Category: Wednesday Tech Bytes

Do you regularly send sensitive documents via email? If so, you are probably careful to double check that you have included the right recipient; you might even go one step further by adding a read receipt to the email. The next step that you could take when sending sensitive documents via email, is to use an encrypted email. However, if you truly want to protect sensitive documents that contain either personal or business assets, then you should consider the benefits of using Microsoft Word’s latest password protection feature.

Protect The Documents You Need To
The beauty of Microsoft Word’s password protection feature is that you can use it to protect the documents you need to. In other words, you don’t have to password protect the memo about days off or the daily office joke that brings a bit of cheer in the morning. Instead, you can pick and choose what documents you protect with a password. In this vein, it should go without saying that you need to send the password via a secure measure. In other words, it doesn’t do you any good to protect a document and then simply send the password via the same email as the document. Additionally, remember that passwords are case-sensitive and cannot be easily recovered if they are lost. With these tips in mind, there are three simply steps that you can take to add a password to any Microsoft Word document that contains sensitive information.

3 Steps To Add A Password To Microsoft Word Documents 
To add a password to a Microsoft Word document you will need to complete the following three steps in order.

1. Select the File tab and scroll down to Info.
2. Once you have selected Info, click on the Protect Document button. You will then select the Encrypt with Password option, which can be found from the drop-down menu.
3. Click Encrypt It and type in the password that you want to use for the document. Keep in mind that each password will be case-sensitive, unique, and cannot be easily recovered if it is accidentally forgotten. Once you have selected the password that you want to use, click OK.

Through the above three easy to implement steps your Microsoft Word document will be securely locked behind your carefully chosen password. It is important to note that this process can be completed in Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Word 2016. Finally, you can always remove the password by simply following the above three steps and their prompts. Whether you need to protect your personal or business files, the Microsoft Word password protection feature is an easy way to bolster security as you write, edit, and send sensitive documents.

Microsoft Excel has been around for ages. However, did you know that there are a whole host of functionality features to simplify your workflow and help you save time? One of the most commonly used tools is the Add Column from Example option. Here’s what you need to know about it.

How Do You Add a Column from an Example in Microsoft Excel?

Start by selecting Query > Edit. Then select Add a Column. Choose Column from Examples and From All Columns. After a column is populated, go ahead and add sample data for the new column. Press the Ctrl + Enter keys to instruct Excel to populate the remaining fields.

When is Adding a Column from an Example in Microsoft Excel Useful?

The Add Column from Example feature is an instrumental part of Microsoft Excel’s Power Query functionality that saves users an immense amount of time. Examples of an ideal time to use this function in situations where you need a column that references another column, such as when you want to join two columns together. For example, combining city and state names together for an address.

Is Add Column from Example a Feature for All Versions of Microsoft Excel?

Unfortunately, the Power Query feature of Microsoft Excel is a relatively new addition to the popular software program. You must have Excel 2016 or Office 360 to use it unless you install a free add-in from Microsoft to your version,

In short, the Add Column from Example feature is a practical and useful way to clean up data sets without additional time or effort.

Microsoft recently announced several new updates to Office 365. These updates and additions will help organizations who want to streamline efficiencies and remain compliant with new regulations across numerous industries. The nine key additions and updates to Office 365 will also help organizations effectively manage their digital presence.

9 New Updates And Additions To Microsoft Office 365

The nine key updates and additions to Office 365, include the following features and benefits.

1. Embed 3-D animations into Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. — You don’t need to know how to code an animation series to use this new feature. In fact, all you have to do is place the 3-D model into your slide, select a pre-built animation, click apply, and instantaneously watch as the 3-D model comes to life.
2. PowerPoint can transform written texts into readable messages. — Whether you have the world’s worst handwriting or a five year old can draw better than you, PowerPoint is now here to save you time and inevitably money as you create your business presentations. Simply draw out the presentation by hand using a touchscreen tablet. Next, launch PowerPoint and watch as the slides are automatically transformed with digital design recommendations that include layout, icon, and text suggestions. In minutes your handwritten ink can look like something that was designed by a professional artist in the graphic design department.
3. Save office supplies with the digital pen. — The Microsoft digital pen has all new features that will allow you to save time and resources when editing important documents. Enjoy the speed of simply using the digital pen to cross out paragraphs, circle text, add words, insert line breaks, split / change words, and leave detailed comments.
4. Transform Word documents into web-ready publications. — To transform your Word document into a Sway website, simply finalize your document, click File, and then click Transform. This feature can also be used to reduce the time needed to create and publish newsletters, training documents, product pages, and pitch decks.
5. Use blurred background to regain focus on video calls. — The new blurred background features allows video callers to blur their background so that unwanted distractions remain out of sight. The feature is particularly helpful for organizations that have a large remote workforce.
6. Avoid time-consuming compatibility issues. — Microsoft’s recently released desktop app allows organizations to easily check app compatibility before they complete a system upgrade. This check can save organizations time and money as they keep their systems operating at the optimal capacities, without suffering from incompatibility issues.
7. More efficiently complete Office 365 migrations with the SharePoint Migration Tool. — The new and improved SharePoint Migration Tool offers a point and click interface that makes it easier for organizations to complete Office 365 migrations. For example, in a few simple clicks your OneDrive files can be migrated to OneDrive for business.
8. IT teams can more effectively manage and implement business critical resolutions. — The SharePoint Admin Center now allows IT experts to more easily manage Office 365 group-connected sites and hub sites. The update also includes security and compliance enhancements. For example, admins can now restrict or allow access from known IP-addresses, automatically sign-out idle users, and restrict access from non-compliant devices.
9. Maintain user data compliance. — Office 365 has a complete list of certifications and attestations to ensure that security and compliance are maintained. In this vein, Office 365 recently achieved its HITRUST CSF Certification, which is specifically designed to help health organizations maintain security, privacy, and regulatory compliance.

The Bottom Line: Microsoft Office 365 Delivers Powerful New Updates

Whether you want to more effectively manage your digital presence or create dynamic PowerPoint presentations in a click of the button, the new updates to Office 365 are built with the business executive in mind. In short, the new updates and additions to Office 365 will help your organization to more efficiently and effectively complete daily tasks that will lead to heightened levels of business success.

PowerPoint is regaining a much-needed edge in the world of business presentations. Microsoft recently announced some new exciting and easy to use features that will improve presentation design for those who subscribe to Office 365 and who have PowerPoint 2016 or beyond. Some experts are calling the new features like the Live Captions and Subtitles innovative and even, sleek.

1. Live Captions and Subtitles: This is a new and very innovative feature to PowerPoint that transforms and even translates what you are saying into helpful real-time captions and subtitles. These live captions and subtitles also support those who are deaf and hard of hearing in Microsoft’s mission to use artificial intelligence (AI) for social good. This feature also engages those who speak an entirely different language making your PowerPoint presentations more inclusive. This feature will support 12 languages and display captions or subtitles in over 60 languages using AI.

2. Zoom: Say goodbye to clicking from one slide to another and keeping track of how all of those slides work together. PowerPoint’s new Zoom feature is like a presentation’s visual table of contents. You select the slides you want to feature and the Zoom tool will automatically become the menu of all the presentation’s slides. Plus, while on the menu slide, you can “zoom in” or focus in on different parts of the presentation. Zoom is a creative an eye-catching feature that allows presenters to share the overall context of the presentation without having to click through a variety of slides. And it is straightforward to use with three options; the summary zoom, section zoom or the slide zoom. The summary and section features create menu slides that allow presenters to select what to click on. The slide feature cleverly allows you to include a clickable thumbnail into a slide as opposed to the menu slide.

3. Morph: The Morph slide transition feature gives you the opportunity to easily create interesting and seamless transitions between slides, smoother animations, and object movements among slides. Morph allows a presentation of individual slides become like a continual thread creating a type of video. Experts suggest the best way to create a successful Morph is to select two slides that include at least two common objects. A tip is to copy and paste the common object onto two slides and then move the object to a different location on the second slide.

4. Slide Hyperlinking: This is a game changer in PowerPoint’s features. Slide Hyperlinking feature allows you to click on any slide within your presentation creating a more interactive and better flowing presentation. There is a feature, “place in this document” that allows this to happen. If an audience member has a question concerning information on a previous slide, the hyperlink feature takes you back instantaneously.

5. Designer: PowerPoint has taken the mystery out of beautiful presentations with Designer. Designer helps and inspires you to create professional looking slides with ease. This feature will generate a design concept as soon as a photo or other content is inserted. A template including color schemes, font types and selections, and other stylings are recommended. In the end, Design saves you time, effort and stress when creating a presentation.

You have a lot going on during the business day and beyond, so any short-cut that adds productivity and efficiency to your day is a nice welcome. Microsoft recently updated its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint programs with a nifty even if simple tool: the @mention.

You have likely been there where you want to make a comment, you do make a comment, and that comment gets lost among all the other comments. Worse yet: the document you are reviewing will be reviewed by not just one but many other people. Without personalization in these comments, everyone will read each comment without knowing for whom it was intended. The @mention is a feature that solves these types of problems — problems that seem trivial at first but which can really add up. Here’s how to use the @mention feature and how to do so with success.

How to Use @mention in Microsoft Office?

The @mention feature is only available using Office 365. It allows you to tag someone who has permission to open the document for feedback by emailing that person with a direct link to the comment. It is really quite simple to use:

1. Make sure you are signed into Outlook and then sign into Office 365.
2. Open the document to be reviewed in either your SharePoint library or OneDrive for Business.
3. Go to Review > New Comment.
4. Type @-person’s-name within the comment.

The feature, for the moment, however, is only available online and to those who are Office Insiders using Windows or macOS. It is not yet available in iOS or Android.

How to Use @mention strategically?

Using the @mention strategically is what will really make this feature work for you. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Bring a comment to someone’s attention immediately by using @mention. Here, we specifically mean targeting a colleague who may have specific interest or knowledge of the matter or who may be loaded with work and an @mention may be the thing to get his or her attention.
• For one comment, you can @mention more than one person, so there’s no need to draft more than one comment for the same issue.
• You can @mention someone without permission to access the document — in this case, Microsoft will ask you to provide permission.
• Make sure before starting the review that you have given permission to everyone who may also need access to the document so you do not need to worry about this additional step later.

Also, if you are wondering whether or not a person subject to multiple comments will now receive multiple emails, Microsoft has already thought about it, too. Microsoft will batch the links into a single email if there is more than one @mention for the same person.

Now that you know how to use @mentions in your Microsoft programs, and how to use it strategically, it is time to get back to get back to being productive. Sign in and try it out and see how soon other reviewers start responding.

In late September, Apple released the latest version of its Macintosh operating system—MacOS 10.14. Known as Mojave, the update includes a variety of useful tools designed to delight casual and fanatic Apple users alike. Here are the top five new features to look for in MacOS Mojave.

What Do I Need to Know About Security Changes in Mojave?

Apple is primarily known for having robust security features and this update is no exception, as it allows greater control over your personal information. Applications now ask your permission before accessing the camera or microphone. You’ll also receive a prompt for approval anytime an app attempts to access your message history or mail database.

Additionally, MacOS Mojave comes with an updated version of Safari, which includes an Enhanced Tracking Prevention feature. This tool puts a high emphasis at keeping your personal information private, including safeguarding against social media like, share, and comment widgets that track you without permission.

What Changes Happened to Quick Look in MacOS Mojave?

Although Quick Look has been around for a long time, MacOS Mojave makes it easier than ever to view photos and files without having to open them in an app. Now, you can utilize a selection of markup tools to add notations, shapes, or highlight important information with only a few mouse clicks. You can rotate or crop photos, and there are even a few tools to allow video editing without having to open QuickTime.

You may also use Quick Look to electronically sign a document with your digital signatures. This is especially handy for PDFs and scanned documents, where going through the process to open an application for a such a simple step is time-consuming.

How Have Screen Capture Functions Changed in Mojave?

Another exciting change in MacOS Mojave is the screen capture feature. In the past, users could only take a quick snapshot of their screens without needing additional software. Many users were fine with using QuickTime or other apps to get the job done, but Apple took note and decided to include updated functionality with the latest update.

Mojave’s built-in screen capture option now allows you take screen recording videos and set timers for when you want the feature to work. There are even special markup tools that will enable you to highlight certain elements you find most important.

How Do You Use Group FaceTime Calling in the Latest MacOS?

Perhaps the most anticipated feature of MacOS Mojave is the ability to FaceTime several individuals in a simultaneous group conversation. While it wasn’t initially included in the release of the operating system, Apple included it in version 14.10.1.

Group FaceTime supports up to 32 callers in a single call, which is especially handy for business users who want to add a particular element to video conferences or just those times when you want to get the family together virtually to share important news.

What’s the Stacks Feature in MacOS Mojave and How Does It Help Productivity?

If you’re like most people, your desktop organization skills need a little help. From old documents that you no longer need to icons that are just taking up space, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the digital clutter. That’s where the Stacks feature really comes in handy.

With a simple mouse click, Mojave’s handiest feature groups similar files together and “stacks” them on top of each other. Users have a choice on how this happens, for example by date last used, file type, or different classification categories. This add-on makes it easy to tackle your digital file keeping while giving you the appearance of a nice and clean desktop.

And Apple didn’t just stop there with these five features. A special dark mode feature provides a darker color scheme that’s less harsh on the eyes after a long day of work. For those who enjoy expressing themselves, an additional 70 more emoji now make it easier than ever. And a redesign of the app process is paving the way for a future ability to run your favorite iOS programs on your laptop or desktop.

These new features in MacOS 10.14 Mojave make everyone’s life just a little easier. Which one do you want to try out first?

The integration of the Microsoft (MS) digital ink function and digital pen provides companies with a way to improve collaboration, increase out-the-box creativity, and drive innovation. Have you given thought on how your organization can create better cooperation among your different work teams essential for driving new product development, opening up new markets, or managing workflow? If you have, you need to invest some time and effort learning how digital ink can be of assistance to your company.

About Microsoft Digital Ink

Microsoft digital ink allows a digital pen accessory to write on the surface of a pen-enabled device. These include laptops, notepads, notebooks, and Windows-based handheld devices. This capability allows the creator to share notes, capture your thoughts, and your ideas in real-time. This benefit is of great importance when your team members find themselves limited by space or the ability to use a fully attached keyboard.

You have the need to put together elaborate sales presentations in MS-PowerPoint or jot down quickly a sales quote for a potential customer in MS-Excel. The use of digital ink allows your workers to do this in less time then it takes to format a slide or complete a spreadsheet. It takes their handwritten notes and scribbles and converts them into a presentation that gets attention.

How Digital Ink Creates Collaboration

Imagine a massive project of yours that requires the input of stakeholders from different teams within your company. Accounting for financial projections, engineering for logistical support, and business planning for managing the project’s timetable, all of these disciplines need the ability to communicate with each other to keep the project on time and within budget.

You can take the traditional route of calling time-consuming meetings that require members of the project team to sit in the same room, away from their other duties and responsibilities. Or you can install Microsoft digital pen and allow input and updates come into the project from all over without the need for lengthy meetings or huddles that take time and people resources away from their jobs, reducing their productivity and increasing your costs.

Is Microsoft Digital Ink Easy to Use?

The digital ink application is both intuitive and easy to use. It is a simple plug-and-play application that requires nothing more than the digital pen itself as the peripheral device and a machine that is digital pen enabled. Your end-users will remark at how easy it is to simply draw, doodle, write, and express their ideas in any application using digital ink, and share that information between their colleagues.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line for you and your business is this: your competitors, especially younger entrepreneurs and competitors, are already employing next-generation technology. They are doing so as a way to gain market share and increase their competitive advantage.

You need to up your technology game to hold on to your customers, maintain relevancy, and attract the type of workforce that will grow your business. With so much riding on you and the decisions you make, Microsoft digital pen is a straightforward solution for you to consider and implement company-wide.

You can not afford to stay stuck in old practices in favor of new tools that make life easier for your teams. The investment you make in digital ink will pay huge dividends in the future, regarding better deployment of your people resources and greater freedom to innovate.

Anyone who has passed a high school English class can tell you two things—writing is tough and plagiarism is wrong. Hiring an outside writer from a website such as Fiverr is a great way to create great content without exerting an overabundance of effort, but not every freelancer is honest.

That’s why it is incredibly important to take a little extra time to investigate the text to ensure it free from error and completely unique. Here is a list of the best online grammar and plagiarism tools for checking your writing.

What’s the Best Tool for Checking Spelling, Grammar, and Plagiarism?

While it is one of the most expensive tools on this list, Grammarly is hands down the best option for those who want to check everything including spelling, grammar, and plagiarism. This gives you the best of both worlds—a place to test your outsourced content for errors and the ability to quickly edit your own writing before sending out a social media post or important email.

Grammarly even offers plugins for Microsoft Office, Outlook, and various web browsers to give you easy access when you need to scan a document quickly. A limited version is available for free, but to enjoy all of the robust benefits including plagiarism detection it is recommended that you subscribe to the app.

What is the Best Tool for Checking Just Plagiarism?

If your only need is to check against duplicate content, then Plagiarism Checker X is an excellent choice. Compare multiple documents to search for repeated phrasing or deeply scan the web to find sources of plagiarism. You may also input a specific web address to find other sites matching particular phrasing, which is especially helpful to determine if your website’s unique content is being ripped off by other bloggers.

The program offers a limited option with a free trial or a more substantial one-time subscription fee for additional features. As a bonus, Plagiarism Checker X also comes with a keyword analysis tool that provides the number of times a particular word is used in a piece and the density of keywords.

Which Online Plagiarism Tools Allows Me to Scan the Web Automatically for Plagiarism?

In most academic circles, Copyscape is the gold standard for duplicate content and plagiarism checking. Why? This easy-to-use tool features the option to insert a URL and find instances of the same copy elsewhere on the web without having to set up an account. However, if you want the option to copy text into the checker, you’ll need to sign up and pay for credits.

This app does include a unique feature very applicable to bloggers and digital marketers alike: a monthly subscription service called Copysentry that sends you alerts anytime it finds content from your website elsewhere on the internet.

For developers, Copyscape also provides an API integration for quick scanning. This is especially helpful for those creating software aimed at the education sector where instructors need the ability to quickly and efficiently spot instances of plagiarism.

Which Plagiarism Checker Tool Offers Support for Multiple Languages?

While most plagiarism checker apps feature support for a variety of major languages, Plagiarisma is your best bet. This expansive program offers duplication checking for up to 190 global languages. It also allows you to paste text into an in-browser box or upload a document. Accepted file extensions include DOX, DOCX, TXT, XML, PDF, RTF, HTML, and a whole host of others to help meet your needs.

Not sure you want to use an online interface? Plagiarisma has several different plugins including those for Blackberry and multiple popular software programs. As with the other tools mentioned above, both a limited free version and paid versions are available.

What’s the Best Tool for Checking Readability?

If you’re just concerned about checking readability, then the Hemingway App is an excellent option. This free web-based service and allows you to paste in any text of your choice. It then information about sentence structure, passive voice use, and approximate reading level. This is an excellent tool for use on emails, white papers, memos, and other important documents where sounding authoritative and professional is important.

Outsourcing content is a great way to maximize efficiency. Using these plagiarism and grammar tools help ensure your text is original and free from errors.

It is hard to maintain a strong brand presence without video marketing. Whether local or national, brick and mortar or eCommerce, goods or services, video content is crucial to success in the current marketplace.

Here are some recent numbers from an Animoto study to put this into perspective:

Basic Stats

• 93% of marketers report that they reach new customers through the use of video content
• 73% of consumers say that social media content has made an impact on their buying decisions
• 45% of consumers say that video is their preferred form of social content, with image, link and text content coming in second, third and fourth, at 22%, 13% and 10% respectively
• About a third of consumers will review a brand’s social media content before deciding whether to go to their website in the first place
• 45% of consumers report that their first encounter with a product or service is through video

So this clearly establishes a couple of things.

1. You need to pursue video content marketing through social media to maintain a strong brand presence in the modern age.
2. Everyone is doing it. So it’s going to be hard to stand out.

Video content is necessary, but all it accomplishes on its own is that it puts you in the running. Producing video content earns you a shot at getting seen, but it won’t guarantee that you are seen in a crowded marketplace. What does it matter that your videos are making thousands of impressions if nobody’s clicking play?

How do you produce the right kind of video content?

It’s all a process of narrowing-down. As in any data-driven marketing decision, you take your options, cut them in half, cut them in half again, and again, and again until you are getting the most effect for your efforts. You’ve probably taken a look at your analytics and found that certain kinds of content will perform better when posted at certain times of day and on certain days of the week. The same sort of thinking applies to the process of developing, producing and posting your video content.

This begins with…

Categories

The Animoto survey found that three types of video content comprised the vast majority of views:

1. How-to videos
2. Videos about sales and promotions
3. Top 5’s

One of these categories is probably on-brand with your product or service. If it’s not immediately apparent, you can try testing content in each category and gauge their performance. Sale-announcement videos are always a good idea, but you might find that your target audience prefers how-to’s to top 5’s, or vice-versa, and produce content accordingly.

Where Are You Posting?

The Animoto survey suggests that Facebook and Youtube lead the way for video views, but Instagram is the clear winner for sales-per-view. People are specifically on Instagram to discover something new, whether it’s a content producer or a new ice cream shop. This means that your viewers are already in the right frame of mind to discover whatever it is that you’re offering them. Users on Facebook and Youtube are generally looking for content that they’re already familiar with, favorite game streamers, keeping up with friends and family and so on.

This does not necessarily mean that you will have the most success with Instagram. Every brand attracts a different audience, and while more brands than not may enjoy more engagement on Instagram, you might have more success on Facebook if your demographic is a little older, or even Pinterest, which trails far behind the video leaders, but might be perfect if you’re after an arts-and-craft audience.

Calibrate And Refine

All of this data can set you off in the right direction, but getting the most out of any social media content is a process of constant calibration and refinement. Almost nobody gets lucky and hits the target dead-center on the first try. You might post a dozen videos and get fewer than one hundred views on each one. But one of them is going to be an outlier, one of them is going to have a few views more than the others. So you produce a dozen more in that direction, and, again, you have an outlier, one that produces twice as many engagements as the runner-up, and you keep following the outlier and following the outlier until you get a sense for exactly what catches the attention of your target viewer.

There’s no secret formula for producing attention-grabbing videos in a crowded marketplace, because every brand is different. But if you keep testing and adjusting your aim appropriately, you will discover exactly what your customers are looking for.

Remember that hilarious video of a BBC news reporter talking with a professor on camera, only to get upstaged by his family behind him? The professor is sitting in his chair. The door opens behind him and in marches a little arm flaying child. Then a baby wheels in on a rolling chair. Finally, a woman dashes in, stares straight at the screen, freaks out and then drops to the floor grabbing each child. All three scurry away, and the door shuts behind them. The professor is stunned, embarrassed and apologetic. He didn’t have Microsoft Team’s Background Blur that blurs video backgrounds, but his video did go viral.

 

What Is Microsoft Teams and Background Blur?

Microsoft Teams is a platform of cloud-based team collaboration software. Teams are only one part of the multiple suites of applications offered by Office 365. The core capabilities in Microsoft Teams include file sharing, calling, business messaging, and video meetings. Businesses of all sizes can use Microsoft Teams.

One of the main features inside Teams is Background Blur. According to Microsoft Team creators, the new background blur feature was added and permits users to remove embarrassing distractions and have only the focus placed on the individual, and not what’s behind them. The feature is currently available to all Microsoft Office 365 commercial customers and clients of Microsoft Teams and has discovered the capability is already available within their video calls.

Two Crucial Technology Details About Background Blur Most Don’t Know

Background Blur was announced back in July 2018. Along with getting the free version of Teams, users can now blur the background of their video calls. That feature is still currently available. However, if you don’t read the fine print, there are issues with performing facial recognition most don’t know. The blur feature is an AI-driven feature, and it will use facial recognition to automatically blur out your background while the individual is in a video meeting using Teams.

The technology to perform facial recognition, that identifies the person and understands where the background to be blurred begins and where the environment not to be blurred ends. The technology only runs on computers recently equipped with Advanced Vector Extension 2 (AVX2) graphics installed. AVX2 is what Microsoft Teams must use to blur the background after it figures out the position of the user.

Advanced Vector Extension graphics get supported when a computer has a post-Haswell chipset. If your current tablet, laptop or desktop background blurring is working, then you have the needed chipset; but if it’s an older device, it may not function. Also, be aware that a computer’s CPU has quite a bit of processing to do to locate a face and then blur the background. If you are running a loaded system, it will impact any other work on your PC that is in progress.

How To Blur Your Background During Your Video Call?

To start blurring your background, during a video call, you have two options you can try. Press the CTRL+Shift+P combination. If things go blurry, during your video call, you know that your PC has this feature.

• The second option is to start your video from a meeting. Then, click on the Ellipsis icon from the meeting options and choose Blur My Background.
• To un-blur your video, choose the Ellipsis icon again and select Don’t Blur Background.

Now let’s say you want your background already blurred, as you join a meeting before others see your video. It’s easy. Toggle the Video Blur icon to remove distractions from the start.

Let’s Go Ahead And Summarize What We’ve Discovered

• Organizations use Microsoft Teams as a communication platform. It allows their employees to work and chat one-on-one. They can join company-wide video conference calls, share documents, and more. At the 2018 Microsoft Ignite developer conference, the company announced it added a few exciting features to the Teams platform, surprisingly the ability to add background blur during a live video call.
• According to the Microsoft Teams creators, the new background blur feature was added to give users the mechanism to remove distractions behind them and have individuals focus on the person in front of them. The function was rolled out, and customers of Microsoft Teams will find that the capability is already available within their video calls.
• The blur feature is an AI-driven feature, and it will use facial recognition to automatically blur out your background while the individual is in a video meeting using Teams. The technology only runs on computers recently equipped with Advanced Vector Extension 2 (AVX2) graphics installed.
• Advanced Vector Extension graphics get supported when a computer has a post-Haswell chipset. If your current tablet, laptop or desktop background blurring is working, then you have the needed chipset; but if it’s an older device, it may not function.

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