Microsoft Teams gets support for Annotations for PowerPoint slides

Microsoft Teams for Windows 10 and macOS has added some fun new features, including new PowerPoint Live integration and the ability to delete private chats. The desktop client will now receive support for a full-fledged annotation tool later this month and it will work with the existing PowerPoint Live integration.

This new feature comes as part of the June 2021 update and has been under testing for a few months now. When you upload a PowerPoint slide to Microsoft Teams using PowerPoint Live integration, you can quickly annotate your slides with a toolset familiar to anyone who has ever used the annotation tool.

Microsoft explained that this feature is designed for organizers/presenters and can be used as a “virtual laser pointer” to take notes in ink so that the audience can easily follow. This feature is particularly useful for educational institutions, as teachers can highlight different points using annotations.

“The active presenter “in control” will be able to use these new annotation tools. These tools allow presenters to better express or add content and engage more with their audience by drawing attention to certain sections in the PowerPoint slideshow,” the company said.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the small section tools appear under the slides after being uploaded with PowerPoint Live. The tools contain different pens and multiple colors.

The company also shared the following details:

• Annotations are only accessible during the active Meeting of Microsoft Teams and are not stored in your PowerPoint file. In other words, after the meeting ends, you won’t be back with your notes, which makes sense because the feature is designed to improve engagement.
• Attendees who have arrived late to the meeting can see the notes taken in their absence.
• The annotations feature remains exclusive to desktop (Windows and Mac), and users can’t enable it with Microsoft Teams on Android/iOS. However, annotations are visible on all platforms.

Microsoft currently plans to begin rolling out in the coming days.

In addition to the annotation toolset, Microsoft Teams will also get native notification support on macOS this month, and the feature is now available for that part of the company’s preview program.

Source: windowslatest