Microsoft Teams Presents Speaker Coach With PowerPoint

Microsoft has announced that Speaker Coach is soon coming to Microsoft Teams. With this innovative feature, you can bring yourself into every meeting with your own private, personalized meeting coach. Speaker Coach utilizes AI to offer you guidance on your speaking pace, remind you to check in with your audience, and notify you if you are interrupting someone. This capability can empower you to be more confident when presenting or participating in a meeting while fostering inclusivity, ensuring that all voices are heard.

PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach is Now Speaker Coach in Microsoft Teams

The presenter coach in PowerPoint is actually what is referred to as speaker coach in Microsoft Teams! Speaker Coach will be available by early 2022, but you can, in the meantime, use presenter coach in PowerPoint. The AI-powered feature in Microsoft Teams can make you an expert presenter in today’s hybrid-work world. Although Microsoft unveiled PowerPoint “Presenter Coach” early in March, it has now renamed it Speaker Coach. The innovative feature provides feedback on repetitive language use, body language, pronunciation, and more. Microsoft has also outlined a slew of new Teams features that would support hybrid-working environments, including:

AI-enabled third-party cameras for Teams Rooms with both in-office and remote workers
A PowerPoint feature known as ‘Cameo’ that utilizes a Teams camera to display a talking head next to presentation slides
A richer in-room feature for Companion Mode in Teams mobile
Quicker controls for muting and disabling cameras
Better hotdesking support for Teams displays
Teams support for Apple CarPlay to enable hands-free meetings using Siri.

Who Can Benefit from Speaker Coach?

Speaker coach leverages AI technology to help professionals, students, and anyone who just wants to practice a speech for an occasion such as a wedding or graduation. When you turn the speaker coach on in any meeting, the experience will discretely assist you by highlighting moments. Additionally, it will offer Teams users essential presentation tips, such as taking a breath when they talk too quickly. It also helps identify moments when a participant accidentally speaks when someone else is speaking and offers a view of data after every meeting with a private report of the key moments captured. As a result, you can reflect on your performance and make improvements for the next meeting. According to Microsoft, Speaker Coach in Microsoft Teams is designed for the presenter and anyone with a speaking role in a meeting. Even if you simply say a couple of sentences, Speaker Coach can help you privately and empower you with greater confidence. Speaker Coach also provides you with feedback on your pace, use of filler words, use of monotone pitch, poor grammar, use of sensitive phrases, and lack of originality while you rehearse your presentation.

Speaker Coach Availability

Presenter coach in PowerPoint is now available across all platforms. However, Speaker Coach for Microsoft Teams will be availed by early 2022. Eventually, Speaker Coach will only be available to users who subscribe to Microsoft 365. Microsoft will gradually unveil new features overtime to ensure that everything works smoothly. Even for Insiders, Microsoft will highlight features that users may not have because they’re slowly unveiling to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes, some elements are removed to further improve on them based on user feedback. Prerequisites Users will need the following when using Presenter Coach:

A stable internet connection
A microphone-enabled gadget or an external microphone
Minimize as much background noise as possible

New Capabilities in Speaker Coach Microsoft used feedback from Preview participants to roll out two new capabilities with Speaker Coach:

Speech refinement: Users will now see grammar suggestions and the correct way to phrase their speech better.
Monotone pitch: Speaker Coach will listen to your tone and provide feedback in real-time to help you vary your tone and keep your audience engaged.

Speaker Coach also warns you if you’re repeating words or pronouncing them wrongly and tells you off when you swear while presenting. Although the feature that warns you when you swear didn’t seem to work on Mac during testing, it worked well on iOS. This will be an excellent feature for users who are not sure about presenting or those presenting for the first time. How the Speaker Coach Works To use presenter coach in PowerPoint, open the presentation you want to rehearse in Microsoft PowerPoint for the web. Next, click Slide Show -> Rehearse with Coach, and then click Get Started. You can then rehearse your presentation and get real-time prompts whenever a monotone pitch is detected. Additionally, you can use the feedback to correct issues and use a lively pitch. When you’ve finished, press Esc to exit the PowerPoint slideshow. Review the feedback and incorporate any corrections the next time you rehearse or when it’s time to present. When rehearsing, try to speak as if you were right in front of your audience or give a presentation virtually in front of others. Supported Languages Currently, Speaker Coach only supports English, but there are plans to include more languages in the near future. Privacy According to Microsoft, Speaker Coach does not store your speech data. Typically, your speech utterances are sent to Microsoft only to offer you this service. Feedback If you have any suggestions or feedback, submit them through the Feedback button in the Speaker Coach summary report or click Help > Feedback. Be sure to include the right information in your feedback to ensure it becomes actionable and reaches the right people.

Wrapping Up

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