Today, we embark on the next chapter of the Microsoft Teams story with the public preview of the new Microsoft Teams app for Windows.
From its inception in 2017, our vision for Teams has always been to bring together all your communication and collaboration tools in one place, from chat and meetings to apps and files. Whether used for work, school, or life, over 280 million people rely on Teams every month to stay productive and connected with colleagues, partners, customers, friends, and family. Teams has also enabled amazing innovation from third-party independent software vendors (ISVs), corporate developers, and system integrators—resulting in over 1,900 apps in the store as well as over 100,000 custom apps that integrate seamlessly with the Teams platform. These applications, when combined with a broad ecosystem of Teams certified devices and rooms, help you stay productive and in the flow of work.
Enable New Teams
We have been listening to your feedback which has culminated in a reimagining of Teams from the ground up. The new app is built on a foundation of speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence—delivering up to two times faster performance while using 50 percent less memory so you can save time and collaborate more efficiently. We have also streamlined the user experience so that it is simpler to use and easier to find everything in one place. These enhancements also provide the foundation for game-changing new AI-powered experiences, such as Copilot for Microsoft Teams, announced earlier this month.1
While we have already been making a steady stream of improvements in the existing Teams apps, the biggest breakthroughs will only be available with new Teams. Below is a summary of the most significant areas of improvement but you can deep dive into the full list in our Tech Community blog.
Faster. Our North Star for new Teams is to make it twice as fast while using half the system resources. To achieve this, we have made a ground-up investment to overhaul the platform to optimize the data, network, chat, and video architecture for speed and performance. We are by no means done optimizing the performance of new Teams, but we have already seen very promising data even from the public preview build rolling out today. We have worked with the independent benchmarking firm GigaOm to quantify some of the performance gains, which reports that both app launch and join meeting are already twice as fast, and memory consumption has decreased by half when testing the new Teams preview compared with classic Teams.2
Simpler. We are always looking for ways to provide a simpler yet feature-rich experience for our diverse and growing user base. That’s why we are excited to roll out enhancements to the core Teams experience that will make it easier for you to stay on top of your notifications, search for information, manage your messages, and organize your channels—all with fewer clicks. For more information on the design journey of new Teams, take a look at this blog post from Microsoft Design.
More flexible. We know that many of our customers have organizations that span multiple tenants and accounts. That’s why we have made a major investment in our support for these scenarios. We have improved our authentication model, synchronization, and notification systems to provide a seamless and consistent experience. For example, many customers need to collaborate with people across organizational boundaries, which sometimes means they use Teams across multiple tenants or accounts. Instead of logging in and out of different tenants and accounts, you can now stay signed in across them all—receiving notifications no matter which one you are currently using.
Smarter. The new Teams will be the foundation for next-generation AI experiences, including those we’ve previously announced, such as intelligent recap and Copilot for Microsoft Teams. We will use AI to take the work out of working together by getting you up to speed on what happened before you joined a meeting or chat and answering your questions all in the flow of the discussion. We’re only just beginning to see the potential of AI inside of Teams, and we will have lots more to share in the future.
Microsoft Teams Public Preview Program
We are targeting the general availability of new Teams later this year in 2023. In the meantime, we encourage our commercial customers using Windows to try the public preview, which is rolling out starting today. We intend to extend the preview release to a broader set of customers, including those using Macs later this year. While users in our Public Preview program will have access to new Teams right away, our broader set of commercial customers will need an admin to first opt-in, after which users will see a simple toggle to switch to the new Teams. You’ll also be able to switch back to classic Teams at any time.
Today marks the new era of Microsoft Teams, and we are just getting started. As the world continues to evolve, Teams is here to be your modern workplace. For a sneak peek of all the new experiences we are building on new Teams, watch the video below.
While new Teams is a big leap forward in the Teams journey, it’s not the only thing we are announcing today. For a deep dive into the 50-plus additional new features coming to Teams, be sure to check out this Tech Community blog post which summarizes all the announcements we are making this week at Enterprise Connect.
Thank you for using Teams—we are thrilled to introduce the faster, simpler, and more flexible app starting today. I would encourage you to try it out and share your thoughts with us. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you get the most out of Teams.
If you’re an admin, learn how to enable the new Teams today.
1Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot—A whole new way to work, Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft 365 Blog. March 16, 2023.
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