Today, we’re expanding these options so you can customize your background by uploading your own images or choosing one of the collections of backgrounds now available online. Our design team also created a collection of preset images that range from professional (a modern office) to pretty silly (a cartoonish beach scene). Last year, we introduced background blur to help everyone preserve privacy and keep their attention on their teammates. When joining a Teams meeting, you want the focus on you-not that messy bookcase behind you. Microsoft Teams custom background effects are now available! It’s all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyone’s well-being in mind. Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams, along with new features in the free version of Teams. These trends, along with daily conversations with customers navigating remote collaboration, inspired us to accelerate new features to customize your video experiences and make meetings more productive, comfortable, and fun. We also saw total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March. In fact, when the world moved to remote work earlier this year, Microsoft Teams customers turned on video in Teams meetings two times more than they did before many of us began working from home full-time. Video capabilities, once a nice to have, have become a critical component of collaborative work.

Free funny teams backgrounds