MS Teams control deck
This is an Autohotkey script that I prepared for my 7 y.o. son to make it easier for him to participate in remote learning lessons.
He needs to be able to quickly and easily:
- mute/unmute microphone (muted microphones are necessary for any online meeting with more than 7 people)
- raise/lower hand whenever he wants to ask for something or signal that he wants to answer teacher's question
There is a really awkward keyboard shortcut for the microphone control (Ctrl+Shift+M) and there is no shortcut at all and another one, equally difficult for small hands (Ctrl+Shift_K) for raising hand.
He is able to do these actions using mouse but just not fast enough. Keyboard shortcuts are always better than using a mouse, and a special deck is better then keyboard shortcuts.
Installation
- Download and install autohotkey from https://www.autohotkey.com/.
- Download this repository as a ZIP archive and extract somewhere
- Double click on on the msteams-deck.ahk file to make the script active. A green Autohotkey icon will appear in the system tray.
How it works?
It doesn't matter if you have full-size keyboard with numpad or if you use USB-attached one, they will work the same. The status of Numpad LED doesn't matter, both key functions (i.e. numpad 2 and numpad cursor down) are intercepted.
The script is active only when Teams.exe is running.
Whenever you press one of the shortcut keys the Teams window will be activated and a keypress or mouse action will be sent to it.
Shortcuts
These are the intercepted numerical pad keys:
| key | icon | function |
|---|---|---|
| Enter | icon | mute/unmute microphone |
| dot/Del | icon | push-to-talk (or push-to-mute) whenever you want to temporarily toggle microphone status to say "Yes" or "I'm present" or (if it's your turn) to spare other participants from hearing your cough or sneeze |
| 0/Ins | icon | raise/lower hand |
| 1/End | icon | open/hide list of participants |
| 2/down | icon | open/hide chat window |
| 3/PgDn | icon | open/hide screen sharing options (strangely Ctrl+Shift+E works only when chat window is open) |
| / | icon | camera on/off |
| + | icon | volume up |
| - | icon | volume down |
| * | icon | sound mute on/off |
Keyboard labels
If you are like me you are going to forget about those key assignments very soon.
I have used icons from https://fontawesome.com/ and printed them out on a 1cm x 1cm grid, so every icon has maximum width or height of about 9mm.
This is the arrangement next to the deck:
I have used a spare USB numpad and glued icons to it using a clear acrylic paint.
