Microsoft Teams Adds New Web Features for Small Businesses

Published: Jun 28, 2022

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Microsoft announced a big update for Teams on the web that’s aimed at small and medium businesses. The latest release brings some much-anticipated features that are already available in the desktop versions of Microsoft Teams.

First of all, Microsoft has announced that custom backgrounds support is now available for all web users. Microsoft Teams first introduced the background effects feature for desktop users back in 2020. It allows users to blur their messy backgrounds or choose from pre-set background images during video calls and meetings.

The Microsoft Teams web app now provides Live Captions with speaker attribution in 27 new spoken languages. The list of newly added languages includes German, Hindi, Japanese, and Portuguese (Brazil). The feature is designed to make Teams meetings more inclusive for participants who have different levels of language proficiency or hearing disabilities.

Microsoft Teams Adds New Web Features for Small Businesses
Live transcription

Microsoft Teams on the web has also introduced Live transcription support in all languages. With the Live transcription feature, attendees can see a written record of the spoken text during a Teams meeting in real-time. The text appears alongside the video feed with the speaker’s name and a time stamp. It helps people who missed the meeting or joined late to catch up on important discussions.

Microsoft Teams on the web gets CART captioning support

Lastly, Microsoft has added communication access real-time translation (CART) captioning to its web app. The service allows attendees to see real-time captions coming from a third-party provider within the meeting window. CART captions are an alternative to the AI-powered live captions available in Teams, and organizers can enable them from the meeting options.

Microsoft Teams Cart Captions
CART captioning

In addition to these web-focused updates, Microsoft has also released some enhancements for the desktop version of Teams. The app now allows users to send messages, notes, images, videos, and files to themselves. Microsoft Teams has also received new AI-based features to improve the meeting & calling experience, and you can find more details in our previous post.

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