Microsoft Mesh enters general availability in January, including a new Teams experience

A new way to connect

To support a truly flexible workplace, organizations and employees need technology that helps them feel connected regardless of where they work. Over the years, we have learned that a thriving workplace fosters authentic human connections—allowing employees and teams to build meaningful relationships and trust so they can perform at their highest potential.  

According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report, 43 percent of leaders say relationship building is the greatest challenge in remote and hybrid work.¹ Coming together in a physical space helps, but it’s not always possible—travel costs are prohibitive, real estate is expensive, and talent is increasingly dispersed. We need new ways for people to connect from different locations or geographies, using the tools they already have.   

Good news—the technology is here and employees are ready. More than 50 percent of employees are open to using new innovations like immersive experiences for meetings and team activities.² Customers like Takeda, Accenture, DXC Technology, PwC, Telefonica, and the World Economic Forum are already using Microsoft Mesh to bring employees together and foster learning and creativity.  

We are re-imagining the way employees come together with Microsoft Mesh, a new three-dimensional (3D) immersive experience and, we are excited to announce we are excited to announce Mesh general availability in January 2024.

Mesh, a new 3D immersive experience for your workplace

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.

Here’s what makes Mesh a powerful tool to bring your organization together: 

3D digital environments—meaningful connections in shared spaces  

Immersive spaces have unique attributes that create a perception of being physically together in a 3D digital space, including spatial interaction, co-presence, and immersion. Digital engagement is evolving from audio to video, and now to spatial interaction. Spatial awareness through directionality and distance enables multiple small group discussions in the same place, adding familiar human elements to digital connections. Spending time in the same 3D environment also creates a powerful sense of togetherness, or co-presence, even without actively speaking. This co-presence can lead to serendipitous moments of conversation or even just the deepened connection of a shared experience. 3D environments also remove distractions and help participants focus on fewer things—specifically the people and objects that surround them, driving a higher sense of immersion.    

Join immersive spaces with the tools you use every day  

Our goal is to help organizations bring people together, regardless of where they are located. And we believe that innovation that offers a new way to connect shouldn’t come with a high barrier to access it. That’s why you don’t need a special tool to get started with Mesh.  

You can join immersive spaces in Microsoft Teams, a tool that hundreds of millions of people already use, or participate in a custom immersive space in Mesh. 

Immersive spaces will be available initially with PC or Meta Quest VR devices. The only difference is, with virtual reality (VR) devices—the experience will be richer and more immersive. 

Use immersive spaces where you work in Microsoft Teams  

We are making building relationships easier by bringing the power of Mesh into the place where people work every day—Microsoft Teams. Getting started is easy! From the View menu in a Teams meeting, you select the immersive space option. With just a click, you will transform your two-dimensional (2D) meeting into a 3D immersive experience.  

Here are key capabilities in immersive spaces in Teams:  

• Avatars: As you enter an immersive space, choose an avatar that you’ve already built for standard 2D Teams meetings or create a new one. It’s easy to customize your avatar to reflect your appearance, style, or mood for the day.   
• 3D environments: Choose from one of the ready-made 3D environments that fits your meeting’s needs, whether it’s a big team social gathering or a small round-table discussion.   
• Seat assignments: Select where you sit in a meeting or event to drive connections with your co-workers. You can also freely move from one conversation to another.  
• Spatial Audio and audio zones: Have multiple, simultaneous conversations and communicate effectively in subgroups without talking over each other. 
• Interactive activities: Play built-in interactive games for team bonding within immersive spaces. To get started, you can see a few designated areas to roast marshmallows, throw beanbags, answer fun icebreaker questions, and more.
• Live reactions: Use live reactions such as hearts, thumbs up, clap, and more to express yourself during discussions.    

Immersive spaces in Teams enable collaboration for all your meeting attendees, even if some of them join from outside the immersive space. If you join from a standard 2D Teams meeting experience, you can see, hear, and interact with your colleagues in an immersive space. If any participant shares their screen, the content is visible to all meeting attendees.  

Create a custom immersive space with Microsoft Mesh

You can also create custom immersive spaces in Microsoft Mesh that are tailored to your specific business needs such as employee events, training, guided tours, or internal product showcases. Use a no-code editor to easily customize the event or the Mesh toolkit to leverage the power of Unity for fully customizable immersive experiences.  

Easily create immersive events with a no-code editor 

With the Mesh editor in the menu bar, you can customize immersive experiences to address the unique needs of your event—without writing a line of code. Event creators can select from a set of ready-to-use immersive spaces, customize them by adding images, videos, and screen share in a shared 3D canvas, and have them show up in an event in an orchestrated way. Once these objects are added, change the size and position, or put the video on loop so it fits right into your event. These customizations can then be saved as a template for anyone in the organization to reuse. These unique elements help you deliver an immersive company event like all hands, town halls, or new employee onboarding that serves your business goals. 

We are bringing additional capabilities that will make it easier for speakers to interact with attendees when hosting immersive events in Mesh. Even organizers will be able to facilitate a Q&A session by enabling attendees to raise hands. Once enabled, organizers will see the list of hand raises, in order; and will be able to call on participants, engaging them directly. When called on, attendees will be effectively seen and heard by everyone in the event. This makes immersive events more effective and engaging, and brings elements of real-life town hall experiences.

Build fully customized immersive experiences with Unity  

The Mesh toolkit enables event creators and developers to build fully customized 3D experiences using Unity.

Here are some of the key capabilities:  

• Virtual 3D interactions: Build interactions that feel real and immersive (such as the ability to grab objects or walk over to people) that facilitate human connection and enable collaboration. 
• Live data connections: Create connections to enterprise & public live data sources to create a rich custom immersive space (such as creating a control tower with multiple visual dashboards of real-time data).  
• Enterprise-grade: Deploy to Mesh, which is built on Microsoft 365 with enterprise-grade security and privacy. 

From employee onboarding and training, to tailored virtual museums, you can see how our private preview customers leveraged the power of Mesh to bring people together in a meaningful way. For example, Takeda, a global research and development-driven biopharmaceutical leader, created multiple environments in Mesh including the Hirameki Garden, where employees can immerse themselves in Takeda’s culture and business priorities, with a goal to have a more connected workforce while driving employee engagement. Read our developer blog for more details about building immersive experiences with Microsoft Mesh.

Easily discover and join events in Mesh, Outlook, and Teams  

Organizers can schedule an event with an existing template or create a new event in Mesh. When it’s ready, they can rehearse or make any changes and get ready for the big day.  

In addition, attendees can also easily find Mesh events right within their daily Outlook and Teams calendars without needing to go to another place to see and join the events.  

Get started today 

Mesh experiences will be available in the upcoming weeks. Here’s what you need to know.   

To get started with immersive spaces in Teams:  

• Users: Once your admin has enabled Mesh immersive spaces app in Teams, you can go to the view menu from your regular Teams meeting and select immersive space.
• IT admins: Check if you have one of the following licenses: Teams Essentials, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3/E5, and Office 365 E1/E3/E5. In the Teams Admin Center, enable the Mesh app.

Note: Immersive spaces are available in classic Teams and will be available in new Teams beginning in early December.

To get started with customizing immersive spaces in Microsoft Mesh

• Users: You can download the Mesh app for PC from the Microsoft Store or the Mesh app for Meta Quest devices from the App Lab. You will need the Teams Premium license to use Microsoft Mesh. Learn more on how to get started with immersive spaces in Mesh.
• IT admins: For users in your organization who have the Teams Premium license, enable Microsoft Mesh in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center once it becomes available.
• Developers: Create custom immersive experiences with Mesh toolkit. Read our developer blog or get started on your development journey today.

We’re excited to invite you to join us during public preview and share your feedback and ideas with us. We’re also looking forward to seeing what you create and experience with Mesh, and how you use it to connect and collaborate with others in new and meaningful ways.  

Thank you for being part of the Mesh journey. We can’t wait to see you in Mesh. 

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¹ Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong? (microsoft.com) 

² Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work Work (microsoft.com)