Editor's note: This article was originally published on October 5, 2023, and updated on November 6, 2023, to reflect the schedule for the update from classic Teams to new Teams.
As we announced in this blog post, general availability of the new Microsoft Teams app was launched, which also includes our education customers. As part of our continued efforts to provide updates and upgrades to the Microsoft Teams experience, the Teams for Education app is being re-designed on a foundation of speed, performance, and flexibility, and has now launched as the next evolution of Microsoft Teams – new Microsoft Teams for Education.
To ensure Teams continues to meet the evolving requirements of educational institutions, here’s a quick look what users can expect from new Teams:
- Higher overall performance with enhancements in core areas such as reliability, security, and IT management
- Seamless collaboration across multiple organizations or accounts, ensuring no disruption to your workflow
- More reliable, improved security and better manageability – using trusted types, stringent CSPs, and integration with MSIX
As of today, new Teams for Education is now available for desktop on Windows, Mac, Edge and Chrome browsers. Additional browser platform availability will be announced in early 2024.
For additional resources, including update schedules, different methods on how to update to new Teams, and any known issues, please visit New Microsoft Teams for Education (EDU) - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn.
Education users can get started with new Teams today
New Teams also allows us to ship new capabilities to the market faster. Moving forward, new features and capabilities as well as enhancements to existing features will be available exclusively in new Teams.
Along with our latest innovations in speed, performance, flexibility, and intelligence in new Teams, almost all classic Teams features are already available as a part of the new Teams platform, and we encourage you to upgrade to new Teams today. To learn more about these features, please visit our new Teams Microsite, or by visiting The new Microsoft Teams desktop client - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn.
The new Teams upgrade is seamless for our Education users
Upgrading to new Teams is quick and easy – no migration is required! Users will be able to pick up where they left off after they’ve upgraded to new Teams. By introducing new Teams as an opt-in, this allows administrators to upgrade to new Teams on a timeline that works best for their specific institution.
It is important to note that school administrators will need to set the policy to upgrade to new Teams for their users. Instructions for this step are as follows:
1. Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center
2. Select Teams > Teams Update policies from the left navigation pane
3. Select Add to create a new policy or select an existing policy to open Update policy
4. Name the update policy, add a description, and select the setting for “Use the new Teams client”, as shown below.
5. Please select New Teams as default and apply this policy to users in your organization. Once the policy is set, users will be automatically switched to new Teams, quickly and seamlessly.
Note: There are different policy settings which you can use to upgrade to new Teams, based on the needs within your school. For detailed information about how to upgrade to new Teams via policy and for various other policy settings, please refer to this link: Upgrade to the new Teams client using policies - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
Important Timelines
From January 2024 onwards, Microsoft will be setting “New Teams as default” for all Education users.
Key dates include:
- Early January 2024 – For tenants and users still using classic Teams, Microsoft will set new Teams as the default Teams client. Administrators will still have the option to set classic Teams for their users via policy, should they choose to upgrade their users to new Teams on a different schedule.
- March 2024 – All new features and enhancements - and there are quite a few lined up - will be available exclusively as a part of new Teams. To ensure our users can take advantage of latest Teams innovation, all remaining classic Teams users will be automatically upgraded to new Teams after March 31st.
Note: We recommend you to upgrade to new Teams early in Jan 2024, as upgrading to new Teams is easy and seamless and it will also ensure that there will not be any disruption to your classes in the middle of the semester.
Microsoft will continue to share additional information and instructions as we approach these respective timelines.
As with all our products and services, we love to hear feedback from you, our customers. If you have any input, comments or suggestions regarding new Teams, please don’t hesitate to share with us.