Microsoft Teams 2.0 is coming next month: What to expect
What's the story
A new version of Microsoft Teams is on the cards. The company plans to launch a preview of the revamped Teams to users in March, reported The Verge.
The new Microsoft Teams will have significant performance improvements. Internally, it is dubbed Microsoft Teams 2.0 or 2.1.
Microsoft recently announced Teams Premium with features powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5.
Context
Why does this story matter?
Microsoft Teams is one of the fastest-growing apps in the Microsoft ecosystem. However, its increasing popularity has not changed its reputation for being a curse of old laptops or PCs.
By rolling out an entirely new client, Microsoft is burdening itself with the massive task of making the process smooth.
An optimized client will further aid in enhancing its popularity.
New Teams
The new version is expected to improve Teams' system usage
Microsoft has reportedly rebuilt the new version of Teams from scratch. According to The Verge, the company's focus was on changing Teams' reputation as a resource hog.
Therefore, the new Teams app should use 50% less memory, affect the CPU's performance less, and result in better battery life on laptops.
The rebuild is expected to improve the app's system resource usage.
Switch
Teams is moving from the Electron framework
The company has apparently been working on the new version of Teams for years. Some of these changes were shipped as part of the integrated Teams experience for consumers on Windows 11.
The Teams 2.0/2.1 coming next month has ditched the Electron framework and moved to the Edge-based Webview 2 technology and React, a javascript library.
This will lead to more UI improvements.
Toggle
Users will be able to toggle between versions
The new Microsoft Teams client should offer users a better experience without draining the resources of their PCs or laptops. However, those who like the current Teams client despite its shortcomings should not worry.
According to The Verge, the preview app will include a toggle to switch option between Teams 2.0/2.1 and the existing app.
AI
Microsoft announced Teams Premium with AI-powered features earlier this month
Microsoft is also working on a premium version of Teams. The company announced some of the AI-powered features of Teams Premium earlier this month.
The premium version has 'Intelligent recap' that uses GPT 3.5 to automatically generate meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights, even if someone misses the meeting.
It also has AI-generated live translations for 40 spoken languages, among other features.