Today, Microsoft has delivered on its promise and is now launching a new and faster Microsoft Teams app for Windows in public preview. It was previously in internal testing.
Building on Microsoft's premise of doing less with more, the new Teams app will use 50 percent less memory, ultimately promoting efficiency by saving time and allowing people to collaborate easily. The company has also indicated that the new platform.
Microsoft's President for collaborative Apps, and Platforms, Jeff Teper indicated that:
These enhancements also provide the foundation for game-changing new AI-powered experiences, such as Copilot for Microsoft Teams, announced earlier this month.
Here's everything you need to know about the new Microsoft Teams app:
Faster Teams experience
As highlighted above, the new Teams uses fewer resources to achieve more. Unlike the previous version, the new Teams app is faster and only utilizes half the system resources.
Microsoft revamped and overhauled Teams "to optimize the data, network, chat, and video architecture for speed and performance." The company has also indicated that this doesn't mark the end of its attempt to make the app even faster.
According to GigaOm's findings, a research firm commissioned by Microsoft to track the new Teams app's performance index "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."
Easier to use
The new Teams app also features a simple experience that's easy to navigate and use. The platform also ships with plenty of features that are designed to help users keep tabs on their notifications, organize their channels, and enable better management of messages.
Flexibility
If you use Teams and have multiple tenants and accounts, the new Teams app will help you manage them better as it promotes flexibility. Microsoft has highlighted that it has made major enhancements to its authentication model, synchronization, and notification systems to ensure that it meets this need.
What's more, you'll no longer need to sign in and out of your different tenants and accounts to keep track of what's going on at work, the new Teams app now provides a unified experience that allows users to stay logged in to multiple accounts simultaneously.
More intelligent
And with Microsoft deeply integrating AI across its products and services, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the new Teams is also leveraging these capabilities to enhance its experience overall.
The company further added that the new app will be its foundation for next-generation AI experiences, that is, intelligent recap and Copilot for Microsoft Teams that have already been announced.
"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," says Microsoft. The company has also promised to make such additions in the future to ensure that users are able to realize the full potential of AI.
Microsoft has laid out its plans to roll out the new Teams to general availability later this year. It has also shared its intent to tap into a broader market with the new app by allowing Mac users to access the preview release later this year.
The new experience might not roll out automatically to all users and might call for the admin to opt in first. After this, all users part of Microsoft's Public Preview program will see a toggle switch that will allow them to transition to the new Teams.
Note: You can roll back to the Classic Teams whenever you want using the toggle.
Be sure to also check out Microsoft's side-by-side comparison of the classic Teams alongside the new Teams:
What are your thoughts on the new Teams? Have you accessed it yet? Share your experience with us in the comments.