Teams Real Simple with Pictures: Playing Video within Meetings

This blog is part of a series on Teams. For more articles, check back often. 

Written: 27/10/2019 | Updated: 08/03/2020 (v2.0)

After blogs on setting up a video channel for the Team and using Teams and Stream for personalised video watchlists the natural conclusion is to now illustrate how to play video during a meeting. In July, Microsoft released share system audio (Featured ID: 50692 on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap) allowing members of the team to stream their computer audio to meeting participants through Teams. What is absolutely amazing is that there was no fanfare about this new functionality – it was simply added like any other feature and, from memory, didn’t even make that great an impact on social. There are dozens of reasons why a member of the team would use video – instruction, demoing functionality, marketing, analysis, even playing back another meeting – and the organizer is no longer restricted by trying to run video with audio playing through the speakers. Whether the video is in YouTube, or in Stream, this can be done all within Teams to show the power of this application

As of March 2020, shared system audio has been moved from the share menu to the sharing controls at the top of the screen when screen sharing begins. This means it can be turned on and off at will as opposed to only having it on or off when sharing begins, then having to stop sharing and re-sharing in order to effect a change. This is a minor but pragmatic improvement

WHY WOULD WE DO IT?

• For playing & sharing videos during the meeting

PREREQUISITES

Users need Teams and Stream licences – usually via Office/Microsoft 365.

HOW

1.) Join the meeting via the Teams Calendar, through Outlook or Meet Now

2.) Select the Share icon (Square with Up Arrow) on the meeting controls bar

3.) Select Desktop

4.) Hover to the top of the screen to the sharing controls. Shared System Audio is the small scren icon with the strikethrough to right meaning it is set to off by default. Clicking on it will remove the strikethrough and set it to on

5.) Video can be played through Stream if this has been added as an app to the app bar (see using Teams and Stream for personalised video watchlists)

6.) Video can be played through a Stream Channel if this has been added as a tab to the Team (see setting up a video channel for the Team)

7.) Video can be played through the YouTube App

8.) Video can be played through a Website App (Note: switched out to my home tenant as had an app permissions policy setup in the test tenant)

9.) Video can even be played embedded in PowerPoint!

Our work here is done.

Video can be played in several different ways and the shared system audio function gives the meeting attendees a great video and audio experience – all within Teams

Enjoy 😀