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]

i SORELY need this feature!

It is downright neglible that I am not able to mute individual persons on a call.

There are not always enough meeting rooms available at the office, and it is ridiculous I have to hold the headphones out in the air away from my ears when I am on a call with and a colleague in the office space is on the same call and speaking.

FIX THIS PLEASE.

[#3]

Signed up specifically to indicate that we need this feature as well. My colleagues and I regularly move over to Discord when we have to work alongside each other for a longer time, because Teams becomes unbearable if 2 people are in the same room or one person has a jackhammer in the background and keeps forgetting to mute themselves when they are not speaking.

I understand that the audiostream is mixed server-side and this is messier to implement than it seems at first glance, but MS should probably know that the lack of this feature is driving at least some people to other platforms on a regular basis. None of these alternative platforms can offer some of the other functionalities that Teams offers, but that just means that usage keeps being fragmented and it really is just this single feature being responsible for that.

[#4]

Agreed that this would be a major plus for Teams. One of my clients REALLY needs this feature.

They lack sufficient meeting rooms & often keep meetings from their separated desks (but all in the same, open room). So unfortunately a speakerphone is not an option.

It's been the biggest complain about Teams there, I sincerely hope I get to announce the feature's arrival one day.

[#5]

@er008 Great post. I totally agree with this. No idea if Microsoft look at tech community for feedback.  Feedback hub seems to be the preferred way . I have created this problem/request in feedback hub, so please all upvote :)
https://aka.ms/AAlwgc4

Thanks!

[#6]

@dpamment Yes, A feature like this would be great! I would like to stay in a study group chat for work but I would also like to be able to listen to the audio from the e-learning i'm currently working on. Whenever I try muting the person's audio in the teams study group it end's up muting their microphone for everyone else too so I am forced to exit the chat. 

[#7]

Yes this would solve a problem in our office. 

[#8]

Writing here do not bring anything, since it will never be implemented (we do not event get senseless replies "thank you for your replies we will take it into account").
It is probably kept open to give a place where to spit our frustration out.

For those interested, in our case we found a pretty cool workaround. It is one of the solutions listed below (even in a company using teams, we use that aside):
DISCLAIMER: I did not check the mute only option on all of these solutions
https://slack.com/get-started#/createnew
https://nextcloud.com/talk/
https://element.io/
https://zoom.us/fr/signup#/signup
https://discord.com/
https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
https://jami.net/
https://bigbluebutton.org/
https://tox.chat/

I disable the notifications since it is useless only to be informed others are as frustrated than I am. It does only renew my anger.

[#9]

Don't understand. Aer you saying the workaround is to use other software?

[#10]

@Romain44444 

It is entirely in character for me to, from time to time, refuel my anger at Microsoft not having fixed this issue.

BILLION dollar company.

Cant be bothered to fix their meeting software to the modern work place.

270 million users in 2022. Can't make it so you can hear it in an open office floor plan.

Disgrace! !!

[#11]

I only signed up to promote this proposal, like so many others.

I travel a lot and see many different companies. Hardly any company has the possibilities to offer enough employees a private room or cabin. This is a problem that cannot be solved in the "real world". It needs a software solution.

It's werid that the only good solution is using other software.

[#12]

Just implement this.
We have a ducking Teamspeak (sic!) server running on premise to hold voice meetings because it is unbearable for the people sitting in one office.
Teamspeak figured out the tech in 2002, I guess you can, too.

I am actually curious, are you mixing the sound in the cloud and just sending the mixed stream to everyone or why is this so hard to implement? It's been years ffs.

[#13]

"are you mixing the sound in the cloud and just sending the mixed stream to everyone[?]"
Yes, reportedly this is exactly what's happening. All audio streams get mixed together into one which is distributed to every participant. Presumably this helps conserve bandwidth or improves reliability, but at the cost of usability in cases like this.

[#14]

@AdamZovits ok, then wouldn't a compromise be cool?

<= 10 people per call: mixing client side;

>10: mixing server side;

Maybe there's even a sweet spot where the removal of extra calculation server side is worth adding the bandwidth.

Also, Microsoft could make the mixing client side optional - with its opt-in buried in some sub menu - then only people annoyed by it will use it and it'll hopefully barely scratch the performance...

[#15]

Of course it would be cool, but as long as there are so few people (275 as I write this) interested in such a solution, one should not get their hopes up. It'd be better to look for alternative solutions (as offered in this thread) or drum up more support for https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/972be416-4fbe-ed11-83ff-000d3a1f8608

[#16]

There's a high bar for people who have this problem to support this feature request - people have to come here, sign in, choose a username etc. Just had exactly this issue, fumbled through a teams meeting with my mouse on the volume slider dragging it up and down as someone nearby was talking vs. people elsewhere. Not cool :(

[#17]

I agree - probably a lot of people who need this feature that don't have time in their day to figure out how to post here or follow this thread. Discord has had this capability for many years now. Why is Teams so far behind?

[#18]

@mcrevelingPossibly, but probably not. If "Enable user to reply to specific message in the conversation on the desktop client" could get 53K upvotes, issues like ours here with a few hundred responses will keep staying in backlog limbo forever as there will always be things with more backing.

[#19]

Just gave it my like, for whatever that's worth....

[#20]

I also wish this feature

[#21]

@er008 Four years after the pandemic, it's puzzling that a feature widely available in "Discord" and other meeting style software hasn't been implemented in MS Teams, despite this being one of the most widely used "meeting" platforms. Discord offers the ability to adjust audio settings individually for different users, allowing for personalized volume control. Eg, if a participant in a call has overly sensitive microphone settings, you can specifically lower their volume for yourself. This customization enhances the user experience, yet it remains missing from in MS Teams. This can't be difficult to implement.