Allow muting a person only for me

[er008]

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.

[#2]

@KLeDematicAU, it isn't a perfect solution, but, I would propose that the audio should never be muted when multiple people are talking simultaneously.  Otherwise as you point out, all information is lost.  So the echo problem still exists, but it is suppressed in cases where people are behaving politely and taking turns speaking.

[#3]

@Kent_Austin you are correct in saying the echo problem would still exist, but I can't fathom how you conclude it would be suppressed at the same time. It's got nothing to do with manners, but a technical oversight by Microsoft of what routinely happens in offices larger then one, where people Teams meet from their desks, instead of gathering around a dedicated teleconferencing unit (in a meeting room)

[#4]

The funny part of this is that you think that the person next to you's audio should be muted. You probably don't realize it, but your own audio isn't completely muted. There is a concept called sidetone in which your own audio is fed back to you as you are talking. It's been in phone systems since they were basically created. If you don't hear your own audio, you think that the connection is dead.
All of this is a LOT more complicated that people believe it to be. There is nothing simple here.

If you can hear the person near you talking, then the first thing is that both are you are being rude to the other workers around you. They can't focus on their jobs, because they hear you as well.

If you are in a team call, go to a conference room or a huddle room so that you don't interrupt everyone around you..

That's the RIGHT answer.

[#5]

"Back in the old days" of normal desk phones, this happened all the time where different people were engaging in conversations not related while others around worked at their desk. Nothing is different except the technology to do the conversation. You didn't expect people then to get up and transfer their call to a meeting room !
Also, many offices do not have enough meeting rooms for all the different "phone call" conversations which might happen at the same time through Teams. You cannot expect that to happen either.

Simple truth is that Teams needs to bring the technology into it like many of the other online meeting platforms already have.

[#6]

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.

[#7]

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; Add the ability to mute participants for yourself not for everyone · Community (microsoft.com)

[#8]

"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.

[#9]

You shouldn't have to buy hardware to make something work that can be fixed in software. Simple as that, quit trying to justify Teams not having this feature available.

[#10]

Unless everyone wants to go buy the $500 noise-cancelling headphones with directional microphones, all other headsets have the problem of hearing both Teams and the person in the same office on the call as an echo.
I use Microsoft headphones recommended for Teams and hear the echo of a fellow office worker on the same call behind me.

[#11]

Go look at the market again, I think that you are exaggerating a little. While not Teams certified, there are a lot of gamer headsets that fit the criteria.
But simply by getting everyone to put headset on, the room gets quieter, as may people automatically talk softer when using a headset, as opposed to yelling into their PC. You also don't hear the roar of fans on the call anymore.

[#12]

who wants to wear a gamer headset at work? lightweight wireless for me thanks

[#13]

Wearing headsets does nothing to solve the problem: When A and B are sitting in a room and having a call with C, and A is saying something, then B hears A's voice over the air first, then over Teams second.

[#14]

@Ed Woodrick Isn't it obvious that we use headphones? No one is on speaker, but you still hear yourself as other clearly explain. 

It is an issue. Just because you have great hardware set-up doesn't mean others do as well.
If you have headphones with superb isolation, then of course you're in your own world.
But you're in your own world if you believe that everyone can have such a setup.
Same story with the meeting rooms. We have meetings with 30 people present. Just think about your advice then.

You're advocating people and organizations to take the cost of Microsoft not wanting to implement a feature that is widely popular in communication realm. And you're fighting people who have actual issues with this. 

The point of new technology is to be better then the old technology. So I don't know why I have to point out that comparing Microsoft Teams Service to the old telephones is bad, seems obvious, again.

Again your whole response is based on some fantasy world where I use PC speakers and Mic's, but that is just not the case. It's standard Jabra headphones with mic. So while it's a lot of words, it completely misses the point.

And there are not a lot of solutions. Only ones I heard so far was:
-buy better hardware (1. unrealistic  2. Not in Microsoft control ) 
-buy bigger conference rooms (same issue, just the name of the room changes, 1. unrealistic  2. Not in Microsoft control )
-mute and unmute your headphones when someone speaks next to you. (1. unrealistic  2. Not in Microsoft control )

Here is mine:
-allow people control over who they hear, and how loud. ( totally in Microsoft control which is why we are all here, writing to Microsoft, and not for advice to be richer)

And please, don't say obvious stuff like, wear a headset, since I saw no one in my life to be on the speakers in the office situation, and you probably neither.

It's MS Teams issue for MS Teams to deal with.

Saying that we should all get better headphones is not only rude, but bad policy, since we have MS Teams approved headphones, and it's bad for the environment. Don't be like that.

[#15]

My issue related to being able to mute a person but not on the scale you guys are talking about. There are people that make useless noises in the teams chat, but when you mute them, they unmute themselves. Just because everyone is in the same meeting does not mean that all information talked about is pertinent to me. I would like to be able to mute people that make random noises or that I just don't need to hear their chatter on, so when the people how make noises relevant to the topics I care about, I can hear. And I don't like to wear a headset, they bother my ears so that would also be helpful to mute local people around me and likewise them to me, so we don't cause reverb.

[#16]

So let's think of it this way, let's mute EVERYONE that your microphone can hear. I believe that's what you are asking for.
So that now everyone near you is muted, including the desk 20 feet away, that person starts talking. You can't hear them through your headset because they are muted. You can't hear them in person because they are too far away.
So you tend to be damned if you do, damned if you don't

[#17]

@Ed Woodrick You have to be intentionally being an idiot. We aren't complaining because we can't hear the people next to us. We are complaining because we CAN hear them next to us and in the meeting. There's no reason we should have to listen them double with a second delay between in person and over Teams. 

[#18]

"let's mute EVERYONE that your microphone can hear. I believe that's what you are asking for." No, it's not. We're asking for the already existing "mute" button to mute that person only for those who pressed that button and not for the entire chat. That's it, not more and not less.

[#19]

So, no, it isn't obvious that you use headphones, and if you take a vote on this thread, I'd expect less than 20% do.
How did you do this before Teams? You either went into conference rooms or you were on a conference bridge, which often had the same delay, especially iy you were calling from a cellphone.
You seem to think that you are receiving individual audio feeds for all the people in a conference, you aren't. They are combined in the conference bridge in the cloud. Which is why person to person Teams calls stay on your network, but any time that you have 3 or more people, it uses a Teams conference bridge.
You only get one audio feed. You also get a suggestion of who is talking, from the ring around the user coming on, but you can see that it is far from perfect. The conference bridge mixes the audio, it doesn't switch it, so you can have 5 people with their rings on at one time.
So Microsoft really CAN'T allow you to hear only who you want to hear, the single audio stream is sent identically to all participants in a call. If you muted the audio went the light of someone near you speaks up, you would miss a LOT of the call. Especially if their background noise was keeping their ring lit.
This isn't as obvious as everyone thinks that it is and this is the Tech community where people can go for help from their peers. The place to put Microsoft request has already been posted in this thread. If you want Microsoft to review it, you need to upvote it.

[#20]

Ed is trolling us

[#21]

Please implement this. It would be very apreshiated!