Microsoft is working on an upgrade to its business communication platform Microsoft Teams that will serve as a bridge between the desktop app and the web client. 

The “contemporary meeting experience,” as detailed in a fairly vague roadmap entry, will eventually be available to individuals who visit Microsoft Teams through their web browser. A Microsoft spokesman defined what this will involve in an email exchange with a news site. 

“This ‘modern meeting experience’ upgrade brings desktop-only functionality to the internet.” This features the option to move between current meeting stage views such as Dynamic View, Large Gallery, and Together Mode. “The pre-join process and the control bar have also been improved,” they were told.  

the company started testing the “modern meeting experience” on the web in February 2022 and is now gearing up for a full release in June this year, at which point users of the Microsoft Teams online application will have accessibility to the same capabilities as everyone else. 

Web users will benefit notably from capabilities such as Large Gallery view, which enables up to 49 individuals to be present on-screen simultaneously, and Together Mode, which puts all guests on a single virtual background. 

The upgrade will also provide web client users with new presentation choices in the shape of Dynamic View, a function that allows meeting screen components to be relocated and scaled based on the material being presented. 

Finally, the Teams web application will include additional choices to the pre-meeting landing page, making it simpler to choose audio and video sources before calling into a meeting. 

More fundamentally, the upgrade may be considered as part of Microsoft’s attempts to guarantee that all Teams users have a uniform meeting experience, regardless of whatever client or hardware they use to call in. Aside from the planned web app upgrade, the corporation has undertaken a variety of reforms to achieve this aim. 

over the last few weeks, for example, the company announced the expansion of the transcription function to users using Teams in a virtual environment, as well as an upgrade to Mozilla Firefox that would improve the meeting experience. Earlier, the corporation indicated plans to make crucial accessibility features available to a broader group of participants.