June-July developments
Teams upgraded its online meeting platform in July by adding new capabilities. One highlight is the introduction of Loop components, which allow users to seamlessly co-author tables, action items, and lists directly within chats. Meanwhile, collaborative notes empower meeting participants to co-create agendas, capture notes, and track action items in real time.
In Teams Town Hall, organisers have greater control over who manages the screen shown to attendees. They can choose to allow ‘Organiser, co-organisers, and presenters’, ‘Organiser and co-organiser only’, or specific individuals.
Town Hall events have also become more accessible, with dial-in details now included in the shared event dialogue. This enables organisers and presenters to join via traditional phone lines or Microsoft Teams Rooms. Presenters initially enter as attendees and are then promoted to gain access to the green room or live session.
New Town Hall usage reports in the Teams admin centre provide valuable insights into attendee engagement, participation metrics, and overall event performance.
This month, Google Meet introduced an important enhancement for secure collaboration. Previously, client-side encrypted calls were accessible only via computers or mobile devices. Now, users can join these highly secure meetings directly from Google Meet hardware devices.
Google Meet client-side encryption now provides an additional layer of privacy by encrypting all media directly within each participant’s browser, using keys accessible only to them.
Google Meet is making adjustments to make conversations better during live streams. Specifically, viewers will now have the ability to send chat messages during live-streamed meetings.
Additionally, the ability for viewers to read in-meeting chat messages will now be managed through a new host control.
On the Zoom web portal, the Dashboard offers more detailed media connection insights, including metrics for video, audio, and screen sharing. Additionally, Zoom has enabled local automated captions that operate directly on devices, ensuring that captions remain available even during periods of low connectivity.
Zoom Events has also seen significant updates. Hosts can now add and manage promo codes directly within the event setup process, simplifying event promotions and ticketing. Event hub tiles have been improved to display adaptive timestamps, such as ‘2 days ago’ or ‘1 month ago’, offering clearer context for attendees. Hosts can now create surveys with up to 100 questions and automatically notify attendees with banners when active session settings change.
The major addition is the Zoom web portal’s adjustable onboarding approach. This feature allows account owners and administrators to enable or disable an instructional pop-up assistant in the Zoom Workplace app.
Are you planning an online meeting or event and need urgent advice?
Our ConfTech Help desk provides countries and organisations with immediate advice on how to organise and run online meetings and events. Get in touch with us at conftech@diplomacy.edu.
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