Since its inception in 2017, our vision for Teams has always been to bring together all your communication and collaboration tools in one place, from chat and meetings to apps and files. Whether they’re used for work, school, or life, over 280 million people rely on Teams every month to stay productive and connect with colleagues, partners, customers, friends, and family. Teams has also enabled amazing innovation from third-party independent software vendors (ISVs), enterprise developers, and systems integrators—resulting in over 1,900 apps in the store as well as over 100,000 custom apps that integrate seamlessly with the Teams platform. These applications, combined with a broad ecosystem of Teams-certified devices and rooms, help you stay productive and in the flow of work.

We've listened to your feedback, which has culminated in a redesign of Teams from the ground up.

The new app is built on a foundation of speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence – delivering up to 2x faster performance while using 50 percent less memory so you can save time and collaborate more effectively. We’ve also streamlined the user experience so it’s easier to use and find everything in one place. These improvements also lay the foundation for game-changing new AI-powered experiences, as Copilot for Microsoft Teams, which was announced earlier this month. ¹

While we've already made a steady stream of improvements to the existing Teams apps, the biggest breakthroughs will only be available with the new Teams. Below is a summary of the key areas of improvement, but you can dive into the full list in our Tech Community Blog .

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The new Microsoft Teams: Faster, simpler, more flexible and smarter

Faster. Our North Star for new teams is to do it twice as fast while using half the system resources. To achieve this, we have made a basic investment to review the platform to optimize the data, network, chat, and video architecture for speed and performance. We are by no means done optimizing performance for new teams, but we have already seen very promising data even from the public preview that is rolling out today. We have been working with the independent benchmarking company GigaOm to quantify some of the performance gains, reporting that both app launch and joining meetings are already twice as fast, and memory consumption has been reduced by half when testing the new Teams preview compared to classic Teams. ²

Easier. We're always looking for ways to provide a simpler yet feature-rich experience for our diverse and growing user base. That's why we're excited to launch improvements to the core Teams experience that make it easier for you to stay on top of your notifications, search for information, manage your messages, and organize your channels—all with fewer clicks. For more information about the design journey for new Teams, check out this the blog post from Microsoft Design.

More flexible. We know that many of our customers have organizations that span multiple tenants and accounts. That’s why we’ve made a significant investment in our support for these scenarios. We’ve improved our authentication model, synchronization, and notification systems to provide a seamless and consistent experience. For example, many customers need to collaborate with people across organizational boundaries, which sometimes means using Teams across multiple tenants or accounts. Instead of signing in and out of different tenants and accounts, you can now be signed in to all of them—receiving notifications regardless of which one you’re currently using.

Smarter. The new Teams will be the foundation for next-generation AI experiences, including those we've previously announced, such as intelligent summary and Copilot for Microsoft Teams . We will use AI to take the work out of working together by informing you of what happened before you joined a meeting or chat and answering your questions during the discussion flow. We are only just beginning to see the potential for AI within Teams, and we will have much more to share in the future.

Microsoft Teams Public Preview Program Read more  

We are targeting general availability for new teams later this year in 2023. In the meantime, we encourage our commercial customers using Windows to try the public preview, which is rolling out starting today. We intend to expand the preview to a broader set of customers, including those who uses Mac later this year. While users in our Public Preview program will have access to the new Teams immediately, our broader set of commercial customers will need an admin to first opt in, after which users will see a simple toggle to switch to the new Teams. You will also be able to switch back to classic Teams at any time.