- Microsoft Teams Together Mode is officially retired
- Launched in 2020 during the pandemic, it aimed to offer the feeling of “being in space” with others
- But Microsoft says other features can now do the job better
Microsoft has confirmed that it is ending Together Mode in Teams, putting an end to one of its most ambitious video conferencing tools.
Launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Together Mode let Microsoft Teams users turn their calls into a virtual keynote, lecture hall or meeting room with the goal of “making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else,” allowing them to better connect with their friends or colleagues at a time when lockdowns were in full force.
But with many offices now open again and face-to-face meetings unfortunately becoming more common, Microsoft says it has chosen to end the tool in favor of working on other improvements.
Goodbye together mode
“We’re always working to make meetings easier to join, easier to manage, and better for everyone, regardless of device or network conditions,” wrote Katarina Tranker, a product manager on the Microsoft Teams team, in a company blog post announcing the change.
“As part of the ongoing effort, we are retiring the mode in Microsoft Teams.”
Tranker noted that the “core need” that Together mode was designed to support can now be fully met by the modern Gallery view in Teams, which is capable of displaying up to 49 participants at once.
The changes will “simplify the meeting experience” and “reduce behind-the-scenes complexity,” she added, while allowing Microsoft to focus its “engineering investments” toward improvements that will benefit every Teams meeting, “such as video quality, stability, and performance.”
The blog post also added that Teams has added a number of new meeting layout options over the years, leading to possible choice overload for users and a possibly fragmented experience across desktop, web, mobile and Teams spaces.
Removing Together Mode in favor of a single Gallery view will hopefully make it easier for users to quickly access the meeting they need and cut down on complexity across the board.
Users will still be able to use specialized backgrounds where companies can publish branded themes or images for their meetings or town halls.
The news is the latest update to Microsoft Teams as the company looks to ensure its online collaboration tool remains relevant to users.
Among the latest upgrades is a new feature that automatically updates a user’s work location when they connect to an office Wi-Fi network – hopefully this means less confusion about where workers are, but it could be bad news for those of us looking for a quiet day at the office tucked away in a corner.
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