Microsoft announced that Microsoft Mesh is coming to preview in October. That is great news after quite a lot of waiting time 🤩. I am, of course, very excited to see Mesh hitting organizations and enabling people to meet immersively, which allows co-presence, sense of togetherness and rich possibilities for spatial interactions. For me it is great to be able also say that the company I am proud to work for , Sulava, has been in the Mesh Private Preview for quite a long time already. Once Mesh is in public preview, you can expect to hear about our experiences and what has been built with customers. If you are planning to take your organization to immersive world – don’t hesitate to be in contact with me, as we at Sulava can take you there. But for now, let’s dive onto Mesh based on the new information we got from the announcement article.

1. Immersive spaces in Teams
2. Custom immersive spaces
3. Closing

Microsoft cloud-based modern work technologies, such as immersive spaces for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Mesh, are examples of the type of innovative technologies that are gaining rise because they can be accessed on PCs or virtual reality and mixed reality headsets and increase connection, build social capital in the workplace, and support collaboration for hybrid and remote workers all over the globe.

Microsoft

It also looks like the terminology has been decided: Mesh for Teams is called immersive spaces in Teams and custom worlds has become immersive spaces , to separate it from Teams experience.

Mesh can be used with Microsoft Teams desktop app (immersive Teams meetings) and with Mesh application(immersive spaces). To enable immersive Teams meetings IT admins need to go to Teams Admin Center and enable Microsoft Mesh Teams application. It is that easy, users don’t need to install anything. To enable immersive spaces IT admins need to enable Microsoft Mesh in Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center. For immersive spaces users need to install PC Microsoft Mesh application to PC from Microsoft Store or to Meta Quest VR-device from Meta App Lab.

Licensing requirements for public preview were revealed in the same article.

• Immersive Teams meetings : Teams Essentials, Microsoft 365 Business Basic/Standard/Premium, Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Office 365 E1/E3/E5. This covers quite a big number of people who can start using immersive meetings.
• Immersive spaces requires organizers and all users to have Teams Premium license. I have some fear about this, how much Teams Premium requirement will slow down early adoption of immersive spaces for organizations; if this requirement carries over to general availability. People piloting, experimenting and proof of concepting immersive spaces is not that high during these early adoption steps, so this is not a show stopper in my option. Of course don’t just purchase and assign licenses to users unless they utilize it enough. Teams Premium does add a lot of other capabilities to meetings, webinars, security , branding and more. For some Premium users Mesh is a bonus feature, for some I hope Mesh is the reason to utilize Teams Premium in more versatile way.

It is easy to see immersive Teams meetings being used quite a lot, due to easiness and less strict licensing requirements. Immersive spaces is the option that can tie spaces to business processes and goals, as it gives “free hands” to develop customized experiences with integrations – only the imagination is the limit here.

Mesh meeting is difference if compared to the standard Teams meeting. Immersiveness adds more sense of togetherness and you will have co-presence in there even when you are not speaking. Spatial interaction describes quite well what immersive space is. Think looking at a picture of a room, compared to being in the room. People and objects have distance and location as well as audio has. Spatial audio makes it possible to have multiple simultaneous small group discussions and when you move around in the space you can overhear those discussions when you are closer to the group and face it. Just like in the real life. It is a big difference to look at people’s pictures or be in the space talking with them. Best immersive experience of course happens with VR headset.

Live reactions are usable also in Mesh, we know these from Teams and can see hearts, thumbs up and others in various screenshots.

Immersive spaces in Teams

The first thing I love is the easiness how you can join the new experience. Just go to View-menu and select immersive space.

From this you can select a environment template that suits your meeting and number of people. No installation of external solutions is required. Boom, and you are in the 3D using Teams. You don’t even have to use virtual reality device, since this one works right inside your Teams.

Microsoft Mesh is not merely another innovation, but a solution that enables your distributed workforce to connect like never before in a 3D immersive space, helping virtual meetings and events feel more like face-to-face connections.

Microsoft

Some features , besides avatars and 3D other features already mentioned, highlighted by Microsoft in their article are

• Seat assignments – choose your seat. Do you want sit close to your friend? Can do!
• Interactive activities for building sense of togetherness and get started with teambuilding. There will be designated areas to roast marshmallows, throw beanbags, icebreaker questions and more.

You can mix and match people in immersive meetings and using Teams in standard way. As can be seen in this picture there can be shared content and participants who are not immersively there. Screen share is visible to both people in immersive and standard Teams meetings.

Custom immersive spaces

In the article are mentioned two types of custom spaces: events with templates and fully customized experiences. Fully customized versions mean that Unity and development skills are needed, but only the imagination is the limit when creating experiences with Mesh Toolkit. Think about interactions that can be done, live data connections to enterprise and public data and more. Onboarding experiences. Showrooms. Use cases I have been talking in my blog for quite a long time. I can envision that combining AI with Microsoft Mesh is going to enable marvelous possibilities how spaces can be utilized. Digital twins with real time data, AI embedded. And all this in a shared experience with others, where we have co-presence and we can work together in a new way. I can’t wait for the future will be with these capabilities! I recommend you also to check out my earlier Mesh-article Ready, Steady, Mesh! to gain more insights and ideas what immersive spaces can do.

Mesh is where we see people and AI working together to design, develop, model, and optimize products, processes, and operations with real-time data in context. Furthermore, technological advances are modernizing the value chain with digital context to improve engineering and manufacturing processes, accelerate remote training, and automate tasks reducing the cognitive burden of humans

Microsoft

What is really cool, is that Mesh will have a possibility to tailor your immersive space without having to know how to code. There is a Mesh editor, that enables to add elements to the space such as images, videos and screenshare. Organizer can do the customizations to meet the needs, or just to add company branding with pictures. Videos can be put to loop, size and position are editable and so on. Customized space can be also saved as a template, so others can reuse the work done already. Need a bit pumped-up environment for town hall or team meeting: Mesh editor is the way.

Then how do you join these immersive spaces and events? Using Outlook or Teams calendar. Just hit the join link.

Closing

It was really interesting to read the article Microsoft published yesterday. There are great ideas and use cases waiting for to be utilized with Microsoft Mesh. And no, Mesh won’t replace face to face meetings and gatherings – but gives a better option how to meet when face-to-face is not an option. I am happy that the wait won’t be that long – upcoming weeks / during October. I am glad we don’t have to wait until Microsoft Ignite to start Meshing around!

All pictures and gifs from Microsoft blog article. I recommend to read that one as well.