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No need for a green screen, or even a blank wall. Today, we’re expanding these options so you can customize your background by uploading your own images or choosing one of the collections of backgrounds now available online. Our design team also created a collection of preset images that range from professional (a modern office) to pretty silly (a cartoonish beach scene). Last year, we introduced background blur to help everyone preserve privacy and keep their attention on their teammates. When joining a Teams meeting, you want the focus on you-not that messy bookcase behind you. Microsoft Teams custom background effects are now available! It’s all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyone’s well-being in mind. Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams, along with new features in the free version of Teams. These trends, along with daily conversations with customers navigating remote collaboration, inspired us to accelerate new features to customize your video experiences and make meetings more productive, comfortable, and fun. We also saw total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March. In fact, when the world moved to remote work earlier this year, Microsoft Teams customers turned on video in Teams meetings two times more than they did before many of us began working from home full-time. It’s a bit more difficult if you’re already in a call with other people-for now there’s no way to center your view on your personal video, so you’re stuck making changes to your background using the tiny thumbnail that appears in the bottom right of your screen.Įditor’s note: This article was updated to reflect the latest features available with Microsoft Teams.Video capabilities, once a nice to have, have become a critical component of collaborative work. The process to change your background is the same whether you’re hosting a meeting or participating, and it works in a regular call the same way. Microsoft Teams now allows for custom backgrounds. The backgrounds window will appear on the right side of the screen–scroll through all the options Microsoft has provided, apply the virtual background or blurring option you want ( Figure D), and carry on with your meeting. Click the three dots to open the menu, and then click Show Background Effects ( Figure C). With the meeting launched, look at the menu bar that appears a little below center on the video screen. click on that and follow the steps to launch a meeting. For a meeting, you’ll stay in the Teams tab and look to the upper right of the window, as in Figure B, where you’ll see the Meet button and a small camera icon. Starting a meeting is different than starting a call-for a call, you’d switch to the Calls tab on the left side of the Teams app. If someone else on your team starts a meeting, you’ll see an option to join right in the team chat window, but for the sake of this demonstration, and to turn your own background on for future calls, we’ll start our own meeting. This is the area where you can chat with coworkers, as well as start a new meeting and join an existing one. With Microsoft Teams open, navigate to the Teams tab ( Figure A). SEE: Microsoft Teams: How-to guide (TechRepublic download) In this tutorial I use Microsoft Teams for macOS, but the Windows version works nearly identically. Turning this feature on is a snap, if you follow these directions. It’s great for disguising messy rooms, non-work spaces or just maintaining a bit of privacy, and Microsoft Teams offers the feature as well–no green screen required. One of the hottest features of video conferencing apps like Zoom is the ability to change your background. If you’re new to Microsoft Teams, you might be a bit flustered by its layout–it’s a complicated app that offers a lot of various features, and those features can be confusing. SEE: How to blur backgrounds in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet (free PDF) (TechRepublic) With its full-featured collaboration tools like team chats, file sharing, one-on-one video calls and video conferencing, Microsoft Teams is a force to be reckoned with not just for Zoom, but for other alternatives as well-and it has a robust free tier that anyone can sign up for. Zoom has been the digital meeting app of choice for many users lately, but security woes are forcing it to face up to stiff competition from the likes of apps like Microsoft Teams.