Last June Microsoft announced the general availability of additional calling and meetings experiences for organizations using Microsoft Teams in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. For many organizations, deploying a VDI environment is necessary for managing access to applications and systems for remote employees, and can provide benefits of improved security, performance, and cost savings.
Check out some of the newly added features for VDI that further extend the value of Teams:
Multi-Window for VDI
Multi-window capability provides users the option to pop out chats, meetings, calls, or documents into separate windows to help streamline their workflow. Now Teams’ users on VDI can now manage Teams calls in a separate pop-out window, allowing them to use the main Teams client while a call or meeting is in progress. Accessing Teams and chats will be possible while keeping the popped-out call or meeting window visible.
Therefore, meeting and call controls such as mute, video, chat, and leave are now located at the top of the meeting window for easy access.
Live Captions and Transcription for VDI
Teams’ users on VDI can now use real-time captions to improve meeting accessibility for participants with hearing impairments, varying levels of language proficiency, or those who may be attending from noisy environments.
Spotlight for VDI
Meeting organizers and presenters can use the Spotlight feature to choose up to seven participant video feeds to highlight for all attendees. Presenters can right-click on an attendee’s video (or their own) and select “Spotlight” for the first spotlight, “Add spotlight” if someone else is already spotlighted, or “Spotlight me” for spotlighting their own video. Presenters can right-click again and choose “Stop spotlighting” to exit.
Background Blur and Effects for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365
Teams background blur and effects is generally available on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 too. Before or during a video meeting or call, users can change the appearance of their background with a blur effect or Teams virtual background template.
Microsoft will keep adding more great features to Microsoft Teams on VDI, so stay tuned and subscribe to our blog to find out.
