Microsoft recommends upgrading to its new 'lightning fast' Teams app — If you want actual support, new features, and important security updates

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Microsoft will cut support for its classic Teams client in two months.

Microsoft Teams on Windows 11

The new notification design.

 (Image credit: Microsoft)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft has announced that it will cut support for its classic Teams client on July 1, 2024, and recommends transitioning to the new Teams app.
  • Users running the classic Teams client on unsupported operating systems won't access it after October 23, 2024.
  • The Teams classic client will be blocked on supported operating systems on July 1, 2025.

It's official now! Microsoft will end support for its classic Teams client on July 1, 2024, in favor of its new Teams app, which boasts better performance speeds and consumes 50% less memory.

Microsoft was initially slated to automatically upgrade Teams classic users to the new Teams app after March 31, 2024. However, it extended the client's lifeline, giving users ample time to transition to the new Teams app. With the classic client set to hit its end-of-support in the next two months, Teams classic users are encouraged to transition soon.

After July 1, Microsoft won't ship any updates, security patches, or new features to the classic Teams client. This decision doesn't mean that users who fail to make the transition won't be able to use or access the platform. You'll still have access to the platform, but it'll now feature a notification indicating the classic client is no longer supported.

Microsoft has indicated that users running the classic Teams client on unsupported operating systems, including Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and MacOS Sierra 10.12, will receive notifications from August indicating that the app won't work after October 23, 2024. However, according to a spot by Neowin, users will still be able to access the web version.

Teams classic client is expected to continue running on supported Windows and MacOS operating systems until July 1, 2025.

A bright but different future for Teams ahead?

Microsoft Teams web client on Edge

(Image credit: Future)

Microsoft surpassed 320 million active monthly users on Teams in September 2023, and the platform continues to grow and evolve. However, its future remains uncertain, especially after the EU antitrust watchdog forced Microsoft to unbundle Teams from its Office 365 services over anti-competitive practices. This decision was despite the company separating its services in the European Economic Area and Switzerland last year.

While commenting on Microsoft unbundling Teams from Office 365, Steve Weber, professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information:

"Until the regulators have their foot on their neck, they're going to hold on to that business strategy for as long as they possibly can. Kicking the can down the road, then they can keep doing this again and again and again. And that's why I feel people like me are trying to stand up and say we need to find better ways to stop this sooner rather; than like trying to close the barn door three days after the horses run away."

Microsoft will now provide Teams as a standalone service for new customers for $5.25, whereas the Office package without Teams will range between $7.75 and $54.75. Strangely, while the reorganization of Microsoft's Office 365 service happened, a new report emerged indicating the company was moving some of its staffers from the Teams Chat app to help with Copilot AI projects.

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Kevin Okemwa
Kevin Okemwa
Contributor

Kevin Okemwa is a seasoned tech journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya with lots of experience covering the latest trends and developments in the industry at Windows Central. With a passion for innovation and a keen eye for detail, he has written for leading publications such as OnMSFT, MakeUseOf, and Windows Report, providing insightful analysis and breaking news on everything revolving around the Microsoft ecosystem. You'll also catch him occasionally contributing at iMore about Apple and AI. While AFK and not busy following the ever-emerging trends in tech, you can find him exploring the world or listening to music.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • GraniteStateColin
    New Teams is near universally better now than old Teams (for a long time, it was missing functions, but I think it's at feature parity, but lighter and faster). Are there any reasons not to upgrade?

    On the other point, is Steve Weber saying that regulators should put their boot on Microsoft's neck? If so, Weber has a fundamental misunderstanding of the adverse effects of regulation. Regulations ALWAYS add costs in the aggregate. Those costs may be small and may be worthwhile if they are stopping some truly horrible behavior (e.g., regulations preventing dumping toxic waste in the river), but they ALWAYS add cost. Just like no system can produce more energy than it consumes in the aggregate -- entropy of any closed system must always increase, the same applies with regulations. If you add a regulatory burden to any company, compliance and enforcement add cost. Period. No company is ever inefficient in a way that will be improved by a legal mandate.

    So the question is: Is including Teams with Office so destructive to the market that it justifies the damage and added costs caused by creating new regulations? It's hard to imagine the answer to that being 'yes.' The only parties harmed by the inclusion of Teams are MS competitors and it's not the responsibility of government to protect one business from competition from another.

    Or to put it more simply, the EU is acting like an agent of Slack, helping them while hurting MS and MS customers (because the added costs will be borne by all MS customers in some fashion). They are not looking out for the interests of the customers and marketplace as a whole.
    Reply
  • Happy
    So did they finally add a list of contacts/favourites which also displays presence/status? The lack of this kept me switching back to the classic version so far, but I haven't checked in a few weeks now.
    Reply
  • DaveDansey
    I just tried switching to the new one again - assuming it had finally reached feature parity with the old one.

    WRONG - it STILL doesn't have contact groups. In fact it doesn't have a contacts list AT ALL.

    I never use the "Chat" view in the old one. It's a jumbled mess of a list of chats sorted by "most recent". It's plain horrible.

    99% of the time I have it on the Contacts list, which shows 4 neat groups of contacts, exactly where I want them. It's really annoying it defaults to the horrendous chats list every time it starts - no excuse for not making it persist the last view that was used when closing down. However annoying though, it's tolerable.

    Not having the ability to have a grouped contacts list, for me, makes it UNUSABLE.
    Reply
  • DaveDansey
    I've sent polite feedback at least 3 times on the above. Still nothing.

    I've been a UI \ UX developer pretty much my whole life. I'm not amazing. Maybe a bit better than average. I'm sure Microsoft have a ton of far more skilled developers than me. How they can fail so appallingly at basic user experience is beyond me.

    When I was in 6th form at school (many years ago!) I wrote a "chat" application called "Communicon". This was before MSN messenger and yahoo existed. Mine had a decent contacts list (it made me popular at school as everyone wanted access!) - I was only 17 with no professional experience at all. How can Microsoft be so sub-par at this? Am I the only one who thinks the chat list is rubbish? Does everyone else just shrug and tolerate what they're given?

    I've just sent them this, to maybe catch someone's attention :) - I'm sure they'll ignore it too but made me feel better to have a rant.

    **********************************************************************************
    I just read support for classic teams will be coming to an end before long.

    I assumed you had therefore reached feature parity with the old one - but no.

    STILL NO GROUPED CONTACTS LIST

    Please fix this and put back the ability to show contacts in groups. It's the view I use 99% of the time.

    The jumbled mess of a list titled "Chat" is HORRIBLE; it's currently the only way to get to chats between multiple contacts though (I could design a much better UI for the same). I can live with that but please also make the last used view persist on close so I don't need to "fix" it every time the app starts.

    I REFUSE to use the new teams UI until this BASIC FEATURE has been implemented. If you remove access to the old one I will not be able to do my job. If I get fired then it will be YOUR FAULT!!!
    Reply
  • Happy
    DaveDansey said:
    STILL NO GROUPED CONTACTS LIST

    I just checked and it looks to almost be in place now. I say almost only because the UI for it IMO is much worse than in the classic version.

    The contact list is now called the People app which you can add and pin to the left-hand menu. Then you can add contacts and put them in various categories (I've used department names/numbers). Now I get clickable categories (for instance IT support) which will show me all contacts in that category, including status. It will not let me see the contacts (and their status) in multiple categories at the same time like in the classic version. For that I have to click All contacts, then make sure Categories is displayed (if it isn't, click the ... to configure) and sort the list by that column.

    Not a very good design compared to the classic version, but much better than when I last checked and contacts in the People app didn't even display online status.
    Reply
  • DaveDansey
    Happy said:
    The contact list is now called the People app which you can add and pin to the left-hand menu.

    Thank you - I will check it out. I just switched to it for 20s, saw the chat list without the option to switch to contacts and didn't look any deeper.

    It sounds a faff from what you describe above but certainly better than nothing.
    Reply
  • GraniteStateColin
    DaveDansey said:
    I just tried switching to the new one again - assuming it had finally reached feature parity with the old one.

    WRONG - it STILL doesn't have contact groups. In fact it doesn't have a contacts list AT ALL.

    I never use the "Chat" view in the old one. It's a jumbled mess of a list of chats sorted by "most recent". It's plain horrible.

    99% of the time I have it on the Contacts list, which shows 4 neat groups of contacts, exactly where I want them. It's really annoying it defaults to the horrendous chats list every time it starts - no excuse for not making it persist the last view that was used when closing down. However annoying though, it's tolerable.

    Not having the ability to have a grouped contacts list, for me, makes it UNUSABLE.

    Dave, while the Chat page is indeed just a messy list of all contacts, defaulting to the order last chatted, just Pin the ones you want and drag and drop to put in any order you want. You can also pin group chats. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see that anything is missing from this, other than the fact that you have to do set it up manually by pinning and dragging to organize (but that's once and done and carries across all PC's and mobile devices.

    Or, go to Calls -> Contacts to see the same Contact list from Classic Teams or ... -> People app and pin that to the left navigation.

    Bottom line: I don't think this is a reduction in capability from Classic Teams, just that it's a slightly different way of doing it, but same capabilities.
    Reply
  • DaveDansey
    Thanks for the suggestions - I've just had another look and disagree about the reduction in functionality.

    My classic teams contact list in chat looks like this:
    - separate groups of contacts (Developers \ Engineers etc).
    - all contacts shown at all times and a single click loads the chat on the right.


    In the new teams I have lost the ability to have contact groups. Yes I can pin certain chats, but I still only have two groups (pinned and recent). I've lost the ability to have my own groups of contacts which I like. Furthermore it's giving a preview of the last chat for each person which makes the list look cluttered compared to above.


    If I choose Calls > Contacts, it just takes me to the People app. Sure, I can pin that to the left but I don't see "the same Contact list from Classic Teams" - am I still missing something?


    The above view does show that my contacts are still in the groups I defined for them, but now all the contacts are shown in the main display area. I can't just click on someone's name on the left and see the chat on the right, like I do with the old teams.

    I fully appreciate not many people will care about this, however from my perspective the old UI presented me a clean and intuitive way of working. All contacts are shown at all times, where I want them, in groups. I can click between the contacts I regularly talk to, within the same view.

    I agree the closest is "pinning" contacts in the chat list. I've still lost the ability to show the clean layout I'm used to though. I don't see why they've removed the ability to add new groups and "pin" contacts within those groups. Previously I had 4 buckets that I defined, where I could place users - now I have 1 bucket with a fixed name of "Pinned". For me this is a backwards step and a reduction in the functionality I'm used to.
    Reply