New Microsoft Teams Client Now Generally Available for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

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Key Takeaways:

  • The new Microsoft Teams app is designed to be twice as fast and consume 50 percent less memory than its predecessor.
  • The new Teams provides a faster scrolling experience and seamless switching between chats, channels, and activities.
  • Microsoft plans to discontinue support for the classic Teams client in VDI on June 30, 2024.

Microsoft has announced that the new version of its Teams app is now generally available for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) customers. The new Teams client has been rebuilt from the ground up with a focus on improved performance, a simplified interface, and reduced memory footprint

Microsoft says that the new Teams is two times faster and it consumes 50 percent less memory than the classic Teams desktop application. Users should notice a faster scrolling experience and instant switching between chats, channels, as well as activities.

“The new Teams App in VDI has feature parity with classic Teams app and also has improved performance, reliability, and security. Additionally, we are grateful to our committed customers who gave us feedback during public preview, which helped us improve several VDI specific features and enhance the basics to guarantee smooth updates to the new Teams app,” Microsoft explained.

The new Microsoft Teams app comes with new AI-powered experiences and multi-tenant organization capabilities. Copilot in Teams will allow users to get AI-generated summaries, action items, and decisions based on their conversations. The Copilot AI assistant will also let participants catch up on missed Teams meetings.

New Microsoft Teams Client Now Generally Available for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Support for classic Teams for Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure to end in June 2024

Microsoft notes that IT admins can use Intune and other management tools for app deployment and updates. Microsoft Intune supports the MSIX packaging format, which enables the silent installation of new versions of the app with security updates and bug fixes. This helps reduce network bandwidth, memory consumption, and disk space usage. Moreover, the MSIX packaging format adds Windows security support to the new Microsoft Teams client.

Going forward, all new features and improvements will exclusively be available in the new Teams application. Microsoft plans to drop support for the classic Teams client in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) on June 30, 2024. The company recommends customers to switch to the new Teams experience in the coming months.