Hello Readers,
I hope you’re well.
A quick one today about a new feature for Microsoft Teams meetings. As announced in the What’s new in Teams September edition. Teams has a new lightweight join experience for users with unsupported browsers.
Light-weight meeting join experience for Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox
While the best Teams Meetings experiences happen in the Teams application and supported Edge and Chrome browsers, there are times when meeting participant’s machines may not meet these requirements. With new light-weight meeting join capabilities, users can jump right into a Teams Meeting in Internet Explorer 11, Safari, and Firefox browsers and participate in the meeting. Meeting audio is delivered via Audio Conferencing, so meeting organizers will need the respective license.
I took it for a test drive once I found a sufficiently old machine to try it out on. And I was pleasantly surprised by the results.
Background
Just a reminder, really, that Teams works best in Edge, Edge Chrome and Google Chrome. This is especially true for meetings. All three support variations on audio and video. This includes making and receiving calls and more importantly, audio and video in meetings. Edge and the Chrome’s have WebRTC baked in. Teams meetings use WebRTC to offer a plugin-less join experience for users of these browsers. Google Chrome is generally regarded as having the lion’s share of users. And while the other browsers don’t come close to Google’s dominance, people still use them.
| Browser | Market Share |
| Chrome (Google) | ~67% |
| Firefox | ~9% |
| Internet Explorer | ~8% |
| Edge | ~5% |
| Safari | ~4% |
Source: netmarketshare.com as of 11 October
And while the users with these browsers can’t use them for audio or video, they can still join. I tested using Internet Explorer. I started a meet now in the Teams desktop app (for Windows) and copied the join link and entered it in IE.
It reminds you that the browser isn’t fully supported yet, but gives the user options to join nonetheless. They can click on the “Launch It Now” link to open up Teams. Or click to download and install the Teams app.
I used Join in this browser instead.
It asks if I want to allow Windows to use additional storage on your computer. I slicked yes the first time I tried. For completeness I joined from another machine having said not for this site. As far as I could tell, the experience was the same. So I’m not sure what that’s for.
Enter the name you want to use to join the meeting
Sit in the lobby
Admit from the client
I was sharing video from my Teams desktop client. The guest user got a warning that someone is sharing video and offers the link to download the client again.
It also pops up a toast reminding you that your browser doesn’t support audio with a link to dial in manually.
This link opens up the join by phone info, including the list of local numbers. Would be useful to have the call me back option here. But we’ll have to wait for that because Microsoft doesn’t offer that in Teams at all now.
As the guest, I can see desktop sharing…
And I can chat…
I can’t share, however…
And if you tap the phone icon, you get the dial in details screen.
I don’t use Firefox and I don’t have a Mac to try out Safari. I can’t imagine it would be much different though. If you want to test and report back, leave a comment.
Wrap up
I think you’ll agree that this is super useful for those out there with older machines (without Edge) or those that are content with or forced to use Internet Explorer for whatever reason. And these are those out there that have to use IE because of a line of business app that only works in IE. And for those wealthy people that use Apple Mac’s with Safari 😉.
That’s all folks.
ucstatus.com 