One of the last big announcements from BlueJeans was the acquisition by Verizon last year. Today, the company released some new features that make the UCC platform more user-friendly and unique when compared to industry leaders MS Teams and Zoom. The new features are:

• Participant Reactions: Meeting participants can now express their feelings without interrupting the flow of the discussion. Users can add reactions like clap, thumbs up, celebrate and smile during a discussion to demonstrate how they feel about a certain topic.
• Participant Time Display: By having participants’ local time displayed right over their video tile, we hope to provide better visibility for those meeting attendees who may be participating well after hours. By having a simple context clue, meeting participants will be able to increase empathy and take into account their fellow attendees’ situation as they proceed through the meeting. This simple enhancement will go a long way in avoiding those future 4:00 a.m. or 10:00 p.m. invites.
• Participant Scrolling: In an effort to ensure everyone in attendance can be seen, we are adding participant scrolling to both Gallery and People view. Users will now be able to view all meeting participants’ video tiles by scrolling through multiple pages of attendees. In Expanded Gallery View, each subsequent page will retain the five most recent speakers at the top while supporting various layout types.
• Participant Interactions: When meeting hosts and attendees now click on an attendee’s tile, they will be served up a set of features to better control the meeting experience and boost collaboration. Moderators will be able to spotlight an individual participant for everyone to see and all meeting attendees will be able to pin specific video tiles if they want to create a custom viewing experience. Additionally, all participants will now also be able to DM (direct message) each other without having to access the People sidebar.

Also, now moderators will also be able to mute audio or video for any participant through their video tile. Whether you’re dealing with members who have forgotten to mute their audio while telling their dog what a good boy he is, or someone who is accidentally sharing more than intended on video, moderators will be able to easily keep the meeting professional by muting individual audio or video.