Microsoft plans to deliver a big update to its Teams app that will help users better organize their chat experience with threaded conversations arriving in the middle of 2025.
Fortunately for some users, Microsoft is also providing some other customizations that will help with cleaning up its chat experience in Teams well before 2025, that include testing the ability to combine chats and channels into a single view.
According to a post from Microsoft’s Teams blog, users will soon be able to test out a new UX paradigm the chat app that brings together chat, teams, and channels into a single tabbed UI under the heading of Chat.
Microsoft plans to alert users to the new accessibility options in Teams Chat by employing a virtual assistant prompt that will walk through the new experience by helping them choose between Unread, Chat, Channels, Meetings, and Muted actions.
From there, users will also retain the ability to scour the entire Work area for more granular specifics via the universal search platform.
Most impressive from the announcement made today is the news that Microsoft is addressing concerns from users about navigating multiple conversations in Teams being a laborious task by providing AI-powered templated organizations options alongside user enabled grouped conversations.
The new chat and channels experience in Teams empowers you to personalize your work environment to fit your needs and organize your conversations the way you prefer to work. The new favorites section is available for everyone by default, bringing together all your pinned chats and channels from the previous experience, so you have one easy-to-access place of your top priority conversations. With custom sections, you can bring all relevant conversations on a project or topic together into one place, be it in chats, channels, meetings, Teams bots or AI agents. With up to 50 sections and 50 items per section, you can efficiently manage even the most complex projects.
Noga Ronen – Microsoft Teams Blog
Microsoft is also highlighting a new @mentions panel that isolates and filters messages where users are directly mentioned as well as a Go-To navigation that ushers’ users to frequently used conversations across chats and channels views. The Go-To pane can be accessed through use of the mouse or new keyboard shortcuts when Ctrl+G on Windows or Cmd+G on a Mac are pressed together.
Again, Microsoft is testing out these new features in a public preview set for next month, for both desktop and mobile apps, while broad availability won’t be seen until mid-2025.
If users are in any preview channels for Teams, they just need to select the Get Started button on the new pop up when their system gets enrolled in the testing phase.
