With the resumption of in-person operations in schools and workplaces, we anticipate a sustained rise in online meetings and calls. Although communication and collaboration tools have been vital in ensuring continuity during these extraordinary circumstances, initial stress tests have uncovered areas for improvement to enhance the quality of meetings and calls.

Common obstacles that impede the effectiveness of online calls and meetings include disruptive echo effects, subpar room acoustics, and choppy video. In our pursuit of continual improvement, we have incorporated AI and Machine Learning into our strategy. Leveraging these technologies, we have successfully identified and implemented innovative enhancements within Microsoft Teams. These improvements address the audio and video challenges mentioned earlier, ensuring user-friendly solutions that can be seamlessly scaled across various environments.

We are thrilled to share the availability of several new features in Teams that will greatly enhance your communication experience. These features include an advanced echo cancellation capability, eliminating disruptive echoes during your calls. We have also introduced the ability to adjust audio settings specifically designed for environments with poor acoustics, ensuring clear and crisp sound quality.

Voice quality improvements

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Echo cancellation

When a participant places their microphone too close to the speaker in calls and meetings, often sound loops between devices resulting in an unwanted echo. Microsoft Teams now employs AI to differentiate between speaker sound and the user’s voice. This AI-powered feature eliminates the echo without hindering speech or impeding multiple participants from speaking simultaneously.

“De-reverberation” revises for poor room acoustics

In certain environments, room acoustics can lead to sound reverberation, making the user’s voice sound shallow as if speaking in a cavern. Microsoft Teams introduces a groundbreaking feature that utilizes a machine learning model to transform the captured audio signal, making it appear as though users are speaking into a close-range microphone. This innovation ensures clearer and more natural audio quality, even in challenging acoustic settings.

Interruptibility, for better conversations

A crucial aspect of effective conversation is the ability to interrupt for clarification or validation. This is made possible through full-duplex transmission, enabling users to speak and listen simultaneously. However, removing echo while maintaining full-duplex audio can be challenging, particularly when using devices where the speaker and microphone are in close proximity.

To address this issue, Microsoft Teams incorporates a sophisticated model that has been “trained” using 30,000 hours of speech samples. This model intelligently retains desired voices while effectively suppressing unwanted audio signals, resulting in smoother and more fluid dialogue. By leveraging this advanced technology, Teams ensures that users can engage in seamless and uninterrupted conversations, even without using a headset.

Background noise suppression

Microsoft knows what it’s like to have a meeting interrupted by the unexpected noises of a barking dog, a vehicle alarm, or a slammed door. Over two years ago, Microsoft Teams introduced AI-based noise reduction as an optional tool for Windows users. Since then, we’ve been iteratively developing, testing, and evaluating our model to improve it better. After observing substantial improvements across key user metrics, they enabled machine learning-based noise suppression as the default for Teams clients using Windows (including Microsoft Teams Rooms) and Mac and iOS users. This capability will be available for Teams Android and web clients.

These AI-driven audio upgrades are being rolled out and are anticipated to be widely accessible in the coming months.

Video quality improvements

Microsoft has also recently launched AI-based video and screen-sharing quality enhancement advancements for Teams. They now use AI to help you appear and show your best, from low-light modifications to optimizations depending on the sort of information shared.

Real-time screen optimization revises for the content you’re sharing.

The effectiveness of presentations greatly relies on the audience’s ability to read on-screen text or view shared videos. However, ensuring optimal video quality for different types of shared content can be challenging, especially when bandwidth constraints come into play. To address this, Teams now leverage machine learning to detect and dynamically adjust the characteristics of shared content in real-time. This intelligent approach optimizes the legibility of documents. It enhances the smoothness of video playback, ensuring that your audience can effortlessly engage with the content and have an enhanced viewing experience. By utilizing machine learning, Teams empowers presenters to deliver their messages with clarity and impact, regardless of the shared content or network limitations.

AI-based optimization assures your video looks fantastic, even under bandwidth constraints

Unforeseen network bandwidth issues can disrupt the flow of your presentation, particularly causing a choppy video that can divert attention away from your message. To address this challenge, teams incorporate AI-driven optimizations that dynamically adjust playback in demanding bandwidth conditions. This intelligent feature empowers presenters to confidently utilize video and screen sharing, knowing that Teams will adapt and optimize the playback experience. By leveraging AI technology, Teams ensures smoother and more seamless presentations, allowing you to focus on delivering your message without worrying about the impact of network limitations.

Brightness and focus filters that put you in the best light

New AI-powered filters in Teams allow you the choice to modify brightness and add a soft focus for your meetings with a simple toggle in your device settings to better compensate for low-light circumstances, even though you can’t always control the lighting for your meetings.

Microsoft Teams: Planned for clearer audio and fewer distractions

The last two years have shown the critical importance of communication and collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams in ensuring secure, connected, and productive operations. TECHOM Systems assists you in leveraging new methods to employ technology to make the online calling and meeting experience more natural, robust, and efficient, in addition to delivering new features and capabilities to Teams.

Contact us to learn how we utilize AI and machine learning to improve your team’s audio quality and optimize video/screen sharing in Microsoft Teams. Leverage Teams for seamless workforce communication and collaboration. Reach out to explore the possibilities.