Microsoft first signaled its intentions to provide custom background in Microsoft Teams in April. It’s been a long time coming as the company promised the ability for a long time. Early in 2019, Microsoft announced it would bring custom background to the service. As the name suggests, this Microsoft Teams tool allows users to change the background effects in meetings. This extends background features that have been part of Teams for two years. Back in 2018, Teams received a tool that allowed users to blur their background during video calls. This quickly became a popular feature.
Competing with Zoom
This is one of those additions that is much more useful that it at first appears. It also brings Microsoft in line with video conferencing rival Zoom. The increasingly popular app has allowed users to add a custom background for some time. Zoom increased its userbase from 10 million users to over 300 million in the space of six weeks. Microsoft Teams also enjoyed massive growth, jumping from 20 million daily users to around 80 million. Elsewhere, Microsoft announced some new abilities for the free version of Teams. Specifically, users can now schedule meetings and send invites without using the “Meet Now” tool. Furthermore, users can also add live captions to calls. You can check out the new abilities on Microsoft Teams now.
