Microsoft is readying a new feature for collaboration platform Teams that could introduce a greater level of interactivity to virtual presentations.
As explained in a new addition to the company’s product roadmap, Microsoft Teams users will soon benefit from a “collaborative annotation” feature that allows video meeting participants to make notations on shared content.
The roadmap entry reveals few specifics, but explains that presenters will be able to activate collaborative annotation mode for all participants, or just themselves.
Microsoft Teams presentations
Since the widespread transition to remote working, vendors in the collaboration software space have put a significant amount of energy and resources into enabling effective virtual meetings and presentations, with mixed results.
A common problem faced by companies is that a loud minority tends to dominate virtual meetings. Although this is also true of in-person meetings to an extent, the nature of video meetings means that less assertive team members often struggle to make themselves heard.
Over the last two years, Microsoft has rolled out a number of new Teams features designed to make meetings more interactive and reduce the likelihood that participants coast through meetings unnoticed.
For example, Microsoft upgraded its large gallery view, allowing for up to 49 participants to appear on-screen at any given time, and rolled out a new mode that places all attendees on a shared virtual background.
The company also introduced new-look breakout rooms, which split large meetings into smaller group sessions, incentivising contribution from a wider variety of attendees.
The new collaborative annotation feature is the latest example, giving presenters an easy way to involve the audience directly and collaborate on shared content in real-time.
The update is still currently under development, but should roll out to all Microsoft Teams users by the end of June.
