Microsoft takes on Zoom with custom background, schedule meetings and live captions during video calls

Microsoft has added a ton of new features to its video-conferencing app, Microsoft Teams. Taking a page from the book of Zoom video conferencing features, Microsoft Teams will now let users add a custom background, among others.

Aiming to help you avoid showing that untidy part of the background while keeping the focus on you, Teams comes with support for custom backgrounds. Users can either select one of the collection of preset images or upload one to customise the background. This feature is an add-on to the background blur that Microsoft introduced last year in Teams. 

“Teams uses a highly trained model that differentiates the subject from their background and can impose a custom background over everything else, making it easy and fast to start expressing yourself in all your meetings,” Microsoft said in its blog post. 

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The preset image collection includes ‘something for everyone’, like a mountain of LEGO building blocks, an Xbox console collection background wallpaper, and 20 virtual backgrounds for you to show your pride and support for the LGBTQI+ community.

How to create a custom background on Microsoft Teams:

1) During a Teams meeting, click on the three horizontal dots on the bottom row.

2) Select ‘Show Background Effects’.

3) Here, you can either select any of the existing preset images or upload one of your own.

4) To add your custom background image, click on ‘Add new’.

Microsoft Teams will also let users schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance, even on the Free version of the app. 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. Also, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teams.

Also Read: Google Meet gets AI, machine learning-based noise cancellation feature for video calls

Teams free users can also turn on live captions during their calls and meetings. The feature makes meetings more inclusive, giving participants another way to follow along with the conversation and address the needs of participants with different hearing abilities or language proficiencies. It’s currently available as a preview in U.S. English.

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