Microsoft 365: Teams and OneDrive News
Microsoft Teams: Organization-Wide Backgrounds
Custom Teams backgrounds have been available for video calls and meetings for a little while. Now, administrators will be able to create a repository of corporate approved backgrounds that everyone can use. This will require the Advanced Communications license (Adds Advanced meetings, calling, workflow integration, and management tools) to implement.
Organization-wide backgrounds will only be manageable by Teams Administrators. The images will be uploaded in the Teams admin center.
The images must meet the following requirements:
- Images can be either PNG or JPG format
- Images should be no smaller than 360x360px and no larger than 2048x2048px.
- Administrators can upload a total of 50 images.
Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS will soon support custom backgrounds
According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap, custom background support for Teams on Android and iOS should begin rolling out as soon as this month.
Microsoft Teams will make it easier to join meetings
Microsoft Teams will soon have another option for joining meetings. According to the Microsoft, people will soon be able to join Teams meetings by entering a digital code. This mimics a popular feature from other platforms that makes it incredibly easy to jump into a meeting.
Microsoft's announcement states:
“All meetings will have a Meeting ID that is automatically assigned to a Microsoft Teams user and added to the meeting invite under the meeting link. Meeting attendees can join the meeting by entering the Meeting ID. For all meeting attendees, the pre-join, lobby and security will remain the same.”
Support for joining a meeting with a code will begin in May 2021.
Syncing large files through OneDrive is about to get better on Windows 10
The new OneDrive sync client will make it easier to sync large files as well as larger numbers of files.
Microsoft is testing an improved version of the OneDrive sync client for Windows. The new version is 64-bit, as opposed to the current version that's only 32-bit. The 64-bit OneDrive sync client for Windows is available now in public preview.
Microsoft explains the benefits of the 64-bit version in a Tech Community post:
“The 64-bit version is the right choice if you plan to use large files, if you have a lot of files, and if you have a computer that's running a 64-bit version of Windows. Computers running 64-bit versions of Windows generally have more resources—such as processing power and memory—than their 32-bit predecessors. Also, 64-bit applications can access more memory than 32-bit applications (up to 18.4 million Petabytes).”
The 64-bit OneDrive sync client for Windows is only available in public preview for AMD64 devices, meaning that people with ARM64 devices have to stick with the 32-bit version.
The new version of the OneDrive sync client is rolling out in public preview now, and it should be generally available by the end of the month
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