How to use a video background in Microsoft Teams meetings

Microsoft Teams allows you to define a picture to hide your background while in a meeting but unlike its main competitor Zoom, it doesn’t have support for short background videos yet.

Despite this limitation it doesn’t mean you are not able to use videos as background during your Microsoft Teams meetings, it is possible in just a few clicks as explained in this article.

Microsoft Teams video background

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How to schedule focus time automatically in your calendar

Reserving focus time for yourself is important so you can concentrate on your own tasks without getting disturbed by other users and Microsoft Teams notifications.

You can set your focus time manually every day by changing your status to do not disturb or you can automate the focus scheduling process using the My Analytics application included in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Microsoft Teams focus time

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Meet Microsoft Viva – Your new employee experience

Microsoft Viva is the new Employee Experience suite of application provided by Microsoft that combines communications, knowledge, learning, and resources inside Microsoft Teams.

Viva includes 4 different modules: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning and Viva Topics with Microsoft announcing that are more on the way.

Microsoft Viva

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How to build a Free Touch Deck to control Microsoft Teams

I’ve being thinking about acquiring a Stream Deck for quite some time but always thought it was a bit pricy, so when I saw the Free Touch Deck project promising a similar solution for just $20 I immediately jumped into it.

Even though the it requires the manual wiring of the hardware, Dustin Watts the creator of the project has it very well explained in the online tutorial making the entire assembly a breeze.

Microsoft Teams Free Touch Deck

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Meet the new Microsoft Teams history menu

Starting this February Microsoft Teams desktop clients will get a history menu that displays a user’s recently visited locations.

By hovering the back and forward navigation buttons you will get access to menu that will make the navigation to previous locations a lot easier.

Microsoft Teams History menu

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Meet the new Microsoft Teams channel calendar

One of the core functionalities of Microsoft Teams are meetings, and this feature just got an update that will make the scheduling and managing of channel meetings a lot easier with the channel calendar app.

Added to the roadmap in December 2020 it is already available to be used in the web and desktop clients worldwide, so let’s see how configure it.

Microsoft Teams channel calendar

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Get my Hands-On Microsoft Teams book for just $5 dollars

Packt the publishing company with whom I published my book Hands-On Microsoft Teams book is committed to help people to increase their technical skills in the beginning of the year.

With this in mind they’ve decided to run a campaign until January 15th 2021, offering a significant discount in several book titles.

If you want to start the year mastering Microsoft Teams don’t loose the opportunity to get your hands on my Microsoft Teams book, you can do your order here.

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Meet the new pop out apps feature for Microsoft Teams

Multitasking while working in Teams was one of the main limitations of the platform, having a chat with someone, while looking for content in an application was a bit annoying and forced you to switch context multiple times.

Microsoft was aware of this limitation and with the last updates has been introducing pop-out windows that allow you to detach calls, meetings, and chats.

With the latest update of the Microsoft Teams client, you will be able to pop out personal apps and tabs so you can continue to have chats and collaborate while working in the app.

pop out microsoft teams applications

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How to enable Microsoft Teams personal features in your desktop

Microsoft Teams has grown and evolved like no other platform in 2020 and helped thousands of business and schools to stay on track during Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the huge success with businesses and the education sector, Microsoft has started to target other areas expanding Teams to be used with friends and family.

The preview of Microsoft Teams personal was announced and released for mobile in June and now is arriving to the desktop helping you to better manage your work and personal life.

Teams for Life

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Keep track of who watched Microsoft Teams meeting recordings

The possibility of recording a meeting on Microsoft Teams is not new but is being improved to provide a better experience and it now supports the recording directly inside of SharePoint and OneDrive as I explain in this article.

Getting the recordings stored on SharePoint and One Drive solves a lot of the issues users face with Microsoft Stream and it also takes advantage of the great features for files built in in this platforms.

Microsoft Teams meeting viewers

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I've been working with Microsoft Technologies over the last ten years, mainly focused on creating collaboration and productivity solutions that drive the adoption of Microsoft Modern Workplace.