Published: Aug 25, 2023
Key takeaways:
- Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to initiate a self-service Teams Premium trial with their Entra ID credentials.
- Microsoft Teams Premium, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, offers intelligent meeting recaps, real-time translations in 40 languages, and advanced security protections.
- The Microsoft Teams Premium self-service trial licenses will only be available for commercial customers.
Microsoft has announced the imminent launch of the self-service Teams Premium trial for commercial customers. Scheduled for a global rollout in September, the self-service trial feature will give users a hands-on experience with the AI-powered Microsoft Teams Premium capabilities.
Microsoft launched the new Teams Premium add-on for commercial customers back in October 2022. The new offering is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 AI language model, and it includes more personalized and intelligent meeting experiences. The premium tier offers an intelligent recap feature that automatically generates notes, tasks, and highlights of meetings.
Additionally, Microsoft Teams Premium provides AI-powered real-time translations from 40 spoken languages. Other meeting capabilities include custom meeting templates, branded meetings, as well as organization backgrounds and together mode scenes. Moreover, the Microsoft Teams Premium tier supports new webinar features such as virtual green rooms, registration waitlists, and customizable start and end times.
Microsoft Teams Premium also brings advanced meeting protections for businesses. These include end-to-end encryption for meetings, watermarks, and support for custom user policy packages. It’s also possible to restrict users from recording meetings and copying text from the meeting chat.
Once rolled out, Microsoft Teams users will be able to start a 60-day Premium trial license with their Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) credentials. IT admins will be able to view/manage these self-service trial licenses like other subscriptions in the Microsoft 365 admin center. They will be able to view details like the product name, expiration date, and assigned users for each Microsoft Teams Premium trial subscription.
Microsoft says that administrators will also have complete control over whether these trials are converted into paid subscriptions. “If a user would like to convert to a paid license, they must work with you directly to do so as there is no auto-renew functionality for these trials. If a user isn’t upgraded to a paid subscription, all services included in their Microsoft Teams Premium will end, and the user may lose read only access to data generated by Teams Premium, stored in Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint,” Microsoft explained.
Microsoft expects to roll out the new trial capabilities to commercial customers in late September. However, this capability won’t be available for government customers. It will be up to the IT admins to use the self-service purchase controls in order to disable trials in their tenants.
Microsoft notes that this is a new premium trial experience that can be enabled/disabled separately from previous trial offerings. You can find more details about Microsoft Teams Premium in our separate post.