Discover the latest from the new Microsoft Teams app for Windows, promising enhanced performance, flexibility, and AI-powered features. Explore the improvements, including increased speed, simplified user experience, improved flexibility for multi-tenant organizations, and the integration of smarter user experiences.
Microsoft have launched a public preview of the new Microsoft Teams app for Windows, and it promises many new and valuable features for business professionals.
Microsoft Teams has proven to be an invaluable solution for many organisations around the world over the last few years. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature of work has undergone a significant paradigm shift – remote and hybrid work is the new norm, and communication has been identified as a mission-critical aspect of business processes. TechQuarters, a Microsoft Partner that provides small business IT support London companies have been relying on since 2010, has witness Teams’ growth trajectory since its initial launch – they themselves rely on it almost exclusively for their communications. They stated that the new Teams app promises to further empower professional users to work more efficiently, and interconnectedly.
Reimagined the Teams Architecture
The new Microsoft Teams app for Windows has been redesigned with speed, performance, flexibility and intelligence identified as the cornerstones of the user experience. In order to make the platform both faster and more resource-efficient, Microsoft have rebuilt the Teams app from the ground up.
The new Teams app is built using Microsoft’s own Fluent UI framework, which is the foundation of Windows 11 – it only makes sense that the future of Microsoft Teams would be to migrate it to the new design system. The result is a more adaptive, responsive platform that works consistently across all platforms (while currently limited to Windows, the new Teams app will come to Mac, and other platforms, eventually).
Redesigning the User Experience
User experience is a hugely important part of any application or service. According to TechQuarters, having provided business IT support London based businesses have relied on since Teams’ launch, there have been a few instances where users were unsatisfied with its UX – most noticeably, the channel experience.
As a result, the new channel experience sports a re-designed, top-down post feed – a departure from the earlier channel interface that was closer to a chat. The entire interface of Teams has been redesigned to be slimmer and lighter, resulting in more streamlined headers, fewer buttons, and an overall more minimalist UI
Another new feature comes from Microsoft’s acknowledgement that many users will be use Teams across multiple tenants. Instead of having to log in and out of your different accounts, you can now receive notifications from, and toggle between your different accounts without having to log in or out, allowing for a more streamlined, fluid way to manage multiple workflows throughout the day.
Embedded Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has been making a significant buzz recently. Particularly, its potential to enhance and assist workflows for professionals. As a provider of IT support Central London-based companies have worked closely with for many years, TechQuarters attested to the major interest in applied AI for productivity.
Microsoft have already been working on a number of intelligent features for Microsoft Teams. The intelligent recap feature, for example, uses generative AI to analyse meeting recordings and improve the experience of watching them – with features such as automated notes, video chapters, and transcriptions.
Microsoft have also worked to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot – the new intelligent data assistant – into Microsoft Teams. Copilot combines Large Language Processing with Microsoft Graph, the main data gateway for Microsoft 365 – by leveraging an organisation’s data estate, Copilot can make valuable insights and suggestions for the user to aid in their workflow.
Conclusion
Microsoft continues to demonstrate its dedication to enhancing communication and collaboration experiences by evolving the Microsoft Teams platform we have all grown to depend on in the last few years.
With the general availability slated for late-2023, users can look forward to experiencing the improved performance, flexibility, and smarter AI features that the new app brings. Furthermore, Microsoft has plans to extend the preview release to Mac users, ensuring a wider reach for the new Teams experience.
