Microsoft Teams Now Shows 9 People in Participant View

Microsoft is making a massive upgrade to Teams — well, kind of. The company is rolling out a new update to Microsoft Teams that increases the number of participant views by more than double.

As you may know, Microsoft Teams used to only show 4 people in a call, but that’s obviously not enough. Today, Microsoft announced it’s increasing the number of participants shown in a call to 9, which should be a welcome upgrade.

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Here is the thing, though: 9 people in the participant view still is not enough for a lot of users. Microsoft Teams’ main competition, Zoom, is able to show 49 participants, which means Microsoft Teams is way behind with its 9, reports Petri.

Microsoft plans to roll out the ability to view nine participants simultaneously by the end of this month, so you may still be stuck to viewing 4 participants at once for now.

Understandably, a lot of users want the ability to be able to view more, or even all participants at once. That’s obviously not possible now, but Microsoft says it is continuing to work on expanding the number of participants that can be viewed at a time. “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,” Rish Tandon, the CVP of Engineering for Microsoft Teams tweeted.

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Conversation 17 comments

  • davidabitbol

    13 April, 2020 - 5:10 pm

    <p>Rolling out now for Teams = One day in the next 3 months when your Tenant is updated</p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    13 April, 2020 - 6:38 pm

    <p>This is good, but it took over a year to do this, they need to jump to a 6×6 layout ASAP. The other big missing option is a Webinar type option. Live Events is way too much for our needs and does not work if you want to have say 6 people on the screen talking and then restrict everyone else to listen only.</p>

  • SvenJ

    13 April, 2020 - 7:54 pm

    <blockquote><a href="#538199"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a><em> </em> Apparently Zoom users can keep track of what 49 people are doing. I agree with you, but gotta keep up with the Joneses. Why not just make it an even 10×10 postage stamps? </blockquote><p><br></p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    13 April, 2020 - 10:18 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#538199">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>They can still allow for the option for Webinars, just change the meeting type to view only unless invited. In terms of people on screen maybe not 36 but 20 or so is very doable. </p>

  • techreader

    13 April, 2020 - 10:30 pm

    <p>To be very useful to schools and universities, they need to be able to see everyone on the call, even if they are just small tiles. Or at least 49. </p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      13 April, 2020 - 11:03 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#538217">In reply to techreader:</a></em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p>Honest question… how is seeing 49 students useful? Is it just attendance and classroom management? People trying to maintain a physical classroom so when "we go back to normal" its not as jarring?</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

      • mebby

        14 April, 2020 - 1:02 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#538219">In reply to red.radar:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I would think seeing 49 people would distract from the purpose of a call. I would not want to be in a meeting where I can see so many people at once. "Look! Johnny in grid A-7 is picking the nose…" Good to see many people for social calls though.</p>

        • SvenJ

          14 April, 2020 - 2:57 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#538340"><em>In reply to mebby:</em></a><em> </em>Heck, if you have 49 people in a physical meeting it would distract from the purpose of the meeting. </blockquote><p><br></p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      14 April, 2020 - 8:25 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#538217">In reply to techreader:</a></em></blockquote><p>Why? If they are such small tiles, how can you possibly see what people are doing? The point of having the video is so that you can see facial expressions and the body language of the people you are talking to, but you can rarely concentrate on more than a couple of people, let alone nearly 50!</p>

  • rm

    14 April, 2020 - 9:00 am

    <p>They just need to have teacher / presenter to have easy controls to mute/unmute all others, only allow presenter to be shown to others, end meeting for all others, etc.. Just have a quick way for a teacher to get a list of who is one the call and who is not on the call that was invited. That is type of thing is needed more than seeing all students all the time.</p>

  • Stooks

    14 April, 2020 - 9:23 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Microsoft Teams’ main competition, Zoom"</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Hahahahahaha……want some free porn streams with that slice of Zoom. My company banned the use of Zoom. Buhhh-bye.</span></p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    14 April, 2020 - 1:00 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#538305">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yes but this is the trick to winning MarketShare. Even if it is not a primary need for Teams it is the inference that Teams is not technically as advanced or good as another product – in this case Zoom. I learned a long time ago in Software development and marketing to never let a competitive product out feature mine. </p>

  • SvenJ

    14 April, 2020 - 3:09 pm

    <blockquote><a href="#538305"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a><em> </em>OK, then why does Teams need to add this feature? Both have numerous uses. What do you think is different about them? Keep in mind that Teams is taking the place of Skype as well as being a portal into O365 Business processes.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • beckoningeagle

    Premium Member
    14 April, 2020 - 4:38 pm

    <p>Why was my comment deleted? I made an observation about the title of the article that was not disrespectful in any way. I just said that the title is misleading because this is something that will begin to roll out at the end of April. The correct way to address my comment is either to correct the title, or to engage in a conversation about it, but not outright deleting the comment.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      15 April, 2020 - 11:53 am

      What are you talking about?

  • overseer

    14 April, 2020 - 5:02 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#538304">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>That is pretty clear from the way the system works. However, Microsoft is pushing it pretty hard and marketing it to schools and educators. For those in Education Tenants, we have Class Teams, Assignments, Class Notebooks, and School Data Sync for the automatic provisioning of Teams for classes. So while I think they features don't line up perfectly with distance learning applications, Microsoft is clearly marketing it as such, so they need to compete with others in that space. </p>

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