Spotlight feature (what is it?)

The spotlight feature was released in October 2020.

By default, during a teams video meeting with multiple users, everyone sees a ‘gallery’ view, where you can see up to 9 webcams displayed on the screen.

In some cases, a presenter may wish to force students to watch just one of those webcams in full screen – e.g. the presenter may wish to draw attention to themselves, or another speaker. This is the spotlight feature.

There is a short video here that explains the feature very well.

Things to know

• You can turn the spotlight on yourself (or someone else) by opening the participant’s pane and clicking the 3 dots next to  your own name (or someone elses)

• When you spotlight yourself, your own view does not change. Everyone else however can only see your webcam/video.
• You can adjust the spotlight at any time.
• Spotlight does not affect teams recordings
• Students can turn the spotlight feature on someone, unless you have set appropriate meeting permissions, see here for more detail under ‘controlling contributions’