What you need to know
- Microsoft Teams will soon support up to 1,000 participants in interactive meetings.
- View-only presentations will also soon support up to 20,000 viewers in Teams.
- Both expansions are expected to roll out later in 2020.
Interactive meetings in Microsoft Teams are about to get a whole lot bigger. Alongside a slew of other updates coming to Teams later this month and year, Microsoft announced that it's increasing the participant limit in interactive meetings to 1,000. Further, view-only presentations and meetings will have their limit increased to up to 20,000 participants.
"There are times when it's important to bring large groups together for meetings or classes," Microsoft said in a blog post outlining the changes. "For more interactive meetings—where attendees can chat, unmute to talk, and turn on their videos for real-time collaboration—Teams meetings are growing to support up to 1,000 participants. When you want to bring more people together to watch a presentation or discussion, Teams can support a view-only meeting experience for up to 20,000 participants."
Both increases will give large organizations a better way to handle company-wide meetings and presentations while more of their employees are currently working from home. These changes are also coming after Microsoft has gradually started increasing the number of meeting participants you can see on screen at once.
Beyond these changes, Microsoft also introduced a new Together Mode for meetings that puts participants in a virtual room together. Other incoming features include chat bubbles, live reactions and even Cortana voice assitance in the Teams mobile apps.
The meeting limit increases are expected to roll out to Microsoft Teams later in 2020, though Microsoft didn't give a more exact release date.
