Use Bing Desktop Wallpapers as background images in Teams calls

Sun, 10 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I blogged about Bing Desktop Wallpapers, a nice little tool you can install on your Windows Machine to enjoy some of the amazing views of the world.

Knowing these got stored on your local machine as JPEGs (C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages), got me the idea to reuse these as “Teams Backgrounds” during video calls.

As the Bing Wallpaper gets updated every day, it would be nice to have a different image in Teams… every day. So instead of trying to remember to copy a Bing Wallpaper image, why not using a Windows Scheduled Task for this, based on a little PowerShell script?

The script could look like this:

> $today = get-date -format "yyyyMMdd"
>
>$source = "C:\Users\petender\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages" 
>
>$target = "C:\Users\petender\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads"
>
>$targetfile = $today+".jpg" 
>
>copy-item -path "$source\$targetfile" -Destination $target -Force

Save this file with a PS1 (PowerShell Script) extension, e.g. “copybingtoteams.ps1”, and store it on your local machine (I used my Documents folder for this).

You could try and run this script manually to try it out, and see how nicely the “today’s” Bing Wallpaper gets copied to the Teams folder

So that works!

Next, to make this an automated step every morning when logging on to our machine, let’s use the Windows Task Scheduler as follows:

From the Start Menu, search for Task Scheduler

Once the console is open, Right click Task Scheduler Library, and select “Create Task”

From the “General” tab, provide a descriptive name for your task e.g. “Copy Bing Wallpaper to Teams”, and keep the default setting to only use this when user is logged on.

From the Triggers tab, create a new trigger, and specify the time you want to launch this script (e.g. 7am in the morning), and specify to run this every 1 day

Under the Actions tab, is where we define the actual script to run.Set “Run a Program” as Action, and browse to the location where you saved the PS1-file.

Nothing special to configure in the Conditions tab settings, although I did turn off the dependency to start this task only when connected to AC Power.

I didn’t make any changes to the Settings tab, so we are good to go to Save our settings.

If you want to validate the task is going to run fine, you can manually launch it from the Task Scheduler console.

That’s it. Enjoy your new daily Bing Wallpaper in your Teams video calls!

Have a great day you all! and stay healhty!

/Peter

Bing Desktop Wallpapers take you on a trip around the world

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Due to COVID19, my traveling rhythm went down from an avg 90% the last six years, to 0%. I have never been that much at home without travel than in these last 5 weeks (and a few more to come).

While the primary reason for my travel is business related, every now and then, I have the opportunity to enjoy the area, if even only for a short moment, or in-between delivering sessions. Some locations immediately coming to mind:

Johannesburg, South Africa (Lion & Rhino Park)
Kathmandu, Nepal (overall scenery and the top of the mountains)
Seattle, WA, USA (Harbor area, boat trip, Snoqualmie Falls)
Ischl, Austria (Closing of skiing season, hiking at the top of the mountains)
Bangalore, India (Shivoham Shiva Temple)
Bay St Louis, MI, USA (Airbnb stay for 80 days, loved everything)
… and probably another +100 locations at least.

What should be clear about those locations, is they are all beautiful, especially the scenery of nature, sometimes it’s extraordinary buildings and most often it’s both (outside of the great and awesome training experiences)

So no doubt about it, I’m missing traveling. Missing the walks, the drive-by’s, the “enjoying my trip” feeling.

And that’s where I discovered an interesting but yet little gem to install on my laptop: Bing Desktop Wallpaper “Exploring the world, one photo at the time”.

If you have been using Bing as your search engine, or you had the joys of owning a Windows Phone in the past, you pretty well know what I’m talking about: Beautiful, stunning pictures from anywhere in the world, changing every day.

By installing this tool on your Windows machine, it will show a different image on your desktop wallpaper every morning when starting your laptop. It also stores these images on your machine (C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingWallpaperApp\WPImages), so you can reuse them later on, if you don’t like the one from a given day :).

While it is no substitute for the real-life experiences out there, it takes me away every now and then, dreaming for a few seconds about so many unexplored destinations that still need Azure training workshops to be delivered there.

Stay safe and healthy you all!

/Peter

Bing on Azure Readiness starts here...

Use Bing Desktop Wallpapers as background images in Teams calls

Bing Desktop Wallpapers take you on a trip around the world