Microsoft continues to add new features to the Teams app on a regular basis and is often attentive to user requests. One such highly requested feature is the pop-up chat and video window, which has made its way through an update. I bet you want to know everything about him. Currently Microsoft is releasing it in stages, so be patient if you haven’t got it yet.
I will guide you through the whole process on different platforms and through the steps on how to use it. Also, you can use it in some use cases.
Let’s start.
Pop-up Chat Window in Teams Desktop App
This will work in desktop apps for Windows and macOS. Sorry, Linux users. The interface is largely consistent across platforms. Launch the Teams app, start a chat with any team member as you always do, and there are several ways to open a chat window.
Click on the newly added universal ‘square with out arrow’ icon in the upper right corner of the chat window. It should say ‘Open chat’ when you hover the mouse pointer over it. You can also double-click the user or group chat avatar for this. Do you like giving commands? Try /pop command to open a chat window.
You won’t see any confirmation dialog for this action and this saves time. The chat should open in a new window and allow you to explore or use other tabs in Microsoft Teams.
The popup feature works in both single and group chat windows. You can drag the window wherever you want and resize it as you want. Chatting with multiple people in separate chats? You can now open all chat windows at the same time.
Pop-up Chat Window in Teams Web and Mobile Apps
I don’t need to share the steps for mobile and web apps. This is because the pop-out feature is not available in smartphone apps. This may be because smartphones have small screens. There is not enough screen space to open windows.
Benefits of Pop-Out Chat Window
The Microsoft Teams app includes several features. It is a communication and collaboration application with settings that help with the same. As such, users and team members use it to chat, call, and work on a variety of other things. Some examples might be working on a file in the Office 365 application suite, a third-party application, a PDF file you just uploaded, and more.
A chat or video/audio call window takes up the entire screen, making it difficult for participants to view or access anything else. How can you discuss a presentation or work/edit a file during a conversation?
Opening a chat or search window allows you to continue communicating in a separate window while still working on that Word document. This is a feature Microsoft should have released a long time ago, but I’m glad they’re listening to the feedback.
Can You Open Other Tabs?
As discussed above, there are many other tabs we can create in Microsoft Teams. Can we open these tabs then? Unfortunately, the answer is no. You can only open chat windows. Video and voice calls are handled differently, which I’ll discuss in the next point.
Some of you may also want to open tabs. For example, you are working on two separate documents on two tabs. Instead of clicking tabs to go back and forth, you can open a tab and use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Tab to switch between open windows. This will save a lot of time and make it convenient.
Regardless of the tab you choose, clicking the popup chat button will only pull up that chat window. doesn’t work with tabs
Pop-up Audio/Video Call Window
You can’t open audio/video call windows in Microsoft Teams, but you can. When you connect a video call, you can select all the options in the left sidebar like Files.
Clicking one of the options opens or reduces its size in the video window and gives you access to the rest of the user interface.
You can view call participants, albeit in a smaller window. You can return to full screen at any time by clicking once on the video window.
Did you know that you can open the chat window and the video window at the same time? This allows you to chat, video call and work on any tab or file at the same time.
Free the Chat Windows
Microsoft has been gradually releasing the popup chat feature over the past week or two. A few users still haven’t received the update, but they will. It’s just a matter of time. In the meantime, I recommend voting for any future feature you want on Team’s User Voice site. If the feature you are looking for is not listed, you can create it. Note that it is not for troubleshooting or other support. Keep blasting.
Next: Do you share the screen during a call in Microsoft Teams? Click the link below to learn everything there is to know about screen sharing in Teams.
