New Microsoft Teams for Education now available for Windows

Microsoft has released a new Microsoft Teams for Education, and the platform is now available for Windows and Mac, according to their announcement.

This is all part of the newer Microsoft Teams, or Teams 2.0, release plan, announced by the Redmond-based tech giant earlier this year. However, back then, Microsoft gave the option to customers to switch between the classic Teams and new Teams. Now, the new Teams is the default desktop client for Windows and Mac.

The new Microsoft Teams for Education is based on Teams 2.0, but Microsoft says this version is more suitable for education environments.

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

Microsoft

However, the new Microsoft Teams for Education is only available for Windows and Mac, and its web version will only be available for Edge and Chrome, at first. But, Microsoft will bring additional browser platform availability in early 2024.

The new Microsoft for Education: everything you need to know about it

1. Educators and teachers will be able to easily get started with the new Teams. Microsoft has prepared a guide for them to easily transition between the old version and the new version.
2. The transition to the new Teams will not affect any of the activity currently happening in the old Teams for Education. According to Microsoft, users will be able to pick up where they left off after they’ve upgraded to new Teams.
3. Starting January 2024, Microsoft will be setting “New Teams as default” for all Education users.
   • In early January, 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.
   • Starting June 2024, all new features and enhancements 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 at this time.

What are your thoughts on the new Teams for Education?