Now in public preview: Teams on VDI 2x2 Gallery View

[Kaushal Mehta (LYNC)]

Description

Teams on VDI 2x2 Gallery View feature will enable to view up to four attendees videos in 2x2 Gallery View on VDI clients from Citrix, VMWare when Teams client in VDI optimized mode.

Flighting status

Available to everyone in public preview

How to enable

To access preview features for Teams optimized on VDI you need to follow steps below:

1. VDI platform Admins need to make sure that users are getting optimized. To achieve this VDI environment needs to meet minimum SW requirements to support Teams Optimization and have Teams optimization enabled. Deployment guidance and links to VDI platform partners documentation listed in document: https://aka.ms/teamsonvdi
2. Users must have latest version for VDI client installed on their client machine. Currently Teams optimization is supported on Windows 10 client PC. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-for-vdi#platforms-certified-for-teams
3. VDI Admins need to deploy latest Teams MSI version in per-machine install following instruction outlined in documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-for-vdi#deploy-the-teams-desktop-app-to-the-vm
4. Before enabling Preview IT Admins and users need to make sure Teams client in VDI environment is running optimized. Go to Profile - Settings - About: It should show client version and it should say "[VDI Platform] Media Optimized." i.e. "WVD Media Optimized"

5. With GA experience on VDI there is no Gallery View available, Video stream is limited to only one video for Active speaker showing full screen
6. After switching to Preview mode users will get up to four attendees videos in 2x2 grid.

Note: If you need information about enabling the public preview itself, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.

Microsoft 365 workloads and dependencies

Product, workload, or area	Dependency (Yes/No)	If yes, version requirements and other dependencies
Exchange	No
Sharepoint, files	No
Skype for Business	No
Outlook add-in	No
Azure AD	No
OneDrive	No
Office	No
VDI platforms	Citrix or VMWare environment prerequisites for Optimization

Supported clients and platforms

Windows 10	macOS	iOS	Android	Linux	Chrome	Firefox	Safari	Edge	Internet Explorer
Yes	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Known issues

Video quality might get affected with multiplevideo streams due to network bandwith management issues

Known limitations

Only up to four attendees videos available, no 3x3, 7x7

Screenshare: When user starts screenshare his outgoing video will be stopped and will need to be started again after user stops screensharing.

Enable your Teams client for the public preview 

1. First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.  
2. Users then choose to join the public preview individually. See Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com) for instructions. 

Summary of public preview features

For a history of features in the Office and Teams public previews, see Release Notes Current Channel (Preview) - Office release notes | Microsoft Docs.

Send us your feedback 

Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help > Give feedback.  

Thank you,

Preview Team @Alexander Ivanov 

Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams

[#2]

Great to see the VDI version developing

[#3]

@Kaushal Mehta (LYNC) 

It is great to see that the gallery view is coming to those of us using VDI. At my organisation I am under growing pressure to switch to Zoom because of the video limitation and I need to provide a date when many more videos are going to be an option 3x3 would be great, but ideally 7x7 so that Teams can actually compete with Zoom

[#4]

More details on user side configuration steps and user experience with screenshots: https://tomtalks.blog/2021/02/microsoft-teams-vdi-2x2-gallery-view-public-preview-citrix-and-vmware/

Big thanks to @Tom Arbuthnot for great write-up!

[#5]

Any news on when Teams on VDI 2x2 Gallery View will be available for production environments? Thank you

[#6]

@Kaushal Mehta (LYNC) 

I would also like to know when this will be in production?

Thanks

[#7]

@Gadget34 We will be posting update in this tread when the feature is rolled out 100% to GA.

[#8]

@Alexander Ivanov  Thank you. System administrators running VDI environments are facing a great amount of pressure in regards to this feature. Are there still many hurdles before it gets cleared for GA? Can we get an rough estimate? Q1? Q2? Q3? Q4? 2022? 

[#9]

Hi, It would help a lot to have a rough timescale. are we talking days, weeks or months please?. A Teams VDI roadmap would help a lot in convincing managment not to just purchase zoom.

[#10]

Hi, we have had two users confirm it is working for them.

They were not users who were testing the Tech Preview.

Can you confirm it is working now generally?

It doesnt seem to be all users yet, just a couple, we are all using the same version.

Thanks

[#11]

@danieldunn10 

Wow! It does not seem to be working on my side yet but this seems like good news! What version of Microsoft Teams are you running on your virtual environment?

[#12]

Could this be because the tenant is set on a different release track? I believe we are on Standard Release but it could be set to First Release? Not sure if this applies to teams features though or just 0365 ones.

[#13]

@Gadget34 

We are just using the targeted release.

We have later versions of the CWA but the two I have seen it working in is CWA 2006 and CWA 2009.

The Teams client is 1.3.00.34662. I'm not sure if it particularly matters what version Teams is in my experience.

The VDI version of Teams (which you can find in the logs) that MS seems to update from their side is 1.0.0.2021022224

Users have also noticed the bar down the left side has changed to grey and the icons chance. This is something I have noticed when trying the tech preview before