Having had the privilege of using the new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams for several months, I am excited to share my insights and reflections. This update has changed the way I communicate and use Teams, and it’s poised to make a significant impact on how we all work together. Everyone will be upgraded to the new experience, but choosing to keep chats and channels together is optional. Users can easily switch to keep them separate, while enjoying the benefits of new features like upgraded filters, sections, @mentions, and more!
Microsoft published information about the upcoming feature early before the release, so organizations and people can get ready to prepare for the change. This new experience is now rolling to the public preview and targeted release!
In this article, I will delve into some of the features and functionalities of this new experience, explaining what makes it a game-changer for me. From enhanced organization to an improved user interface, there are numerous reasons why this is a good leap forward for Teams. Read on as I explore the nuances of this update and highlight why it stands out as an enhancement in our digital workspace.
The Evolution of Teams A Unified and Customizable Experience Flexibility and features Key features overview Filters on top How about separate views for chats and channels? My Teams View Conclusion and useful tips Learn more from Microsoft sources
Over the past year, the Teams platform has evolved significantly to meet the demand for faster, simpler, and smarter solutions in the AI-powered workplace. Microsoft has implemented several improvements, such as the New Teams (twice as fast as the old client) and adding new features to both Teams Core and Teams Premium, including voice isolation, intelligent recap, custom emojis, Loop-components to chats and channels, co-editable code blocks, and many many others. The latest significant upcoming addition is the New Chat and Channels Experience, which is designed to simplify and streamline collaboration within Teams, the digital hub for work.
One of the most striking features of the new chat and channels experience is its ability to bring all your conversations—whether in chats, teams, or channels—into one unified view. This integration is a game-changer (to me, but experience varies), allowing me to stay on top of all my communications without having to switch contexts between chats-teams-channels constantly. The new interface also offers customization options that should have been there years ago: options that enable you to tailor your Teams to suit your preferences such as grouping chats & channels to sections you name and define. The redesigned chat and channels experience also adds other tools than just custom sections, it adds persistent filters, GoTo, and a new @mentions view. These features help me to stay up to date about what’s new and what’s important in Teams.
Starting with the new experience is straightforward, thanks to a self-service, guided onboarding flow that helps you discover and configure the new features according to your preferences. Whether you prefer to keep chats and channels combined or separate, the new interface allows you to make these adjustments easily, by yourselves.
Are you a heavy mobile user? The new chat and channels experience is designed to work seamlessly on desktop, web, iOS, and Android, ensuring that you can access and manage your communications efficiently, no matter how you use Teams. Settings like combined or separate view, or message previews, can be different on your mobile and desktop app. In this way, you can customize each how you like it, even with different settings. For example, I use the persistent , global, Unread filter in Teams mobile app, but in the desktop app I use Unread filtering in sections.
What’s in the new experience:
Unified view for chats, teams, and channels
Favorites section for prioritizing important conversations
Customization options for grouping chats and channels into sections
Persistent filters
@mentions view
Settings to control the experience
When you get the new experience, you are greeted by Teams with a dialogue telling about the new experience. You can skip this one by selecting Do it later, or just Get Started with the new exp.
If you choose to Get Started, then you will notice that you don’t have Chats and Teams on the App bar anymore. Just Chats. Under it, you have a combined view of chats, teams, and channels together. You can also find @Mentions (the new view showing all messages you have been at mentioned), Discover (the recent channel messages pick, this is not a new one – it has been there in the Teams for some time) and of course the Copilot.
From the top of this screen, you can go to Customize view. It takes you to Settings / Chats and channels. In there you can choose if you want to keep chats and channels combined (ie: all these are under the Chat) or separate (separate left rail apps for Chats and Teams, just like before). You can also tune the experience by showing (or not) message previews (I have this one off, to save space) and message time stamps (I have also this one off). You also have the old settings we had before in this tab: Hide inactive channels (I have it on), message density (comfy for me) and Suggested replied (on for me). You can also change settings in mobile Teams.
Now the best part: customizing sections. It is possible to create up to 50 sections.
It is possible to add, edit and remove sections and move chats and channels to any section you like. It is not just favorites anymore (it will be on top) but you can use any grouping that makes sense to you. For example, projects, customers, teams, company channels, etc. Basically: you organize your chats and channels to topics/context and projects.
You can also collapse sections, so you see only the name of the section and you need to click it open if you want to drill onto it. When there are new messages in the section’s channels or chats the section name will be bolded.
How about sorting sections? Just drag and drop!
Each section has its own … menu, and you can define from it how you want the section sorting to behave.
Custom means that you can drag and drop chats & channels in the section to any order you prefer. Most recent shows chats and channels with recent activities on the top (ie: the order is changing). What I use: Unread only. This automatically hides all chats and channels that don’t have new messages and those with unread messages are shown in the most recent order. And if I want to see the rest of the conversations, I just click See read.
There are also filters on the top of the view.
In there you can quickly choose to show only Unread chats & channels. It hides all sections that don’t have any unread conversations. This is the most compact view, and I use this one on Mobile Teams. On desktop I prefer to have all sections visible, so I can see its contents quickly (with one click).
Other options are to show only Chats (hiding channels) or Channels (hiding chats). It is possible to select to show just meetings and muted conversations.
@ Mentions view is also a great one. It shows all messages where you have been @mentioned, and when you click the message open it opens on the side pane.
And there is also the magnifying glass icon on top of the view, next to the new message icon. With the search, it is quick to find sections that contain chats and channels matching what I am searching for, and when I press See read, I see those chats and channels that match the search. As most of my work happens in custom sections, I rarely need to use this search filter.
What also helps with navigation is the new Goto shortcut Ctrl+G (Cmd+G). This opens the top box for searching, making it easy to discover and jump to any channel or chat you are looking for.
When using the separate Chat and Teams views, you can still use filters and the @mentions view to triage and organize you list with custom sections, as well as the new message and go to commands navigate quickly across conversations in chats or channels
You can opt in to show only Channels or you can go with the “old way” Teams and Channels.
I have the following settings: combined view and showing unread messages selected for each section. My key sections are favorites (this and that that I want to access easily), Copilot and AI (a lot of work and ideation happens here), Copilot Customers, MVP (Microsoft MVP related chats and channels both internal and shared channels) and Metaverse and Mesh is one of custom sections as well. Everything else is under Chat and Channel sections.
As most of activities happen in Copilot and AI, I have placed these sections to the top. However, despite Metaverse and Mesh being at the bottom of this snip, they stand out whenever there is any activity in channels and chats because I tend to have this “Teamsbox zero” situation with the new experience. If there are messages I need to process later, I have two options: mark as unread (for a short period of time) or add message & task to To Do. I use To Do quite often, but occasionally marking unread is fast and does the job. I have grown a habit I don’t like to see unread messages in my Teams. I know it is not possible for everyone, but I also decided to do a lot of prioritizations, and adding messages as tasks. What I wish Teams had: snoozing a message & notification, just like in Outlook I can snooze an email. Yes, I can do a Flow that notifies me about that message, but it is not the same. Perhaps, one day, we get the snooze action. Fingers crossed!
The new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams is a significant step forward in enhancing my digital workspace. With its unified interface, customizable options, and other tools, it is set to take the next step on the way we collaborate and communicate.
I have been using this new experience since that private preview came available, and I have noticed that I prefer the new “smooth” streamlined version of Teams. I have my filters set to show only Unread messages and created sections that work the needs I have currently. This changed the way I use Teams, and combining chats & channels was quite a natural step – work is done on both, and people use chats & group chats a lot. It was just a logical decision to combine the view. Teams are there, so I can choose to go to the team view and work on it like before when I need to.
I used to miss an easy way to get to the team from the combined chats and channels view, but I just found out that there is an easy way to do it!
💡Tip: If you hover mouse cursor over the channel avatar (channel picture), it opens the channel card which has a link to the team. Note: if you hover over the channel name, the channel card doesn’t appear.
Link takes you to the team’s Channels-tab
What I also noticed and learned when using the new combined chats and channel’s view: it is important to use a good team picture. Team picture is used as channel avatar. For me, visuals help to associate the channel with a team, so I know already from the avatar to which team (or to which product, customer or project) the channel belongs to. For example, using the customer logo as a team picture helps to identify which customer team the CAS (Copilot Adoption Service) or General channel belongs to. 💡Tip: use the possibility to change General channel’s name to something more descriptive, as it helps to associate the context with the channel more quickly, especially when using this new combined view experience. Nothing is more confusing than a list of 10-20 General-channels, that don’t have team pictures set.. Channel naming and team pictures are now in a higher priority, than before! Not that they were not very important before, but now it is a good idea to make sure channel stands out from others with he same context. For example, with Project Management channel, it might be a good idea to include project name (or a short version of that) in the beginning of the channel name. Describe the channel name so, that it can be used without the team context. If you have a standing out team picture in use, then having just the name Project Management can work out well.
This new view and use experience is a big change for a lot of people. The old Teams is changing to something different, yet in the core it is the same Teams. Plan how you communicate and train employees about this new view. It is a powerful one, but not everyone wants to use their time and capacity to learn it from day one.
Remember: your teams didn’t disappear anywhere – the focus is just on chats and channels, flattening the structure. You can navigate to teams and manage them just like before. Nothing in the base structure has changed: these are teams and teams have owners, members and different types of channels: standard, shared and private.
Stay tuned – I will be writing more about this new experience!
