One of the most highly anticipated Microsoft Teams features is almost here

Share your Teams channels with customers and partners

Microsoft is preparing a major update to Teams that will unlock a range of new collaboration capabilities for businesses.

According to a new entry in the Microsoft 365 product roadmap, the company is almost ready to release its new Teams Connect feature for shared channels for all customers, after launching a limited preview in March 2022.

The feature allows organizations to invite external users into a shared Microsoft Teams environment, opening the door for business collaboration with customers and partners.

Shared channels in Microsoft Teams

Although Microsoft Teams has enjoyed tremendous success since the pandemic began-now more than 270 million monthly active users-the platform has so far focused primarily on peer-to-peer interactions.

However, the arrival of shared channels from Teams Connect will also transform the service into a hub for business collaboration, with secure environments where multiple parties can hold video meetings and exchange messages, files and other data.

“Collaboration in the workplace has become increasingly digital and cloud-based. And in our interconnected world, we need to collaborate with people outside our own organization – communicating with partners, following up with suppliers and reaching out to customers,” Microsoft said when the feature was first announced.

“With shared channels, multiple organizations can collaborate in a shared space. Conduct conversations, schedule a meeting, share and cocreate files, and collaborate on apps without ever switching tenants.”

The drive to bring cross-business collaboration to Teams is part of a broader effort to make the platform a central hub for working, with everything an employee needs to carry out their goals.

As part of this push, Microsoft is also channeling energy and resources into building a strong ecosystem of third-party apps for the platform, minimizing the need for users to constantly switch between different services to complete tasks. Instead, everything can happen within Teams.

By bringing communications that would normally occur via email into Teams as well, Microsoft will further reduce the need to switch contexts in a way that could hinder productivity.

Although the new shared channels feature remains in preview for now, Microsoft says users can expect a full, public release by the end of July 2022.

Source: tech radar