Microsoft has embarked on redesigning its Teams app to be more than just a hub for teamwork to its consumers wishing to better manage their responsibilities across both work and life. With more than 75 million daily active users, Microsoft Teams has played an important role in these times of COVID-19 global pandemic that has seen organizations of all sizes across education, government, non-governmental, and business sectors switch to remote working.  Teams has given them a single tool to chat, call, meet, and collaborate to get the job done.
Microsoft has decided that Teams isn’t just for work. With the new features, Microsoft has extended the power of Teams beyond work scenarios to help busy parents and individuals to manage their daily family life and to stay connected with those who matter. The features have been designed to alleviate the need for disparate tools and instead offer one central hub for individuals, groups, and families to collaborate and stay connected and organized.
Just like you do with Teams at work, you can stay connected with friends and loved ones through messaging and video calling. Create groups to chat and call friends, workmates, family members, or whoever your group may be. You can also chat or call one-on-one. Microsoft wrote in their blog that the companyâs goal is to grow Teams as a messaging hub for all its customers’ personal needs whether it is voice, video calls, or chat with fun features such as sharing GIFs, photos, videos, documents, and even locations.
Teams has also been made easy to share grocery lists, book appointments, plan birthday parties, events, track team schedules, and more. It’s a hub to chat, coordinate, delegate tasks, and stay on top of all the work and personal life details.
âThe team is excited to take this next step with Teams and extend the value of Teams at work to your whole life. We want your input on this journey, so weâre releasing these features in mobile preview to get feedback on how you want to connect and organize across your life,â said Liat Ben-Zur, Microsoftâs Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search, and Devices.
âAs we roll out the preview over the coming weeks, we look forward to collecting your feedback to help us evolve and improve the experience over time. General availability of the new features, as well as expanding features to the desktop and web versions of Teams, is expected later this year,â she added.
You can get started with the new preview features in two ways:
- If you currently use the Teams mobile app at work, simply click into settings, and select Add an account. You can then sign in with your personal Microsoft account, or create a new one with your phone number. Through settings, you will then be able to toggle between your personal and work accounts.
- If you donât use Teams yet, visit the app store on your iOS or Android to download the mobile app and sign up with a personal Microsoft account, or create a new one with your phone number.
Once youâre signed up, start inviting friends and family and creating your groups. The mobile versions of Microsoft Teams for iOS and Android will soon be updated to allow users to log in with personal Microsoft accounts. The feature will enable them to switch within the work and home accounts and use the personal version alongside other Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Read Also: Microsoft Teams to accommodate offline and low bandwidth users in new changes
