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Feeling a bit disconnected from your team? Try working in Together Mode and enjoy the experience of virtual face-to-face contact.

Quick reference

Together Mode

Feel a sense of togetherness when participating in virtual meetings. 

When to use

We use Together Mode whenever we have 5 or more meeting participants and want to feel more connected and relaxed. 

Instructions

Together Mode is a new meeting experienced in Teams that Microsoft introduced in 2020 during the pandemic to create a sense of togetherness in a united virtual space. 

Together Mode feels more relaxed, encourages conversation, and helps presenters read the room and energy levels of meeting participants better. It's also been reported that Together Mode helps prevent meeting fatigue. 

  • Click the Meet button to start an on-demand meeting. 
  • Check the meeting settings and click Join now. 
  • Click the three dots to open up More options. 

Together Mode needs at least 5 meeting participants including the meeting organizer to work. 

  • Select Together Mode from the list. 

All meeting participants will be placed into a united, virtual space and will appear to be sitting next to each other.

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  • 00:04 Together Mode is a new meeting experience
  • 00:07 that Microsoft introduced during the pandemic.
  • 00:10 With so many people working from home, they wanted to give
  • 00:15 people a sense of togetherness in a united virtual space.
  • 00:20 This seems like a really simple idea, but
  • 00:22 there is actually quite a lot of scientific evidence to back this up,
  • 00:27 related to cognition, social perception, and communication.
  • 00:31 Together Mode feels more relaxed than regular meetings, and
  • 00:36 users report that the design offers less fatigue from frequent video meetings.
  • 00:41 So let's take a quick look at how Together Mode works.
  • 00:46 Now, for this, I'm going to need to join a meeting, so let's click on the Meet
  • 00:51 now button, and I'm just going to jump into a very quick ad hoc meeting.
  • 00:56 Now, you'll find Together Mode underneath the three dots for more actions.
  • 01:01 Now, notice for me, Together Mode is grayed out, so
  • 01:05 it's not accessible for me at the moment.
  • 01:08 And this is one really important point to note.
  • 01:11 In order for you to be able to select Together Mode from this drop down list,
  • 01:16 you need to have at least five participants in your meeting,
  • 01:19 including yourself.
  • 01:22 So this is quite a hard feature for
  • 01:24 me to demonstrate because I am simply one person and I don't have a team around me.
  • 01:30 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to insert some screenshots of what this looks
  • 01:34 like when you jump into Together Mode with your colleagues.
  • 01:38 And these screenshots are taken from the official Microsoft video that you'll find
  • 01:42 on YouTube.
  • 01:43 Now, Together Mode is particularly well suited to calls and meetings,
  • 01:47 where multiple people will speak.
  • 01:50 Users who have been using Together Mode for
  • 01:53 a while have reported that it's a lot easier to find points in which to jump
  • 01:58 into the conversation when working in Together Mode.
  • 02:02 It's also helpful for presenters as it allows them to effectively
  • 02:07 read the room when they come into a meeting, and be able to judge
  • 02:11 the energy level of the delegates or attendees a little bit better.
  • 02:16 So there is quite a lot of psychological reasoning behind Together Mode,
  • 02:20 whether you like it or whether you don't.
  • 02:23 And I know a lot of people who really dislike Together Mode and
  • 02:27 others who think it's amazing.
  • 02:29 So, you might as well give it a go in your next team meeting to determine how you
  • 02:33 feel about this mode.
  • 02:35 But the idea behind it is to make you feel closer to your team and
  • 02:39 have more interactive, engaging meetings.
  • 02:42 The final point to note is that you can have up to 49 participants in
  • 02:46 a meeting when using Together Mode.
  • 02:49 And if you can't even see Together Mode in this drop down menu,
  • 02:53 that it might be that you need to turn on new meeting experience in Microsoft Teams,
  • 02:59 and you'll find that in Settings underneath the General tab.

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