Microsoft has revealed that it is giving organisations 25 free trial licences for the Teams Premium package so users can test the new features.
The free licences will only last for 30 days and will be available to customers who purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription.
The company states that purchasing the Teams Premium add-on licence will provide admins and end users with extra features on top of their current Teams subscription.
A Microsoft 365 admin blog states: “Microsoft Teams Premium is a Teams add-on license that allows organizations with Microsoft 365 subscriptions to enhance their Teams experience with benefits like more personalised and intelligent meetings and webinars, enhanced protection for meetings, advanced management and reporting capabilities for IT and advanced Virtual Appointments.
“Teams Premium is currently available as a preview release, allowing organisations to experience and plan for the generally available release of Teams Premium.
“Not all Teams Premium features are available in this preview release, but more features will be released throughout the preview period.”
Different Features
Users with Microsoft Teams Premium will have access to a lot of features that do not come with the standard Teams licence.
The features relate to things such as meetings, webinars, meetings protection, meetings reporting, and virtual appointments.
Here is a list of features that are available only for Teams Premium users:
Meetings
- Customise meeting templates to ensure they are unique for your specific organisation
- Add your organisation’s branding to meeting lobbies
- Customise meeting backgrounds
- Customise Together mode scenes for your organisation
- The ability to read live translated captions during meetings
- Translate post-meeting transcriptions
- Turn on real-time data storage
- Turn on eCDN for Live Events
Webinars
- Users can set up a green room for webinar presenters
- Send a reminder email to people who have registered for the webinar
- Manage the view of attendees
- Create a waiting list for the webinar
- Manually approve anyone who registers for the event
- Limit the day and time when people can register
- Any registered users can bypass the webinar lobby
- Use RTMP-In for Webinars
Meetings Protection
- Watermarks can be added to meetings
- Teams Premium users can enable end-to-end encryption for meeting with up to 50 participants
- Control who can and cannot record the meeting
- Stop copy/paste in meeting chats
- Assign Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for meetings. Only available to users with a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription.
- Teams Premium can offer custom user policy packages
- Users can turn on advanced meeting monitoring and alerting
Meetings Reporting
- Users can navigate meeting recordings with autogenerated chapters
- View time markers in meeting recording when users have joined or left a meeting
- Search through meeting transcripts with speaker suggestions
- View and act on autogenerated tasks from meetings
- Users can also view when they were ‘@mentioned’
Virtual Appointments
- Customise lobby waiting rooms with themes and logos
- Send SMS notifications to participants
- Chat with attendees in the lobby waiting room
- Organisational and departmental analytics are available
- Manage scheduled appointments in the queue
- Manage on-demand appointments in the queue
- Send follow-ups following the virtual appointments
What Current Features are Moving to Teams Premium?
Due to the general release of Teams Premium, some features that are currently available will move from Teams licences to Teams Premium licences.
Microsoft has confirmed that users will have to purchase and assign Teams Premium licences to have access to the features.
The features that are moving to Teams Premium include:
- Live translated captions
- Timeline markers in Teams meeting recording for when users leave or join meetings
- Custom organisation Together mode scenes
- Send SMS notifications for Virtual Appointments
- Organisational analytics in the Teams admin centre for Virtual Appointments
- Virtual Appointments scheduled queue view
Microsoft has stated there will be a 30-day grace period for admins to buy Teams Premium when the licence becomes generally available.
After that grace period, users will lose access to the features listed above unless they have the Premium licence.
How to Purchase Teams Premium
Admins can purchase Teams Premium add-on licences through their preferred purchasing channel once it becomes generally available.
Once the licences are purchased, admins can then assign them to users via the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
Microsoft Teams Premium is scheduled to be generally available in early February 2023.
The company is yet to confirm a price for the new licence; however, some media outlets are reporting that it is expected to cost $10 per month.
