm presuming our MS365 administrator can enable the features, but they are unsure as to how.
I uninstalled my version of Office Enterprise and installed my personal MS365 account.  Logged in with the personal account and all of the new features are available.

 

 

Brass Contributor

I like it when I saw that the dock is at the top. Thanks for this update:)

 

Copper Contributor

The new meeting experience is back on our tenant as of yesterday. In fact, some users never lost it. It seems that users with call queues enabled were the ones that lost it. It was auto-enabled for most users.

Copper Contributor

@Mansoor Malik  It's been 2 months now since you've announced this and almost everyone I've spoken to in other organizations and companies who uses Teams on a PC, including my childrens' school, has not gotten these new features. I just attended Ignite and heard about even more great features like breakout rooms that you are planning on releasing yet ones you announced months ago haven't appeared. It's unfortunate that the tech media has also gone along and just reported on these as if everyone has received them. The ability to view 49 participants, Together Mode, and the docked meeting control panel are features we needed long ago and would make a big difference in user satisfaction with Teams. Please stop misleading your clients with these announcements for the sake of getting media/marketing attention and tell us when we can expect these updates so that we can plan accordingly and not promise things to our users that don't get delivered for months.

Microsoft

@Rami Elamine Sorry to hear that you are having trouble not being able to see these new experiences. Let me send you a private message and see how I can help, we'd certainly want you to enjoy the new experiences.  

@Mansoor Malik , I had this new experience practically from very beginning on all machines I use. Few days ago we installed new shared notebook in meeting room, setting exists, it's checked, rebooted several times - no effect. Still old style.

Bronze Contributor

Hi @Mansoor Malik, can you please comment on why your team rolled back the New Meeting and Calling Experience for all Call Queue agents with absolutely no notice to end users, IT admins or even your own Microsoft 365 support engineers?

 

We understand that bugs don't always get caught during testing. That's okay! Just tell us there is an issue. Ideally, post an advisory in the Service Health dashboard. Perhaps update the blog post announcing the new feature with this information. At an absolute minimum, create an internal ticket for your support engineers so they can inform your customers.

 

The wrong way to deal with this is to leave everyone in the dark, forcing us to go through the laborious process of contacting support, gathering logs, escalating the ticket with our sales reps when there is no progress on the case, only to be informed one month later that the feature was deliberately disabled due to an issue which has now been resolved.

 

As an IT professional, my most valuable resource is time. I do not have enough hours in the day as it is. When I discover that this resource is being squandered by a vendor, it forces me to reconsider whether our goals are aligned.

 

Satya Nadella gave a great keynote speech on Tuesday. Near the beginning, he mentioned "Tech intensity" and defined it as =(Tech adoption x Tech capability)^Trust. Unfortunately, the "Trust" variable in this equation as it applies to our relationship with Microsoft has been decreasing recently. I remain optimistic that you can turn things around.

Copper Contributor

Awesome :thumbs_up: thanks

Brass Contributor

Is the new meeting experience fully rolled out to everyone?  We are still not seeing the new features, nor have we ever within our company, I am on version 1.3.00.24755 (64-bit).  

Copper Contributor

@Thomas Sjule 

 

We started to see this feature come back on Monday but as not everyone lost the feature originally could not say if its been rolled out to everyone.  We are on the same client version but it would appear the client version makes no difference.  Luck of the draw if you have it or not.

Copper Contributor

hh

Copper Contributor

additionally we had several customers who started to have issues with incoming calls to call queues which was resolved by enabled the conferencemode in the Q (only works with teams-only agents), several customers with conferencemode off (transfer mode) had issues all of a sudden and it is somehow related to the new meeting experience bug. MS does not explain properly or warn us :\

Copper Contributor

I haven't had an update pushed out since 25-August (v1.3.00.24755 (64-bit).  I check for updates/sign-out almost daily and have had Teams re-installed.  I still do not have the new meeting experience.  First told by the end of July, then August, then September.  Is it now October or should I just give up and expect in 2021?

Brass Contributor

Confirmed that the new meetings experience feature breaks Call queues answering:

https://itbasedtelco.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/teams-new-meeting-experience-breaks-call-queues-answer...

Copper Contributor

Again, what about those of us that do NOT have call queues and still do not have the functionality available?   

Copper Contributor

:smile:

Copper Contributor

:smile:thank you

Copper Contributor

I want to thank @Mansoor Malik and his team for quickly assisting me with the issue I brought up in this discussion earlier and resolving it so that we are able to enjoy the new meetings experience.

Brass Contributor

Hello @Rami Elamine and @Mansoor Malik ,

Can you share what you had to do to make this work?  I think we are experiencing the same thing.

Thanks

Copper Contributor

My Microsoft teams does not appear to show the new options. These are not in my settings, nor in my notifications.  Is that another way to access the Large Gallery update?

 

thumbnail_image.pngimage.png

Copper Contributor

@Mansoor Malik After enabling the New Meeting experience, we can no longer activate the debug log using Shift+Ctrl+Alt+1 on windows. Anyone else experiencing this are the shortcuts changed to enable logs?

Brass Contributor

@ZuberSyed Make sure you press the key combination when the main window has focus, it doesn't work when you're in a meeting or call.

Brass Contributor

Can someone point me to how I can debug why I don't get features the rest of my tenant gets for months after it becomes available to them?  The first experience I had of this was with Backgrounds.  Fellow employees were getting this in April but I didn't get it until August and I had the same computer equipment and my tech department confirmed I had the necessary requirements for it.  I was even on the same version of the desktop client as others and it would not prompt me.

 

Now, fellow employees have had access to new meeting experience for some time and I'm left patiently waiting yet again.  I have "Microsoft Teams Version 1.3.00.24755 (64-bit). It was last updated on 9/30/20."

 

This is EXTREMELY frustrating as I help provide Teams training to hundreds of other employees and they all are asking me about features that for some reason I can't get until months after them.  So far, my tech department doesn't see any configuration difference with me that would be causing this.  What gives?

Bronze Contributor

@Mr_Beacher Are you running Teams in a virtual desktop session, or on a machine that has virtual desktop server software installed on it? The Teams client seems to run in a different mode which gets new features later when this is the case. My desktop machine at work has the Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent installed on it and I still don't see the New Meeting and Calling Experience when I use Teams on that machine, even when I'm logged in at the console. I do have the new experience on my Mac and PC laptops, however.

Brass Contributor

@Ryan Steele, thank you!  No for virtual desktop and I'm checking with Tech on the second one but I suspect not.  What makes it even more confusing is that I have the same exact hardware/software setup a colleague and they've had the functionality for some time (in both cases).

Copper Contributor

I still don't have the option to enable the new experience... Checked for updates, even uninstalled, cleared Teams files and re-installed, but still no option.

I have M365 Business Premium sub.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be preventing the option displaying?

 

 

Copper Contributor

Copper Contributor

Why is the Screen Sharing stacked vertically? Most monitors are aligned horizontally left and right,

 

Zoom put the Screen 1 to left and Screen 2 to right, but Teams puts Screen 2 below screen 1. So you end up picking the application window instead of the screen.

 

Has anyone from Microsoft watched how users use the application?

Brass Contributor

Hi,

Will having Teams running in islands mode have any affect on if you see the new meeting experience or not?

Thanks

Microsoft

Thanks @Ryan Steele for calling out Virtual Desktop. You are correct, new meeting and calling experience is not yet available in Virtual Desktop environment. If users who do not have virtual environment and are still unable to see new meetings experience, please DM me so I can further investigate with you and help. Thanks folks and apologies for any inconvenience. 

Copper Contributor

Can Teams record video-conferences?

Brass Contributor

@fvidal79 if you are referring to a meeting being conducted in Teams, then yes.  See this MS documentation: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/record-a-meeting-in-teams-34dfbe7f-b07d-4a27-b4c6-de62f13...

Copper Contributor

No one in my organization can see the option for the New Meeting Experience in their Teams client. We run the desktop app on Windows 10. We are using Teams for Government (I think), but if I use Teams from my home computer with my work account, I see the option and can enable it. From what I've been told by Microsoft 365 support, this feature is out and enabled by default for Government accounts as well. We'd really like to be able to use this feature, what do we need to do?

Copper Contributor

I received this back from Mansoor Malik below...  Although I do not have Anixis installed (but we do use Citrix), this registry key was present.  I deleted that key, signed out and exited Teams, cleared my Teams cache (by deleting everything in this folder: %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams), then launched Teams and signed in and I now have the New Meetings Experience option available in my Settings.

----

From Malik:

For customers who are detected as VDI because of of Anixis and are missing the Multiwindow Meeting and Calling feature they should:

  1. Delete the HKLM\Software\Citrix\PortICA Citrix registry key and update to new Anixis client.

  2. Clear teams cache and restart teams.

Copper Contributor

Hello

With the new experience, will I be able to see several others video when  I am sharing my screen?

Currently I only manage to see 1 video, while it would be great to be able to share my screen but also see the reactions of the persons who can see on it.

Brass Contributor

why does the Linux client not get this feature?

We have more and more Linux users and would like to offer them the feature!

Copper Contributor

images (8).jpeg

Copper Contributor

like 

Brass Contributor

@Mansoor Malik  To me it is counterintuitive that Large gallery is only available when many people share video instead of just being present (and then having their profile picture or initials displayed, like in the "small" gallery).

At least, that is what I think - because with 32 people in a meeting (most not sharing video to save bandwidth) I cannot enable large gallery as it is still greyed out.

Also, "Together mode" may be fun, but adds no value to us (in an enterprise world) - functionality which could be removed if you'd ask me.

Copper Contributor

Very disappointing experience... I realised that the list of participants, the buttons and most of the settings menus are with white letters on a black background, which makes it difficult for me to spot and pick quickly an option, due to particular eye condition that cannot be improved. On the other hand, having dark letters on a white background (as in the old app) works great for me. I just don't understand why Microsoft does not take into account such aspects when upgrading an app. This is an absolute necessity for some people, so please at least leave the option to people to customize their background colours and not just impose the one of your preference. :)

Copper Contributor

I have Gallery View and Together Mode, but no matter what I do, I cannot seem to get the Breakout rooms working - I have this to teach virtually online. Can anyone help? 

 

I've uninstalled, re downloaded, turned on new experiences, quit, restarted, checked for updates... still nothing! Other teachers at my school have it - what on earth am I missing?? 

Steel Contributor

Is there a way to push this out via the registry key?  We took our users how to switch to the new experience several months ago. Then realized that as IT builds new laptops, those users do not have the new Teams experience and we missed communicating the directions to new employees.  Would be better to have a way to push out to all computers.

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