Microsoft today (27 March) launched a public preview of the “next chapter” for Microsoft Teams, which it says has been rebuilt from the ground up to deliver major improvements including delivering two times faster performance while using 50% less memory.
A darling of the pandemic, Teams is now used by 280 million people each month. Unveiling the public preview, Microsoft’s president of collaborative apps and platforms, Jeff Teper, said: “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.”
While Microsoft has been making a steady stream of improvements in the existing Teams app, the biggest improvements will only be available in the new Teams.
For customers using Teams to work with different organisations, they will now be able to easily switch between different tenants and accounts, with Teper commenting: “We know that many of our customers have organisations 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, synchronisation, and notification systems to provide a seamless and consistent experience. For example, many customers need to collaborate with people across organisational 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.”
The new Teams will support some of the AI developments announced earlier this month by Microsoft, including Copilot, which integrates OpenAI’s large language model across the Microsoft 365 suite of apps. Teper said: “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.”
The new Teams is expected to be generally available later this year. In the meantime, Microsoft is encouraging commercial Windows customers to try the public preview. For more information on how to opt in see: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/new-microsoft-teams/
caroline@legaltechnology.com