PowerPoint Live and Interactive Features in Microsoft Teams

If you present mostly virtually, you might run into challenges while trying to figure out the best way to share your PowerPoint presentation. Yes, you could simply share your whole screen and use Presenter View, as discussed in the previous chapter. But then you might have a hard time seeing your meeting controls, especially if you are working with only one monitor.

With virtual presentations being widely used and, I’m quite sure, here to stay, I wanted to include a chapter on leveraging Microsoft Teams’ PowerPoint Live, and other features that help you create more interactions and engagement. Why Teams and not another virtual meeting tool? Simply because it is the application I have been using and have seen evolve since its introduction in 2017, and its ability to leverage many more features included in Microsoft 365.

To help you take your presentations to a new level using PowerPoint Live within Teams...

Technical requirements

You need access to Microsoft Teams with a Microsoft 365 work or school license to have access to PowerPoint Live. Be aware that since Microsoft Teams, just like the subscription version of PowerPoint, is updated on an ongoing basis, it is possible that screenshots shown in this chapter might differ from your version of the application.

Getting started with and using PowerPoint Live

Trying to manage your PowerPoint presentation, participants, reactions, and the chat pane in Microsoft Teams can be quite challenging, especially if you only have one monitor connected to your computer. Even when you do have two monitors, handling the various overlapping windows can be overwhelming.

That is when the PowerPoint Live feature can help you. You will find it when clicking on the Share button (1) in your Teams meeting window (Figure 13.1):

Figure 13.1 – Starting PowerPoint Live from the Share screen feature in Teams

Let’s start by defining a few settings you have in the sharing options:

• Include computer sound (2): Make sure you toggle this option on if your presentation includes sound. This is the only way attendees will hear it.
• The Presenter mode section (3): This allows you to share your content only (4), use Standout mode (5) to overlap your video feed on top of...

Creating and using breakout rooms

There are many scenarios in which you can use breakout rooms during a Teams meeting. And there are many ways to create and use those rooms too! Since I want to keep my focus on how using this feature can be helpful to keep your presentation attendees engaged, I will discuss only one scenario in the following example. If you want to learn more about the various ways to create and use breakout rooms, have a look at the support article listed in Further reading.

Let’s say you are delivering a workshop using Teams meetings. If you were in a room with your attendees, you would probably ask them to work in small groups to discuss a specific topic that each team would present to the whole group after. To reproduce this team exercise from your meeting window, you need to click on the Rooms icon (1) to access the Create breakout rooms pane (2) (Figure 13.6):

Figure 13.6 – Creating and using breakout rooms in Teams...

Using Q&A and Polls to create more interactions

Virtual presentations require more interaction to keep your audience engaged. The reason is simple: you are competing with emails, news feeds, text messages, and social media so you absolutely need to find ways to grab everyone’s attention.

When using Microsoft Teams, you have nice tools that can help you and we will discuss two of them in the following sections.

Using Q&A

Q&A is a recent addition to Teams meetings allowing you to separate questions and important discussions from the regular chat pane. To have Q&A (1) available in your meeting toolbar, you first need to make sure it is turned on in your meeting’s options by clicking More (…) (2) | Meeting options (3) to open the Meeting options pane (4). Make sure to look at the bottom of the pane for Enable Q&A (5) to check that the toggle is on (Figure 13.8):

Figure 13.8 – Checking meeting options to...

Improving the camera, lighting, and microphone setup

My goal with this section is not to cover all the greatest and latest equipment available on the market, but to share some features and tips that can help you even when you don’t have access to fancy gear.

Checking Microsoft Teams device settings

The first place to start is by showing you hidden device settings available in Microsoft Teams. You first need to click on More (…) (1) | Device settings (2), to access the Device settings pane (3) (Figure 13.16):

Figure 13.16 – Accessing Device settings in Teams

Scroll down to the Noise suppression section (4). If you were not aware of its existence, it is an AI-based feature analyzing background noises. Here is a description of each setting:

• Auto (default) (5/6): Teams monitors your background noise and turns suppression up or down to remove noise not recognized as your voice. Do you need to search for a piece of paper on...

Summary

This chapter was all about using tools in Microsoft Teams to help you deliver better virtual presentations. We discussed how PowerPoint Live can help you manage your presentation and your meeting in the same window. We also learned about a few features that can help you keep your attendees engaged, such as breakout rooms, Q&A, and Polls. We finally discussed how to improve your camera, lighting, and microphone setup, sharing quick tips you can easily try.

My wish is that you realize that virtual presentations need as much practice as the ones you do in meeting rooms or large venues. In my opinion, they are even more complex to manage because often you have to learn more about the features that will help you keep people engaged, and handle technology problems by yourself. Make sure you continue learning about the virtual tools you can use because remote presentations will certainly not disappear.

Conclusion

If you have read this book from start to finish, you probably remember from our content structure in the chapters that your content should have an introduction, your main key points, and a conclusion.

In this book, my introduction was all about the challenges encountered while creating your content. I then proceeded to help you learn how to plan, create, and deliver more impactful presentations with the help of the many advanced tools and features in PowerPoint. And my conclusion on this one: now that you have more knowledge on how to create better presentations, will you plan more time in your schedule to put your learnings into practice?

Wishing you much success in your upcoming presentations!

Further reading

• Microsoft Support article on sharing slides in Teams meeting: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/share-slides-in-a-teams-meeting-with-powerpoint-live-fc5a5394-2159-419c-bc59-1f64c1f4e470
• Microsoft Support article on live captions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-live-captions-in-a-teams-meeting-4be2d304-f675-4b57-8347-cbd000a21260
• Microsoft Support article on live transcription: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-live-transcription-in-a-teams-meeting-dc1a8f23-2e20-4684-885e-2152e06a4a8b
• Microsoft Support article on Speaker Coach in Teams: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/preview-speaker-coach-in-a-teams-meeting-30f50d15-5f62-4e09-b3bf-cadeb806386a
• Microsoft Support article on breakout rooms in Teams: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-breakout-rooms-in-teams-meetings-7de1f48a-da07-466c-a5ab-4ebace28e461
• Microsoft Support article on the different roles in Teams meetings: https://support...