ICT: Microsoft’s New Features Knock Zoom Out Of The Park

Technology giant, Microsoft has just launched a bunch of new Teams features as it aims to knock Zoom out of the park.

Over the last few months, Microsoft has been launching new Teams features to challenge Zoom’s dominance as many people work from home. Now, Microsoft has just made its Teams video conferencing service even better with new features for free users that could knock Zoom right out of the park.

The first new Teams feature is the opportunity to use your own logo or picture as a background, or to use one of the multiple custom backgrounds Microsoft has created. Teams already had the ability to blur your background so people can’t see that messy home office when you are on a work call.

The second feature is the ability to schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance in the free Teams version. Previously you could only use the ability to Meet Now.

Meeting schedulers have the option of either copying the meeting link to send directly to other participants or sending an invite via Outlook or Google calendar, Microsoft said in an announcement.

It’s being rolled out to current users first and will be launched “soon” for new Teams users. In addition, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teams. 

With the ability to schedule meetings too, the free Microsoft Teams option beats Zoom because the latter only offers free video chats for up to 45 minutes. While some people may be grateful of this for work calls, it means those who teach over Zoom have to open a paying account if they need to be online for more than 45 minutes. 

Meanwhile, those using Zoom to chat to friends will often have to call back in after 45 minutes—annoying to say the least.

Another new Teams feature is the ability to turn on live captions during calls and meetings.