Microsoft Teams enabled functionality in video meetings that allows you to view (pretty much) every participant simultaneously toward the end of summer this year. Huge teams might still be out of luck, as Microsoft caps this support at 49 participants, but it is a big step up from the previous limit of 9.
This is a really welcome shift in the Teams functionality, making video meetings flow more smoothly and allowing better contributions and productivity from a wider range of team members. It will also help clear up any misunderstandings, as the lack of facial cues and body language can be a real issue for remote meetings.
To take advantage of the new function in Microsoft Teams, click on the ellipsis icon (...) at the top-right of a meeting. Choose ‘Large Gallery’ from the drop-down menu, and expand your meeting’s video stream support.
If the drop-down menu doesn’t show Large Gallery mode, check that your meeting includes more than 10 people. Meetings with fewer than 10 people will work in Standard mode, and you will need to manually switch over when an eleventh participant joins.
In Large Gallery mode, Teams will show every member of the meeting (up to 49 participants) in a dynamically scaled layout. Teams will create a grid that automatically expands or contracts depending on the number of people in the meeting, up to a total of 7x7.
For meetings with more than 49 members, Teams will display video streams based on whether the camera is enabled and whether the participant has contributed recently. Guests’ video streams will be moved in and out of the visible grid on the basis of contribution level.