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One of the last safe places to avoid video calls could be dropping soon, no thanks to a new update to Microsoft Teams.
The video conferencing service is working on an update that will allow users to join a Teams call while driving directly from their vehicle using Apple’s CarPlay platform.
Apple recently updated CarPlay with a new calendar view, which now allows users to join a Microsoft Teams call while driving with their iPhone.
Microsoft Teams CarPlay
The official entry in the Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in new tab) as the update doesn’t provide any additional details on exactly how the feature will work, just noting that users can choose to join a Teams meeting using the new CarPlay calendar view.
Obviously, due care and attention needs to be given to the road while driving, so hopefully the conversations that take place can also be audio-only, meaning users can keep their eyes on the road.
The feature is still marked as in development for now, with a planned general availability date of March 2023, so users won’t have to wait too long.
Microsoft Teams users have been able to dial-in with Apple CarPlay since September 2021, as well as the ability to call and message Teams contacts from most modern vehicles – although meeting video feeds don’t appear on the dashboard.
The platform is also available on Android Auto, with Google’s automotive-focused software enabling Microsoft Teams users to call, join meetings or message contacts.
The news is the latest in a series of recent upgrades to Microsoft Teams as the company continues to improve the platform.
This includes a tweak that uses AI to detect the difference between a speaker’s sound and the user’s voice, fixing a common problem when a microphone is too close to a speaker causing sound to pass between input and output devices, and creates an echo.
For those calling in large rooms, where speech can often reverberate and have some echo, Teams now uses a machine learning model to convert the captured audio signal, making it sound like users are speaking into a microphone up close.