As reported by Petri, Microsoft is already rolling out an update (opens in new tab) that expands Teams to support 250-way chats. The update is expected to be available to every user by mid-May.
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Chatting with so many people on at once can become hectic, so Microsoft is implementing safeguards to keep things flowing. When a group reaches more than 20 members, Teams will turn off automatic Outlook replies, typing indicators, video and voice calling and read receipts, to prevent notifications from flooding your screen. As Petri notes, Microsoft doesn’t let admins restrict room capacity, so there is no way to keep the maximum limit at 100 people. Microsoft Teams has boomed in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. The company revealed last week that Teams daily active users grew from 44 million earlier in the month to 75 million. The service is still behind rival Zoom and Google Meet.
No changes to video chats
The new group chat feature doesn’t increase the maximum number of people in a video or audio call from chat, which is still limited to 20. When you’re not in chat, Microsoft Teams allows for 250 people to enter a video meeting. For comparison, Google Meet now supports up to 100 participants while Cisco Webex maxes out at 200. Facebook Rooms isn’t built for enterprise use and only supports 50-way calls. On the other hand, Zoom supports up to 1,000 members in a video call.
