It’s been a busy time recently for Microsoft Teams, introducing spatial audio for immersive meetings as part of its end-of-June update and several significant updates to Teams Rooms on Android and Windows.
However, there has also been news that’s looking further ahead towards the tail-end of the year, no less significant or exciting for being a long-term development — Teams is getting a new desktop client.
Tom Arbuthnot, Microsoft Teams Expert and Co-Founder of Empowering.Cloud, clarified to UC Today that “Teams 2.1 is kind of the internal name for it.”
“It’s faster, lighter, built from the ground up, and generally better, as said by various marketing terms,” Arbuthnot continued. “But, genuinely, the perception is that it’s true. It is better.”
The new app aims to use 50 percent less memory, be less taxing for the CPU, and lead to better battery life for laptops.
Microsoft has tentatively suggested it’s looking towards October for the general availability of the new Teams, but that doesn’t mean that every customer will have to switch instantly.
“You can see what’s coming here is at some point, Microsoft will run them side by side, the classic client and the new client, and slowly they will push towards, ‘okay, now’s the time where you’ve really got to jump over to the new client,'” Arbuthnot said.
“So, they’ve put up a microsite where you can see which features are in the new client and which features are still coming soon,” he expanded, “which will help you understand how you can roll this out to some or all of your users if they’ve got the use cases covered in the features to make sure they can start using it.”
The microsite includes comprehensive details for admins, including how to roll out the client and how to manage to change.
“We’re coming into summer, which is classically a bit of a slower time for IT, so this might be a good time to start thinking about towards the end of calendar Q4; you’re probably going to be expected to start moving from the classic Teams client to the new Teams client,” Arbuthnot recommended. “Now’s a good chance to get on top of it.”
Microsoft has been keen on customer feedback around the new Teams client to ensure they hit all the use cases that people need. For example, in Teams Admin Centre, admins can flip users into Preview and then provide feedback via the client or a dedicated feedback website. This is in addition to the microsite where users can join the community for Preview.
“I think the most important thing Microsoft are looking for is they want feature parity,” Arbuthnot added, “which is a long-running word for our space. But seeing what features are going to block how many people. So like making sure they’ve got all the core features covered.”
What of customers self-managing a small environment of Teams clients? How would they go about upgrading? And is there a timeline for switching?
“For the moment, it’s still in Preview,” Arbuthnot clarified. “So we haven’t got somewhere where it fully forces you to upgrade, but I would anticipate, much like with the Skype migration, it will be like ‘gently encourage your users to do this, we’re going to proactively give them the option to switch.’ So they get a toggle in the top left of their client saying check out Preview.”
“Then at some point, Microsoft will say, ‘If you don’t do anything, we’re just going to magically update your users, you can defer it, but we’ll do it, and then eventually, you can’t defer it’. That tends to be the model.
“Small customers, very often, don’t practically do this,” Arbuthnot said. “They’ll just wait until Microsoft changes it. For bigger customers, they want to test it with a pilot group, understand how it’ll work, get user comms out there so they help ensure it doesn’t get flooded, etc.”
Given the Teams client’s transition period of being in Preview for some users and unavailable for others, there are inevitably some feature gaps between the new and old clients. The client isn’t available on Mac or VDI, albeit these launches are in the pipeline. It’s also not yet supported on special or government Clouds, so not yet GCC or DoD. That includes advanced calling features, such as call queues and reverse number lookups.
“Amazingly, team and channel creation are not there, which obviously, being Teams, is quite an important one for a lot of people and third-party business apps,” Arbuthnot added. “So, that means bringing in your Salesforce or your Trello or whatever it may be. There are still some significant gaps there to close. So we’ll probably see those close as we roll up to October.”
Satish Upadhyaya, MVP, Microsoft 365 UC Architect, highlighted to UC Today during the conversation with Arbuthnot that “Even your contacts and speed dial, which is one of the most critical things, is still not available on the new clients yet.”
“As you mentioned, Tom, the third line of business apps that’s really critical and vital,” Upadhyaya continued. “They mentioned that towards the end of July, that’s what they are planning to roll out in the Preview for the line of business apps as well.”
UC Today’s full interview with Arbuthnot and Upadhyaya on Teams Client 2.0, Windows Copilot licenses, and more will soon be published on UC Today’s website and YouTube channel.
