Microsoft forges One Teams App To Rule Them All
- Reference: 1710401046
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/14/unified_teams_debuts/
- Source link:
Today, Teams users who have multiple work accounts – or a work account and a personal account – can't use a single app to access them all at once. Microsoft offers a free version of Teams, alongside a version called "Teams (work or school)" and users with multiple accounts need to run both. It's also possible to access Teams with a Web interface – another way to run multiple accounts on one machine.
Which is clearly sub-optimal. And it will remain so … until you get your hands on Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26080 which, as Microsoft today [1]announced , includes "a preview experience of the new, unified Microsoft Teams experience on Windows."
[2]
Microsoft's post states that the forthcoming experience means users can "seamlessly switch between multiple cloud environments, tenants, and account types across personal and work."
[3]
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Redmond has done this because, in the words of Windows Insider program lead Amanda Langowski and senior program manager Brandon LeBlanc the software giant "received consistent feedback from personal and work users: you prefer a single Teams app that allows you to easily access and switch between personal and work accounts."
Unified Teams will "soon be rolled out to commercial customers" through the usual channels, Langowski and LeBlanc reveal, before enthusing about features such as the ability to join Teams meetings using your preferred account, or none at all, and notifications that indicate which account they pertain to.
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Personal accounts will offer "more details, giving clear and easy actions from the notification banner."
The revised experience won't put everything in one window, or behind a single icon. "You can now launch personal and work accounts simultaneously with separate icons on the taskbar," the post states. "We listened to users about their communication needs in various aspects of their lives and how they want to use Teams. The feedback was clear that a multi-window experience is preferred."
[6]The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?
[7]Microsoft calls AI privacy complaint 'doomsday hyperbole'
[8]Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0
[9]Microsoft waited 6 months to patch actively exploited admin-to-kernel vulnerability
Other features in this preview build include a new look for Copilot that "adds the ability to switch between the existing 'docked' behavior that attaches Copilot to the side of your desktop, and a new mode where it acts like a normal application window which you can resize and move around your screen."
A new runtime for the AI assistant has also helped to imbue it with new powers like cleaning up a disk, emptying the recycle bin, informing you of your IP address, or finding available wireless networks.
It's also possible to enable accessibility features, take a screenshot, or toggle dark mode.
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Which means – wait for it – this new release gives us all One Teams To Rule Them All, And In The Dark Mode Bind Them. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/03/13/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-26080-canary-and-dev-channels/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZfLYx4wHBaL4a122C7MFfAAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfLYx4wHBaL4a122C7MFfAAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZfLYx4wHBaL4a122C7MFfAAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfLYx4wHBaL4a122C7MFfAAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/13/the_end_of_classic_outlook/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/12/microsoft_doomsday_hyperbole_ai_filing/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/trying_ms_prerelease_os2_2/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/infosec_news_in_brief/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZfLYx4wHBaL4a122C7MFfAAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "with separate icons on the taskbar"
But hopefully it will get past the nonsense of two separate icons on the start menu and all the subsequentt 'why is Teams suddenly asking me to login and why does it say my account is invalid?'
Edit: or three icons if you have Teams, Teams (work or school) and Teams Classic (work or school)
I am assuming this also means 2 work accounts with different organisations both signed in and online at the same time?
"You can now launch personal and work accounts simultaneously with separate icons on the taskbar,"
This is how it currently works... new teams has worked better for the scenario I mention than "teams classic" in that account switching is better, but I don't see anything in the article that isn't already supported?
My current gripe with Teams is external users - Why do they have to "switch account" to access a team on my tenant instead of it being seamlessly integrated as an extra tab? And don't get me started on how bloody useless chat is if you have a guest account on a clients tenant... They will NEVER message the "external" account that you are actually signed in to.
This is the best they have to offer, with all that AI floating around? Tabbed browsing?
What, you too don't think the biggest issue with the piece of crap is the ability to switch between accounts?
Too little too late
The only people still using Teams are those in big corporates and government bureaucracies that only have one account anyway
Re: Too little too late
That's odd. I wonder why every single video job interview I've done no matter what the size of company has mostly been teams and nearly all jobs I've worked at have used teams where a good few of them I've had to web and app teams because it's two different companies I'm working for.
Re: Too little too late
I have to switch between accounts for work as well. But I'd never use Teams for personal use as it's really the worst messenger / chat client I've come across.
Re: Too little too late
You don't need a Teams client or account to join a call, you can use the meeting ID from the e-mail and web Teams, so that's job interviews at big soul destroying corporates sorted.
who knows why?
How did the use case for teams being "One user, one account, one tennant" ever crawl off the requirements cutting room floor and into the application itself?
It's what lead to the totally stupid situation where every user on a machine had their own Teams install.... which, when you have shared PCs, gets to be a trifle annoying from both a management and a disk space perspective.
It was, I presume, also the reason for the eventual emergence of the "all users" installer which basically checked to see if the current user profile had Teams installed and then installed a copy automatically (handy for when local users aren't local admins - a fact that still seems to evade Microsoft to this day)
People here legitimately have two tennants they belong to - both of which use Teams etc. extensively. Incognito mode and separate browsers get used a lot becasue the cross tennant/one user many accounts aspect of Microsoft 365, is fundamentally, still broken.
[Teams] version capable of simultaneously logging in to multiple personae
What a wonderful way to support leakage of confidential information! Split tunnelling was bad enough, but this really takes the biscuit. I get the impression that M$ has for quite some time thought of itself as a glorified toy shop rather than a creator of robust business tools. And these are the guys who presume to remotely manage our "security".
Enterprise grade security to protect your data :o
“ [1]Enterprise grade security to protect your data ”. How have we've ever managed without online meetings. How would Teams deal with an Aspie manager who only communicated by email, even when he was sitting next to you.
[2]Office Space TPS Reports
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH2seLS5Wb0&t=70s
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3rjQGc6lA
Re: Enterprise grade security to protect your data :o
Don't worry, it's just that he doesn't trust you one inch and is covering his arse with a paper trail.
"with separate icons on the taskbar"
So still really still two Teams instances then.