Make Yourself Silly with Snapchat Lenses in Teams Meetings

Yesterday, I wrote about the profanity filter for Teams meetings, which is something that most business could see value in. Today, we have the arrival of Snapchat Lenses for Teams meetings, which is something that I think might spark a different reaction. Microsoft’s announcement calls for people to “let their silly side shine” and notes that “Snapchat Lenses are a witty and lighthearted addition to the world’s leading communication platform.” I think I prefer mesh avatars. According to Microsoft, Snapchat Lenses for Teams is rolling out and should be deployed to all commercial tenants by the end of April 2023.

Snapchat Lenses are available in the Teams desktop client for Windows and Mac. They are unavailable in the browser (including PWA) or mobile clients.

The Teams Snapchat Lenses App

Using Snapchat filters in Teams meetings is not new. The technique was first explored in early 2020 when people used the Snap camera in meetings (Snap camera is now discontinued). What’s different now is that Microsoft includes a third-party Teams app called Snapchat Lenses (Figure 1) in the set of apps published to tenants.

By default, the app is allowed (enabled). If an organization doesn’t want people using Snapchat Lenses in Teams meetings, all they need to do is disable the app by moving the toggle to the Blocked position. Further control over the app (for instance, to make it available to a limited set of people) with app permission policies. Oddly, Microsoft chose to make the app available to commercial clients only and hasn’t included it in Teams for Education. There’s no indication whether the feature will be available in the GCC, GCC-High, or DoD tenants.

Consent Required

Using a Snapchat lens follows the same process as adding other effects to a meeting participant’s video feed. You can choose the lens before joining a meeting or during a meeting and enjoy the effect in preview before sharing it with others. The Snapchat Lenses are listed under a tab in the video effects section of video settings.

Like the video effects introduced by Microsoft in January 2023, a user must grant explicit consent to allow the Snapchat Lenses app to amend their video feed (Figure 2). This is an example of Teams resource specific consent (RSC) in action where an app receives consent to amend some but not all of the resources available to a user.

Once the app receives consent, the meeting participant can download and use any of the available lenses (24 at present). Lenses can combine with other effects, such as a background image or one of the styles or frames provided by Microsoft.

During a boring meeting, participants can wile away the minutes by experimenting with different lenses before settling on just the right one to make the best possible impression on their colleagues (Figure 3).

The Snapchat Lenses app is not available in the preview version of the Teams 2.1 client. It’s a good example of the kind of feature that isn’t needed to test new software that will be added before the client becomes generally available. The lack of the silly lenses might just be a reason to prefer the Teams 2.1 client, but I shall leave it to you to make your mind up on that subject.

Some in the Teams Community Will Relish Snapchat Lenses

In an example of the strange but backed up by a report statistics beloved by Microsoft, they assert that “video calls make up 78% of positive memories in meetings.” Whether having a giant mushroom perched on my head will enable me to create more positive memories in meetings is a research topic that remains to be explored. I have my doubts.

With over 280 million monthly active users, there’s enough room in the Teams user community for features like Snapshot Lenses. It’s not my style and I doubt that I shall ever use these effects after this brief experiment, but then again, I doubt that I am in the target group Microsoft is going after in the ongoing battle to match features already available in Zoom.

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Teams Profanity Filter Looks for Obscene or Profane Words

When I read message center notification MC537415 (5 Apr 2023, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 113412) about the “newly introduced toggle to turn on/off profanity filtering in live captions” in Teams settings (Figure 1), I wondered about how much usage this feature will get. I can imagine that it will be popular and useful in education settings (hopefully, those running the meetings will take control if profanities abound), but the corporate world is slightly more robust.

Deployment of the profanity toggle started to targeted release tenants in early April. After completing this phase, standard release tenants will see the feature in early May. Full deployment to commercial and GCC tenants should be complete by mid-May. GCC High and DoD tenants should see it in mid-July.

Filter Inserts Masks for Bad Words

The profanity toggle controls whether Teams inserts ***** masks when the transcription of a meeting to generate live captions detects that a spoken word is profane (Figure 2). In this respect, I believe that Teams looks for words deemed to be vulgar or obscene rather than irrelevant or unsanctified.

Some corporate executives I have direct experience of, including some at Microsoft, were prone to dropping a few f-bombs during meetings to emphasize a point or stress just how they felt about a discussion. This is the kind of behavior that I think Teams will seek to filter out.

If you don’t turn the toggle on, you see every word Teams generates for a caption. This is the default, so you need to turn the toggle on if you think that you’re in danger of being offended by seeing a profane caption. Of course, if you’re listening to the meeting, you’ll hear the objectionable term in its full glory because Teams doesn’t filter the audio feed.

Factors Affecting Detection

Another thing to consider is that the generation of live captions depends on the transcription engine being able to recognize words. When seeking to identify profanities, the engine must first recognize the word and then determine it to be profane. Quite how this process will deal with local accents, argots, and slang remains to be seen. My experience when testing the Teams profanity filter was that it detected some words and ignored others. Your mileage might vary depending on the clarity of enunciation by meeting participants and quality of microphones. A whispered expletive is unlikely to be picked up by live captions.

A further challenge exists for live translated captions (one of the four features moved to Teams premium in January 2023). I do not know how effective the profanity filter will be in a meeting where participant contributions are in multiple languages or if the filter will be able to handle concurrent translation of profanities from multiple languages. That would be an interesting test to run.

Improvements for Live Captions

MC538737 (April 8) notes that users will be able to choose colors, height, position (left or bottom) and font size for live captions. There’s no facility to highlight profanities in a different color. This update will roll out in mid-May 2023.

Personal Choice

Opting to use the Teams profanity filter is very much a personal choice. Some won’t care at all if someone’s contribution is on the edge while others will be very offended at terms that some consider unremarkable. There’s no way to set the control programmatically with PowerShell or the Graph that I can see to allow administrators to enable the filter for users. Maybe it’s best to leave this option for individuals to make up their own mind.

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Teams Green Screen Effect Uses Fewer System Resources for Crisper Images

Microsoft Teams has steadily added to the set of background effects available in Teams meetings since the introduction of the original blur filter in 2018. Video filters and effects is an area where Microsoft dedicates engineering effort to remain competitive with Zoom and other offerings. In my own case, although the brightness filter lifts my weary face, mostly, I use standard background images (sometimes grabbed from the Bing daily image). The next big step change comes in May 2023 when Microsoft is scheduled to release mesh avatars for Teams meetings. Between avatars and regular video feeds (enhanced with images and filters or not), Teams users have many ways to customize and enhance their virtual presence

All of which means that some might wonder why Microsoft is bringing a green screen effect to Teams meetings. Announced in MC529415 (March 17, 2023) and Microsoft 365 roadmap item 117941, Microsoft says that the green screen filter will provide “an enhanced virtual background effect.” Preview will begin in late March with deployment to commercial and GCC tenants slated for the latter part of April.

The green screen effect works on Windows and macOS clients with Intel CPUs and doesn’t support the Mac M1 and M2 chips. This is because the green screen effect uses Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) extensions like the background blur effect does. The fact that when using the green screen, Teams automatically disables background blue (and together mode) supports this assertion. The green screen works with background images and meeting presenter modes like Reporter and Side-by-Side.

About Green Screens

Adobe has a useful explanation about the purpose of a green screen. The screen doesn’t have to be green, but green doesn’t “match any natural skin tone or hair colour, so it’s easy to remove without grabbing parts of the person in the foreground. But if you’re trying to match a lower-light background or you need to have a green prop in your project, a blue screen works best.”

Microsoft says that using the green screen in Teams meetings “improves the sharpness and definition of the virtual background effect around your face, head, ears, and hair. It also allows you to show a prop or other object in your hand to be more visible to other participants in a call.”

Setting a Backdrop Color

The requirement to use the green screen effect is that the meeting participant has a solid color screen or a “clean” background wall behind them. Clean means that it’s a one-color wall without too many imperfections or objects on the wall.

To apply the green screen effect, the user enables the effect in the Devices section of Teams settings. I have a plain wall behind my desk, so I opted to try it there (Figure 1). Notice how Teams asks the user to select the “backdrop” color of the screen by clicking the dropper on a representative part of the wall.

Two problems are immediately apparent. First, there’s shadow on the left-hand side of the wall behind me. Second, two objects are hanging on the wall. Removing the objects and making sure that the selected wall is free from shade and other influences that cause its color to be non-uniform is the best way to get good results from the green screen.

Proper backdrops for use with green screens are not expensive (here’s an example sold by Amazon). Using a backdrop instead of a wall creates much better video output and avoids the imperfections I reveal below. The lesson is clear: if you want to look good when using the Teams green screen, invest in a proper backdrop.

Using the Green Screen

Using the green screen in a meeting is like choosing any of the other video effects. Select more from the toolbar, then Video effects, and then toggle the Green screen button. Figure 2 shows how the green screen works with the background image and backdrop I selected. You can see that the resulting video feed is imperfect because the wall is not uniform (the effect of the shade on the wall is very apparent). You can also see that the two objects hanging on the wall show through because they don’t match the color chosen for the backdrop. I guess that the top of my hair might match the chosen color!

These remarks are not to denigrate how the Teams green screen works. Instead, they undermine the necessity of choosing a uniform wall to be the backdrop. For comparison, Figure 3 shows the effect of using a regular background image where the video feed removes everything but the presenter’s image.

Fewer System Resources Consumed

According to Microsoft 365 roadmap item 117941, “green screen provides the best virtual background effect, consuming fewer system resources, allowing your Teams to run smoother.” The assertion that the green screen effect is less demanding on the system might seem surprising, but it makes sense when you think about it. When you apply a background image, the processor must scan everything captured by the camera to isolate the person’s image and superimpose it on top of the background image. Using a green screen means that the processor knows to drop everything of a certain color and display what’s left on top of the background image, so the processing is simpler. At least, it seems that way to me.

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Spatial Audio and Howling Detection Sound Interesting

Updated 13 April 2023

I’m no audiophile but I am interested in the changes in Microsoft Teams meetings to make the sound better for participants. Take the splendidly-named “ultrasound howling detection” feature (MC514081, February 10, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 92391) available for Windows and Mac desktop clients. In a nutshell, if multiple people (each with their own workstation) are in a physical room join a meeting, Teams allows the first person to join as normal and then advises the others that someone using a Teams device is nearby and is already in the meeting with an audio feed. To avoid a feedback loop (echo), Teams mutes the microphones and speakers of those users. If the muted participants want to, they can unmute their microphones and speakers (maybe after connecting headsets) or listen to the existing audio.

It’s a neat feature that is rolling out to commercial and GCC tenants. GCC-High and DoD tenants will see it in May.

Spatial Audio

Another interesting idea is spatial audio in Teams meetings (Microsoft 365 roadmap item 107783). According to Sonos, spatial audio “is an immersive, three-dimensional listening experience. Using multiple channels projecting outwards from each speaker, it can place individual sounds (or “objects”) with greater precision and variety than traditional stereo sound.” Sounds good.

Although the feature is still a while away (according to MC540153, targeted release clients should see it at the end of April 2023 with roll-out to standard release tenants due to finish by mid-June), Microsoft has published some documentation to put the feature into context. When users enable spatial audio for a Teams meeting, users will “hear their [other meeting participants] voices coming from their relative positions on the meeting screen.”

Conferencing provider Bluejeans figure that spatial audio helps participants minimize meeting fatigue, an assertion backed up by Forbes. The problem with claims like this is that they are highly subjective. I suspect that individuals will find different levels of benefits depending on the type, length, and content of meetings you attend. Plus the ability of people in the meeting to keep it interesting and worthwhile. If things get too boring, it might be possible to turn on an avatar (due to be available in May 2023) and tune out for a while.

To make the magic happen, you enable spatial audio before a meeting through the Devices section of Teams settings (Figure 1). Alternatively, you can enable it for a suitable device during a meeting.

You can opt for spatial audio only if the selected device meets the requirements of being USB-wired stereo headphones or speakers or the workstation’s built-in stereo speakers. Stereo (to highlight audio from individual speakers) and not Bluetooth are the key words here. It’s kind of disappointing that I can’t use my Microsoft Surface 2 headphones.

Meetings must run in gallery view rather than together mode. The reason here is that the feature attempts to figure out the relative position of the speaker from you and that isn’t possible when participants are framed in a special view. Another thing to pay attention to is that spatial audio consumes system resources. Teams will throttle back on spatial audio if it detects that the system comes under strain. Throttling is automatic and you can’t control it. The same is true for other features (like noise suppression) that process video or audio feeds for Teams meetings.

Making Better Meetings

There’s no guarantee that either feature will create better Teams meetings. Even spatial audio won’t improve what people say, but they will sound clearer and more distinct which can’t be a bad thing. That is, unless you do want to drift off to sleep..

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A Representation of the Real You as Your Visual Presence in Teams Meetings

Updated 27 March 2023

In October 2022, Microsoft introduced Mesh Avatars for Teams to a private preview. According to Microsoft, mesh (3D) avatars are “one of our first steps to enabling metaverse experiences for customers” before going on to say “With Mesh avatars, employees will be able to connect with presence in Microsoft Teams meetings without turning their camera on. They can represent themselves the way they want to show up by choosing the avatar fits their specific meeting— from casual, professional, or day-to-day.”

Since the announcement, I’ve heard a variety of reactions ranging from unbridled enthusiasm from people like MVP Vesa Nopanen to “nah, why bother.” I’m in the middle. I see value in allowing people to represent themselves in online meetings with an avatar in many circumstances. For instance, people with a facial injury might prefer to use an avatar instead of exposing themselves to comments about their injury. On the other end of the spectrum, if I’ve just crawled out of bed and am not in the most visually appealing shape to participate in a call, using an avatar might be better than turning on video and showing the disheveled reality . Another good use of avatars is when you’re the first person in a meeting and you want to establish a “holding pattern” so that people who join know that you’re there but aren’t quite ready to communicate.

MC533652 (March 27) announced that avatars are available to Teams preview users. According to Microsoft 365 roadmap item 107969, Microsoft Teams avatars will roll-out in May 2023. Microsoft hasn’t said if using avatars will require a premium license.

What Avatars Can Do in Teams Meetings

Some must-known things about using avatars in Teams meetings include:

• Avatars are optional. Ignore them if you want to. If you use an avatar, it replaces the video stream from the workstation camera, so the camera is off during the meeting. You can switch between the camera and avatars during a call. Avatars appear in meetings in all Teams clients, but you can only create avatars and select avatars for meetings with the desktop and browser clients.
• A user can have up to three avatars that they can select from before or during a meeting. For instance, they could have a very professional avatar for formal customer meetings and a more informal version for internal gatherings.
• You can combine avatars with other visual effects, like a background image. However, avatars have their own set of background images and don’t support custom background images. Given the popularity of custom background images for Teams meetings, Microsoft might well close this gap soon.
• Avatars are not static. They react to audio and “twitch” from time to time to provide some visual interest. In addition, avatar “reactions” are available during meetings to allow the avatar to express emotion or react to what’s going on in the call.
• Avatars are only available in your home tenant. You can join a meeting in a host tenant (without switching) and use an avatar, but if you switch and sign in as a guest to another tenant, your avatars are unavailable.

With those points in mind, let’s take a quick look at how to create avatars and use them during Teams meetings.

The Mesh Avatars App

Users build and maintain their set of up to three avatars with the Mesh Avatars app. Like other Teams apps, administrators can disable the app in the Teams admin center if they don’t want people to use it (Figure 1) and control access through an app permissions policy. Blocking the app stops people accessing the app and prevents them using avatars they’ve already created in Teams meetings.

Assuming that the app is available, we can load it through the Apps menu and start to build an avatar. You can also create an avatar from the Avatars and Effects option in a Teams meeting. However, I think most people will create their avatar well before attempting to use it in a call.

The avatar creation experience (Figure 2) will delight some and terrify others. The range of customization options is deliberately huge to accommodate as many different people as possible from all ethnic backgrounds and appearances.

After occupying many hours deciding on just the right body shape, clothes, hair, skin tone, and shade of lipstick, save the result to create your avatar. I am rubbish at creating anything artistic, so the avatars I generated are poor representations of the real me.

In some respects, it doesn’t matter how accurate an avatar is because an avatar isn’t supposed to be a 100% representation of a human. Although you might feel that an avatar should look like the person it represents, does it matter if that person decides to do something different? After all, people can use custom background image to represent them during Teams meetings and no one thinks this strange. It’s the same if they decide to create an avatar that projects their chosen image.

In later iterations, Microsoft might make it possible for people to upload a headshot photo and use that as the basis to create an avatar. Being able to use a photo would make avatar creation faster and more accessible, not to mention more accurate (even after a few tweaks). Of course, that assumes that the auto-avatar creation process results in something that doesn’t look like a cross between you and Frankenstein.

Using an Avatar in a Teams Meeting

After creating an avatar, it becomes available for use in Teams meetings. The meeting pre-join screen allows a user to select between video effects (like background blur, custom background images, and video filters).

After joining the meeting, the avatar takes the place of the normal video stream generated from the camera or user photo (if video is off). It’s as simple as that. If you use a live reaction (not an emoji) during a call, the avatar mimics the action. Similarly, if you use the raise your hand feature to attract the speaker’s attention, the avatar raises their hand (Figure 4).

Avatar Reactions

In addition to the basic meeting reactions, avatars have a set of purpose-built reactions to help express feelings (Figure 5).

Although you can pin your favorite reactions for faster access, pinning doesn’t add those reactions to the set displayed by the React button. Instead, you navigate to the Effects and Avatars option from the More […] menu and select the reaction from there. This is fine when you have the time to think about what reaction to use, but avatar reactions are not as engaging or useful as they could be if users could pin their favorite reactions to a more prominent position in the main meeting window.

Avatar Settings

Avatar settings (Figure 6) allow users to tweak the appearance of their avatar by:

• Moving the avatar to the left or right rather than looking straight ahead.
• Zooming the avatar in or out to appear larger or smaller on screen.
• Expressing a mood in a range from unhappy to happy. Mood changes by updating the appearance of the eyes and mouth. An avatar with twinkling eyes and a grinning mouth is happy. One with blank expressionless eyes and a straight mouth gives a different impression.

Who’s for Mesh Avatars in Teams?

I can see why some will like using avatars. They can be fun (hours of endless editing to create the perfect virtual you) and can help to avoid some element of meeting fatigue. Using an avatar won’t make an intolerable, boring meeting any more palatable. You’ll still have to suffer through the droning inanity that is the hallmark of so many corporate gatherings, but I guess you could liven things up a tad by dropping an avatar reaction into the mix every so often, if only to see if anyone responds.  It might just wake up some of the folks who sleep through boring meetings.

On the administrative front, I don’t see any way to track the use of avatars or who’s created avatars. No records are in the audit log to record use of the Mesh Avatars app or the use of avatars in meetings.

Avatars are very personal. Use them if you like. Ignore them if you don’t see the value. Microsoft hasn’t said how they will license Mesh Avatars for Teams. It’s possible that avatars will be a Teams Premium feature. If so, the decision to use avatars might be taken away from users based on the cost of the extra licenses. 

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Enhancing Video Streams with Teams Video Effects (Custom Filters)

Since the introduction of the original Teams background blur filter in September 2018, Microsoft has steadily increased the number of video effects that users can apply in meetings. First, the ability to select from a set of standard background images appeared. Then we could upload and use custom background images. This spawned lots of effort to find nice images to use in Teams meetings, and the generation of scripts such at that to make the Bing daily image available for backgrounds. In April 2022, Microsoft introduced brightness and soft-focus filters. And now, we’re getting a suite of 32 visual effects to enhance the video stream for users during Teams meetings.

In line with the dates given in message center notification MC495330 (updated 10 January 2023, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 86811), the new filters are now available in the public preview version of Teams. According to the roadmap item, the feature should be generally available in February 2023 for both commercial and GCC tenants. Full worldwide deployment will complete in late April 2023.

Consent for Video Processing

According to Microsoft, video (also called custom) filters allow meeting participants to “augment their video stream with visual effects.” Before anyone can use a filter, they must consent to Microsoft processing their video stream (generated by the workstation camera) to add the filters (Figure 1).

Video filters split into styles and frames. presented to users in a gallery (Figure 2). I counted 23 frames and nine styles in the preview..

Like other Teams effects, users can test a visual effect before deciding to apply it within a meeting. This can happen before a meeting (ore-join) and while in a meeting (select Video Effects from the More menu). Figure 2 shows my reaction after selecting the “Animated golden spark” frame imposed. Notice that Teams imposes the effect on top of a selected custom background image. That’s the meaning of “augmenting” a video stream.

Potential for Monetization of Video Effects

Microsoft says that video effects are built on the Teams platform infrastructure and can also come from partners. No partner effects are in the preview: the 32 available are all from Microsoft. In the future, it’s easy to see how partners might sell sets of video effects or custom effects generated specifically for an organization. You can also anticipate giveaway effects generated to publicize or celebrate certain occasions.

Control of Video Effects via the Custom Filters App

Like many Teams components, video filters are implemented as an app. By default, the app is enabled in the Teams admin center for commercial and GCC tenants (Figure 3). It’s disabled in Education tenants. If an organization don’t want its users to “decorate your video effect and make it awesome,” it can either block the app completely or allow selective users to apply video effects with an app permission policy.

The text describing the Custom Filters app mentions stickers in addition to frames and filters (styles). There’s no sign of stickers in the current preview but maybe these will appear in the future.

Hard to Understand the Value of Video Effects

It’s hard to understand the motivation to introduce video effect filters to Teams meetings at this point. It seems like the demand for applying effects to video streams was at its height during the pandemic when applications like Snap camera (no longer available) were popular. I could understand the rationale for including filters like brightness and soft-focus to help user images be as good as they could be, but generating a black and white image or adding a frame is not something I can get excited about.

But others will like the notion of playing with video effects and it will be a popular feature with some groups. I don’t recommend playing with video effects in your next meeting with a senior executive. If you’re going to try the styles and frames out, maybe do so in a meeting with some friends first.

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