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Teams 2.0: The newest version of Microsoft Teams
Published: July 13, 2023
Rebekah Carter
Excitement is growing around Teams 2.0, the next-generation version of everyone’s favorite collaboration and productivity app.
According to Microsoft, the company has been working on the new client, known internally as Teams 2.1, for years. However, the new Teams experience was only launched in public preview for the first time in March 2023.
Currently, admins who opt into the public preview will have the option to toggle between the traditional Teams app and Teams 2.0 at will. However, Microsoft doesn’t plan on making Teams 2.0 the new default experience until much later this year.
The reason for this is simple, with Teams 2.0, Microsoft isn’t just “updating” its client, it’s basically rebuilding the experience from scratch. This means right now, the new client doesn’t offer all the features and capabilities of the previous Teams instance. However, it has some unique benefits likely to entice business owners investing in team collaboration.
Here’s everything you need to know about Teams 2.0.
Teams 2.0 isn’t just another update in a long line of enhancements to the Microsoft collaboration tool. To create the new solution, Microsoft rebuilt its entire platform from scratch, focusing on improving efficiency for modern companies.
Teams 2.0 was officially announced by Microsoft in March this year, alongside a host of updates to Teams experience, at Enterprise Connect.
Microsoft described the client as a “reimagining” of the app from the ground up. Listening to user feedback from the community, Microsoft is building its new tool on the pillars of speed, flexibility, and simplicity.
The new client moves Teams away from the Electron ecosystem and into Microsoft’s Edge Webview2 technology, improving functionality and performance. According to Microsoft, the app will now use 50% less memory, have a reduced impact on CPUs, and enhance laptop battery life.
Switching away from Electron could also help Microsoft to avoid some of the issues it faced in the past, with things like the “Vectra Vulnerability,” by allowing for more secure access controls.
By the end of July, all IT admins should be able to use the “UseNewTeamsClient” admin policy setting in their Teams instance to allow individual users to toggle back and forth between versions. This should mean users can experiment with all the benefits of the “new Teams” while retaining the functionality of the previous client.
Microsoft has promised big things with the Teams 2.0 app. The company is working on making the platform more intuitive and powerful than ever before. Plus, the new Teams version will come packaged with some of the latest tools developed by Microsoft. Copilot AI, for instance, will become a consistent part of the Teams experience in the months ahead.
However, while users can start experimenting with Teams 2.0 today, the client is still very much “in progress.” Microsoft has yet to achieve feature parity between its old Teams instance and the new solution, hence the reason for the new “toggle” option.
Currently, Teams 2.0 only supports Windows clients, and it’s not available to educational customers or other specialist end-users in the government industry. It’s also missing many calling features, such as call queues and voice-enabled channels, and meeting features like breakout rooms.
Other missing features include the option to add channel calendars, search through chats, use Loop components, and leverage various apps, like the Microsoft Files app.
Fortunately, Microsoft will add much of the missing functionality into Teams 2.0 before becoming the default client in September 2023. Additionally, the company has said it’s planning on introducing a host of new features, which will be available in the Teams 2.0 client only.
So, what will Teams 2.0 do differently?
Ultimately, Microsoft has designed Teams 2.0 to be faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly than the previous solution. You can expect a quicker, more streamlined experience with a revitalized user interface and less demand for computing resources.
Many of the most significant changes result from a new approach to the architecture of Teams. The previous Teams client is Electron based. It’s built on a cross-platform, open-source programming framework, which has given Microsoft an easy way to code the system once and deliver it across platforms. However, Electron apps are also notorious for poor resource utilization and performance.
Switching to Webview2, which uses the Chromium browser engine installed on Windows with Edge, allows for a more lightweight, robust experience. Videos in online meetings will require less CPU power, and PCs with less powerful GPUs can access the whole experience.
Outside of significant performance and resource utilization improvements, the most significant changes Teams 2.0 users can expect include:
The updated Microsoft Teams 2.0 app will feature a slightly different user interface. The overall ease of use should remain the same, but there will be some significant enhancements. For instance, there’s a dark mode option that follows the OS setting of the user.
The new user interface will also place posts in a chat or channel at the top of a page rather than the bottom. The updated app will allow users to sign into Teams with multiple accounts. This means users can use various accounts without loading a new web browser.
Clicking on your profile picture at the top of the window will allow you to add another work account instantly. Once you do, you’ll be able to set up notification settings for all of your accounts. You can also set your status differently for each account and color-code accounts for easy organization.
Microsoft is constantly rolling out new features for Teams to boost company efficiency and productivity. The Teams 2.0 app will continue on this roadmap. According to Microsoft, some of the most common complaints they’ve received from Teams users are connected to the app’s speed.
The previous app can often launch slowly, take a while to load meetings, and consume too much memory during interactions. Microsoft partnered with an independent firm, GigaOm, to help benchmark its goals to double the speed of Teams while reducing its resource usage by half.
According to testing conducted by the firm, users on Teams 2.0 will be able to launch the app and join meetings up to 2 times faster. You’ll also be able to switch chats and channels 1.7% more quickly while consuming 50% less memory and 70% less disk space.
Most people agree that Microsoft Teams is a relatively straightforward platform. However, the tech giant wants to make the experience even simpler still. Teams 2.0 will be designed to help users accomplish more with fewer clicks and less navigation.
Microsoft will introduce streamlined actions to simplify search, messaging, channels, and notifications. Plus, users can access more personalized experiences with threaded conversations, new interactive emojis, and customizable group chats.
Teams 2.0 will also update the pre-join experience for meetings, gallery view, and screen-sharing experiences, to remove any barriers to effective meetings.
The latest version of Teams will also provide companies with a more secure, controlled collaboration experience. Microsoft will be making IT management more straightforward, with enhanced security enabled by Trusted Types adoption.
There will also be a more stringent content security policy in place to protect businesses against cross-site scripting attacks. Plus, Teams’ latest version will be installed into the “program data folder” rather than the “user profile folder.”
The program data folder isn’t editable by users, which gives Microsoft Teams clients better protection against attacks that might harm the platform’s performance.
Going forward, Microsoft will also bring various new features to the Teams 2.0 experience. The company has already announced the impending arrival of new capabilities like collaborative notes in Teams and profanity filtering controls.
Plus, the AI features created in collaboration with Open AI will also be available within Teams 2.0. Copilot for Teams will offer intelligent meeting recaps and note-taking services to users. The company also plans to roll out more emojis, gestures, and reactions.
New features for the Teams 2.0 are still being announced, but we can already look forward to things like:
Users in the public preview program for Microsoft should be able to access Teams 2.0 instantly via the new “toggle” feature. By the end of this month, the toggle feature should be available to everyone. However, admins will need to opt-in to the program first.
Microsoft plans on making Teams 2.0 the new default client for all customers by the end of September this year. The update will be available to all Business and Enterprise customers. It will also support Windows, Intel, ARM, and AMD platforms. However, Microsoft says support will be coming for all major platforms in the future.
If you want to dive into the Teams 2.0 experience as soon as it arrives, Microsoft recommends IT admins should start preparing users for the change by Fall this year.
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