New Teams migration, What’s new?

Microsoft Teams has been the primary tool used for chat communication at S&T for a while now. To keep Teams up-to-date and effective, big changes need to happen periodically. With this new update, there are multiple functionalities that have been relocated within the app as well as important behind the scenes upgrades. Here are some of the notable User Interface (UI) changes with accompanying side-by-side images between New Teams and Classic Teams

On Teams, there is a “Toggle” option located in the top left corner of the window that allows you to swap to the new version. You can freely toggle between New Teams and Classic teams. Once you’re in New Teams, the location of the toggle button changes.  On New Teams, the toggle button will be relocated in the drop-down menu under the three ellipses in the top right corner. It is recommended to at least try the new version of Teams before swapping over to Classic Teams. The toggle button should look similar to the screenshots provided below.

In New Teams, the look of the settings page has changed slightly with the locations of some features moved around.  Below is a side-by-side comparison of the settings page between New Teams and Classic Teams.

Other icons have been rearranged on the main screen of Teams. The meeting/call button layout in the top right corner of Teams has been rearranged for a more minimal look. The “Screen sharing” and “Pop out chat” buttons have been removed and the Audio call button was removed leaving only one button to initiate a meeting. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the button layouts between New Teams and Classic Teams.

Some quality-of-life changes have occurred as well. You can now update your status by right clicking the Teams icon in your task bar and selecting the status you’d like to display. You can now forward messages directly from private chats. Right click the message you would like to pass on and then click Forward. After, you’ll be prompted with a box to enter in the contact information of the person you’d like the message forwarded to. As of now, this feature only works in private chats and group chats. It does NOT work in team channels.

Other than significant user interface changes and various quality-of-life changes, the new Teams has impressive background improvements that makes the application faster than ever. This Teams update includes higher performance while using half of the memory it used to. This includes faster load times, faster connections to meetings and more. Teams have created a wonderful and efficient experience with collaborations between coworkers.

The ability to swap back to Classic Teams will be removed on March 25th, 2024. After the 25th, all of UM System will be automatically swapped from Classic Teams and locked to New Teams.