The US software group Microsoft is beginning to roll out a new, faster version of its Teams communication app to its corporate customers. The Windows version is available in preview mode starting today as the company collects feedback before making the pre-release version of the software available to all customers later this year. Microsoft also promises new versions of Teams for Mac and the web. The the group announced on Monday.
Since its inception in 2017, Teams has grown into a core part of Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), the subscription-based productivity software suite. Numerous companies have implemented Teams to keep their employees connected through video calls and text chats during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the company, more than 280 million people worldwide use Teams every month, even if many workers commute back to the office.
Microsoft Teams had some performance issues in 2020 that the company fixed. Then, in 2021, Microsoft began developing a second generation of software from the ground up to improve performance on PCs and laptops. The company announced corresponding performance improvements a few weeks ago.
Faster and easier to use
According to Microsoft, the new Teams version is faster, simpler and more user-friendly. Installing the new Microsoft Teams app is said to be 3x faster and starting or joining meetings 2x faster. Microsoft says the new Microsoft Teams will use half the RAM and 70 percent less disk space. This all sounds like significant performance improvements. With the current Teams app, there have always been complaints about the slowness, the required storage space and other problems.
Microsoft has now abandoned Teams’ Electron foundation and moved to Microsoft Edge WebView2 technology, while also making a full switch to the React JavaScript library and a greater focus on the Fluent design language for UI improvements, writes the US technology portal The Verge.
“One of the key benefits of moving from Electron to WebView2 is reduced memory usage and disk footprint as resources are shared with Edge,” Microsoft Teams engineers explain in a blog post. “The decision to move from AngularJS to React was primarily based on performance characteristics and benchmarking results specific to our use cases. We found that React better suited our scenarios and it was a beneficial move for the overall performance of the Application.”
Almost everything new
This has resulted in pretty much every major part of Microsoft Teams being overhauled in some way. Alongside the performance improvements, Microsoft Teams has also given Teams a visual refresh to better align with Windows 11. Microsoft has also changed the desktop color from gray to white and uses less of the purple Teams color. Microsoft Teams now automatically switches to dark mode, and the app has group profile pictures and theming.
In addition, Microsoft is adding some very useful improvements. Going forward, all accounts and notifications can be seen in a single dropdown menu, making it easier to switch between different Microsoft Teams accounts. There is no longer a need to log out of accounts and switch between tenants to gain access to different Teams instances.
New AI-powered features
The new Teams client will also be the foundation for Microsoft’s future work with its Copilot assistant and other AI-powered features. Users will be able to invite the AI assistant to group chats to perform tasks such as meeting scheduling, or it will appear in the sidebar in meetings and chats to assist with tasks such as summaries, recaps, or general questions help. Copilot’s business chat feature will also be present in Teams as a chatbot and can be used as a personal assistant to pull data and information from all Microsoft 365 services and apps.
However, there are some gaps in functionality in the preview version available now. For example, companies cannot access third-party apps or line-of-business (LOB) apps in the preview. Some advanced calling features like call queues are also unavailable, as are advanced meeting features like breakout rooms.
Provides a detailed overview of the more than 50 additional new features of Teams this blog post from Microsoft.
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