There’s SO MUCH going on in Microsoft Teams as a product, how do you even start to talk about it?! In this blog series I’m going to attempt to work my way through the letters of the alphabet, talking about as many features as I can think of in turn.

If you’re new to Teams, hopefully this helps you find your way around. If you’re not new to Teams, maybe you’ll still get some new ideas. Here we go…

B is for…

Backgrounds!

Did you know that when you’re on video during a Microsoft Teams meeting you can change your background?

This can be useful if:

• You’re working from home and have your ‘smalls’ hanging up to dry/embarrassingly impressive selection of trophies/wildly unpopular music poster behind you in shot of your laptop camera
• You’re somewhere you shouldn’t be and don’t want anyone to know (not recommended)
• You are feeling a bit dull and want to mix things up a bit
• You want to pretend to be somewhere you’re not

You can either change your background before you join the meeting from the meetings options screen under Effects and Avatars:

(Yours might not say ‘avatars’ yet – darn it! That should have been part 3 of A is for! Oh well…)

Then you can pick from a selection of backgrounds. (This is my choosing face)  

You can go for a good old blur, pretend you’re in a fancy office, or go for something zany. (I picked Zany.)  

Then when you click the join button, you’ll enter the meeting with the background already applied.

If you’re already in a meeting and decide to change your background, you can do that by clicking on the More option (3 dots…) and Effects and avatars.

You can select a different background and even preview it before you apply it, using the preview button. Nobody else in the meeting will see any change to your background until you press Apply.

Good hey?!

You might have seen or heard that you can apply your own Teams backgrounds – this is only true for Teams Premium users. More on that here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/custom-meeting-backgrounds

You may be wondering – does this only apply to meetings? Can I change my background on a normal video call? The answer is yes! Just go to the More 3 dots button at the top of the call screen.

Note that the last background you picked stays with you for your next call, so if you’ve got a meeting with someone serious coming up, (or you work in HR and you’re about to have a difficult conversation) you may want to double check you don’t have a bunch of balloons behind you.

ALSO – you can even change your background on a teams call on Mobile! As demonstrated here by myself and my glamourous assistant Kevin.

Again, the option is under the 3 dots button. Clever little button that.

Now I hope you can background away to your heart’s content.

Have you got a favourite background? Let me know!

Next week’s blog will be interesting because there are a lot of things beginning with C in Microsoft Teams (Chat, Channels, Calling, Calendar!!!) – stay tuned to find out which one I choose!

If you missed A is for (parts one and two) you can find them here:

A is for Activity feed

A (part 2) is for Apps

Happy Teamsing!