Microsoft has simplified the chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams as it has updated its video conferencing App with new features. According to the company, “This new experience is designed to help you collaborate more efficiently and effectively. It’s simple by default, enabling everyone to stay on top of what matters, and it’s powerful on demand, allowing you to organize information and communicate your way.”
Microsoft noted that the new chat and channels experience is coming to public preview in November. The company has redesigned the chat and channels experience to simplify your workspace by bringing chats, teams, and channels into one place under “Chat”. This integrates both chat and channels into your critical workflows, making it easier to access, triage, and organize your conversations.
It adds that users who prefer to keep chat and channels separate can easily do so during the onboarding process, or at any time later, without needing IT assistance. Next, there’ a new “@mentions” view that helps you quickly view messages directed at you in one place. You can get through your daily triage with the new filters that help you focus on what’s important now, like unread messages in chats or channels, without muted conversations or meeting chats getting in the way.
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Next, you get new “custom sections”, where you can bring all relevant conversations on a project or topic together into one place, be it in chats, channels, meetings, including Teams bots or AI agents. The new “favorites” section is available for everyone by default, bringing together all your pinned chats and channels from the previous experience.
Then, you can now customize Teams chat and channels to align with your personal workflow and preferred information consumption style. With new controls, you can choose to view chat and channels separately, see message previews, or display all channels in a single list.
The new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams is coming to desktop, mobile, iOS, and Android. The company is beginning to test threaded conversations with customers this quarter and will expand testing in early 2025, with broad availability expected in mid-2025.