What just happened? Microsoft in its latest remote work trend report published on Thursday said users have set a new record for meeting minutes in a single day using Microsoft Teams. On March 31, a whopping 2.7 billion meeting minutes were collectively amassed in Teams. That's an increase of 200 percent over the 900 million minutes logged on March 16.

The tech titan said video is also being used more often in Teams meetings than before. From March 2 through March 31, the proportion of weekly calls and meetings with video more than doubled from 21 percent to 43 percent.

Digging deeper, we see that users in Norway and the Netherlands are the most avid video users with around 60 percent of their calls including video. On the opposite end of the spectrum, people in India use video in only 22 percent of meetings. This could be attributed, at least in part, to reduced access to capable devices and stable Internet in the region, Microsoft suggested.

The Redmond-based company is also working harder than ever to innovate and decrease pain points in Teams.

For example, meeting organizers can now end a meeting for all participants at the click of a button. Organizers will also be able to download a participant report to see when people joined and left meetings - no doubt a handy feature for teachers looking to take roll. And later this year, Teams will be getting real-time noise suppression that uses AI to reduce distracting background noises like barking dogs or loud keyboards.

Masthead credit: Cmspic