Microsoft Teams launches a new combined chat and channel experience, simplifying conversations and management across different locations. This update, excluding Education tenants, will be rolled out from mid-November 2024 to the end of April 2025, depending on deployment phase and user group. Users can customize their chat and channel views, with no administrative action required. For more information, see the Microsoft 365 blog and the Microsoft 365 ID 415249 roadmap.
How it will affect your organization
Prior to this roll-out, users had separate views for chats and teams with no possibility of unifying them; personalized chat and channel sections were not possible; and there was no view to gather all personal mentions in a single list across chats and channels.
The new experience bringschats, teams and channels together in one place, in Chat, so that users can easily navigate between all conversations without changing context. Users start in the combined Chat view, but can choose to keep chats separate from teams and channels as before.
In the Chat view, users will see these sections (in order):
- Favorites containing all previously pinned cats and channels
- Cats sorted chronologically
- Teams and channels, organized in the same order as in the Teams view
In addition, users can create customized sections to organize projects and topics, which can include individual, group and meeting chats, as well as channels.
New filters for Unread, Chat, Channels, Meetings and more help users focus on the relevant conversations in their list. Filters persist until deactivated.
The new @mention view brings together all @mentions personal mentions in an interactive list. Users can quickly access messages with @mentions across chats, channels and meetings.
Favorites, discussions, teams and channels in a single list in Teams for iOS (also available for Android):
Personalized experience
Users can customize their chat and channel experience in Teams settings. They can choose to keep chats, teams and channels combined in Chat (by default) or switch to separate views for Chat and Teams. In the combined Chat view, message previews are disabled by default to simplify the list. Users can activate message previews in the settings.
When using separate views for Chat and Teams, users can still use the new filters and @mentions view to sort and organize topics with customized sections.
Start of the new experience
A guided self-service integration flow in Teams will help users discover the new experience and configure it to their preferences. Users who prefer to keep chats and channels separate can easily do so during the integration process or later, without IT support.
When the new experience is available in your tenant, this screen will appear for users:
The Start button will take users to the new combined chat, teams and channels experience in Chat, and highlight the settings location. Users will be able to defer the new experience up to three times over a period of around three days, offering flexibility while gradually moving an organization to the new experience.
Please note that this feature will be activated by default. The new experience has no administration policy. Each user can make choices to optimize the way they work.
What you need to do to prepare :
This roll-out will take place automatically in November, with no administrative action required prior to deployment. Review your current configuration to determine the impact on your organization. To help organizations prepare for the new features, product guides for administrators and users will be available on the Microsoft Teams new chat and channel experience adoption page before the rollout begins.
