An upgrade to Microsoft Teams’ participant view means you can now see nine users at once, more than double its previous 4. With more and more team members using the workplace chat app for conferencing, it’ll be much appreciated when it launches this month. Many users are noting that after years of requests, nine users still hasn’t met their expectations. Competitor Zoom, for example, supports up to 42. However, Microsoft indicates this is only the start. It calls this its “first update”, and says t’s working to increase the limit further. “3×3 = 9 participants is just the beginning. We won’t stop till our users can see all participants in the meeting at the same time. Lots more innovation coming!” added CVP of Teams engineering Rish Tandon on Twitter. With demand so variable during this time and peaks so difficult to predict, the cautious rollout is likely the smart move. Microsoft says it saw a 775% usage increase in Italy one month and has since had to reduce its call quality and pare back other services. Limitless participants is useful to nobody if the service can’t function with stability. Whatever the case, you’ll soon be able to view Teams in a 3×3 grid. The images are likely to be quite small on a 13″ device, but 9 and beyond will be perfect for bigger screens.
