Microsoft has previously talked about how Teams usage has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic a couple of weeks ago, when the service reached 44 million daily active users. That growth hasn't stopped, though, and today Microsoft released a report on what the company is calling the Work Trend Index, which includes some information about Teams usage.
According to Microsoft, on March 31, there were over 2.7 billion minutes - 45 million hours - of meeting time in Teams. That's a three-fold increase in meeting time to just two weeks before, on March 16, when there were 900 million minutes of meetings on the service. Teams for Education has also grown to 183,000 tenants in 175 countries, and that's considering that some tenants are school districts with "dozens or hundreds" of schools.
Additionally, users turned on video in meetings 43% of the time, whereas it used to be that only 21% of meetings had video. The total number of weekly video calls in Teams has increased by a factor of 1,000 in March. Countries that use video the most include the Netherlands and Sweden, where roughly 60% of meetings use video.
Microsoft also shared a graph measuring the changes in Teams engagement in February and March in the countries most affected by the coronavirus outbreak, showing a clear correlation between stay-at-home orders and the usage of the service.
Aside from this data, Microsoft also went over some of the features coming to Teams. Custom backgrounds are now generally available, and the "raise hand" feature is also rolling out globally this month. Starting today, meeting organizers can also immediately end meetings for all participants, and it will soon be possible to download a participant report to keep track of who joined meetings throughout the month. Later this year, Microsoft will also add AI-powered noise suppression, aiming to reduce background noise in meetings.
12 Comments - Add comment