New Microsoft Teams Experience: Chats and Channels are being consolidated into a single app

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Already available in targeted release, Microsoft Teams has been "streamlined" into putting chats, teams, and channels into a single app. Here’s what you need to know about the new features and how they can benefit you.

Previously, users had to navigate separate Chat and Teams views, which could be cumbersome and time-consuming. With the new update, all conversations whether they’re individual chats, group chats, or team channels are now unified in a single Chat view. This means you can easily switch between different types of conversations without losing context.


The application also has a couple of new features like: 
  • Custom Sections: Organize your projects and topics with custom sections that can include individual, group, and meeting chats, as well as channels.
  • New Filters: Focus on what’s important with filters for Unread, Chat, Channels, Meetings, and more.
  • @Mention View: Quickly access all your personal @mentions in one interactive list.
You can tailor the new chat and channels experience to suit your preferences. By default, the combined Chat view is enabled, but you can choose to keep chat, teams, and channels separate if that works better for you. Simply go to Teams Settings to make these adjustments (there are no admin controls for this). Additionally, you can turn on message previews in Settings if you prefer to see a snippet of each message in your list.

As mentioned, this is already available for users in the targeted release, but it looks like it might take some time for the feature to reach all tenants. The latest Message Center message is indicating GA in January. This is related to the following Roadmap Item.