With the rise of virtual meetings and hybrid work becoming the new norm, the quality of call and meeting experiences on Teams becomes even more important. Micosoft is committed to continuously improving the audio and video quality of Teams, through user features and settings, codecs and advanced AI.
Built in cloud, designed for performance
Before diving into the new features, it's worth reviewing Teams's highly resilient global infrastructure, based on Azure Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge. Azure allows Teams to combine data with AI for experiences that optimize voice and video over variable bandwidth environments. This is also supported with Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The intelligent cloud also provides real-time information, global security, unified identity, simplified device management. All designed to make Teams work at its best.
Let's talk about the quality improvements of Teams in the following categories:
- AI-based audio and video quality improvements
- Real-time intelligent adjustments improve call and meeting experiences in the office and on the move
- Administration tools to help manage and optimise call and meeting experiences
AI-based audio and video quality improvements
Satin Audio Codec - Excellent sound quality with high resilience
As the volume of virtual meetings increases, users need excellent call quality, even amidst network and connectivity constraints. Many scenarios can contribute to low bit rates: parents and children sharing the home network for meetings and classes, an aging infrastructure. To address these challenges, Microsoft's new Satin audio codec delivers excellent audio quality at a bit rate as low as 7 kbps, making meetings natural and clear even when the network has low bandwidth.
Learn more about the Satin audio codec.
Background noise suppression - Keep unwanted sounds out of the conversation.
Background noise suppression from Teams uses specially trained neural networks to filter out noise and retain only speech to ensure that barking dogs, garbage trucks can no longer distract from your meetings. Traditional noise suppression algorithms deal with simple stationary noise sources such as constant fan noise, Microsoft's AI-based approach learns the difference between speech and unnecessary noise and can suppress a variety of non-stationary noises, such as keyboard typing or the crunching of food wrappers. This user-favorite feature is generally available on Windows and Mac and will soon be rolled out to iOS.
Learn more about the suppression of team background noise.
Noise suppression can be enabled in the settings Teams or from a meeting window.
High Fidelity music mode
Because of its foundation as a calling and meeting platform, Teams was designed to optimize dialogue. But with High Fidelity Music Mode, Teams also offers a High Fidelity experience for music.
AI-based video and screen sharing optimization - Smooth, distraction-freevideo
With Full HD 1080p support, AI-based video optimisation adapts to network conditions and bandwidth constraints for a smooth and consistent viewing experience, even at high packet loss. And for additional control, adjustable bit rate caps allow IT teams to further tailor video performance.
The new screen sharing optimizations in Teams automatically optimize shared content for features such as small fonts and video. This ensures your users don't miss an important detail. Now you can focus on meetings instead of manually adjusting content type settings.
Real-time intelligent adjustments improve call and meeting experiences
Real-time user alerts
Even the most robust networks can't compensate for user issues that can lead to poor call and meeting experiences. Microsoft Teams can provide alerts, recommendations and adjustments to users in real time to minimize interruptions and enable smooth, seamless connections. For example:
- When joining a meeting Teams already in progress, users automatically join the meeting with their speakers muted.
- If users join a meeting Teams with their speakers muted, Teams provides them with an alert to turn their speakers back on.
- During an active Teams meeting, if users are muted and start talking, Teams detects this and alerts users that they are muted.
Teams warns users when they are speaking in mute mode.
Seamless endpoint transfers between PCs and mobile devices
Teams allows you to easily make and receive calls from multiple different endpoints. The new endpoint transfer capability allows you to seamlessly transfer your calls between different devices, such as from your laptop to your cell phone and vice versa, without any interruption in service or call quality. When you decide to switch to another device, you will be presented with 2 options to choose from: "transfer to this device" or "stay on both devices" by choosing one of the options you immediately streamline your selection.
Start a call on your PC and transfer it to your mobile device.
Call Me Backup
Teams can detect when an audio or device problem occurs and offer a "Call me back" option, so you can continue the meeting over the phone instead of wasting time trying to solve the problem.
In case of technical problems, Teams can call you back on a mobile device.
Find out how to set up the callback function.
Mobile network switching
When network quality suddenly degrades, it is important to have a seamless transition from Wi-Fi to cellular or vice versa. Teams can automatically switch to a mobile data network while maintaining video and screen sharing. Participants will continue the meeting without any disruption.