Microsoft is getting ready to make its new Teams 2.0 client available for all users. As of today, the new app is available via a toggle in public preview, but the same toggle will become generally available for customers in September.
Microsoft launched the new Teams 2.0 client in public preview in March 2023. The app has been rebuilt from the ground up to make it two times faster and consume 50 percent less memory as compared to the classic Teams desktop app. Microsoft Teams 2.0 is no longer an Electron-based application, and it leverages Microsoft’s Webview2 technology instead.
At launch, the preview version of the new Teams 2.0 client lacked several features that are available in the classic Teams desktop app. Since then, Microsoft has been working to add support for third-party apps, line-of-business (LOB) applications, and advanced calling and meeting capabilities. These include 7×7 video, breakout rooms, call queues and voice-enabled channels, as well as survivable branch appliance (SBA).
Later this month, end users will be able to switch between the new Teams client and the classic app with a toggle button. This change will be applicable to tenants where the admin policy setting of “UseNewTeamsClient” is set to Microsoft default. Microsoft will let IT admins deploy new Teams directly to all devices in their organization in mid-July.
“We’re still working on this version, so some things aren’t available yet. It’s easy to toggle back and forth between using the classic and new Teams, so you can take advantage of the new Teams performance enhancements on some days and switch back to the classic Teams when you need to,” Microsoft explained.
Microsoft expects to make Teams 2.0 the default client for all customers in late September. The upcoming update will be available for both enterprise and business (Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, and Teams Essentials, etc) customers. Microsoft recommends IT admins to start preparing users for this upcoming change in Fall 2023.
Currently, Microsoft Teams 2.0 is only available in preview on Windows PCs. Microsoft has confirmed that the new Teams client will launch on macOS, VDI, and Web later this year. Let us know in the comments below if you have switched to the Microsoft Teams 2.0 preview app.
I hope it better than the new outlook which is in test. I tried it for 2 days before switching it off. It’s truly awful.
Oh man, glad it’s not just me. I tried to import a contact list for work and it duplicated the list (wasn’t given an option to overwrite or merge). When I tried to delete the list to start over, it was limited to selecting 10 entries at a time- the same as the Web version.
Just, why?
Because it probably IS the web version.
I definitely was disappointed to see the new Outlook just mirrored the web version’s mail rules. I had custom mail rules that would play a sound when triggered, that isn’t possible in the new Outlook now (that I could find).
Thankfully it’s slightly better, hadn’t felt the need to go back. It’s not better in any way though. Basically nothing new, same old thing except running in an Electron container. Oh, newest post on channels is now on top instead of bottom. Yay?
Oh wait, one actually useful new feature is that you can log on multiple corporate accounts and easily swap between them. That’s kinda neat.
Will give it a try tomorrow then. (The outlook beta really put me off)
If you switch to another account does it sign you out of the others? This causes us real issues in our company. Basically we have a holding company and several other companies each of which is run independently with different tenants. If we have a teams site and want to share with users from the holding company we have to create accounts on our domain which then makes them unavailable on their tenant when they switch. It’s a pain in the bum; several sites that would she great as teams sites are instead hosted as sharepoint sites due to this.
It signs out depending on that tenants policy. In my case I got 4 tenants connected with one requiring a relogin every now and than. The layout is also odd, slack and discord do it better but you can have a convo in one tenant and a call in the other at the same time.
Shared channels between organizations are still a pain as they have to be configured by IT - both orgs need to trust each other. Makes sense but it’s a pain for users.
No, you can be logged on two (or more, I assume?) accounts at the same time and easily swap between them. You’ll even get notifications from the other logged in accounts.
That’s great. Many thanks for coming back on this.
Agreed, I couldn’t Favorite the inbox of shared inboxes, so therefore I have to navigate down through 3 folders to get to the inbox. Also the calendar doesn’t allow for custom views, I always manually change mine to a two week view using the mini calendar on the left and the new version has nothing like that. These types of features are just stuff I find too inconvenient to live without so I quickly switched back.