This post highlights two new upcoming meeting features to enable or disable attendee’s video in Microsoft Teams Meetings. In Microsoft’s 365 roadmap recently the two features IDs 70620 and 70621 showed up. These include a very handy feature.

We already know the feature to unmute all or single attendee’s audio. This helps to reduce distraction and noise in meetings which are intendend to be more like live events but with options for interaction at the end of the meeting’s session or event. The following screenshots of the roadmap show that this is planned for April 2021 to be available for attendee’s video, too! I.e. you then will be able to disable or enable attendee’s video either for a single attendee or all attendee’s.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

Microsoft Teams meetings are not only used for meetings but also for more or less one-way presentations by one or more organizers with Q&A at the end. Well, there are live events available but this is really more for broadcasting and only allow Q&A via chat plus to manage a live event broadcast using Microsoft Teams live events is not that straightforward if you do not use it often or prepare well for it. In my opinion adding these capabilities, to disable or enable attendee’s video in Microsoft Teams meetings will add value for many use cases where you want to have a meeting or presentation but only with more interaction options based on a clearly defined schedule. That’s where these two new features can help you to deliver great meetings with a much better user and attendee expierence compared to today’s event-like meetings.

Additional resources

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap Feature ID 70620
• Microsoft 365 Roadmap Feature ID 70621
• Microsoft Teams User Voice Participant controls in meetings – block attendee video