Microsoft’s consumer Teams to lose some features to Teams Premium

To christen the launch of Microsoft’s Premium edition of Teams, the company is stuffing some previously licensed versions of features behind the new offering’s paywall.

In February, Microsoft plans to flip a switch and move over a handful of features that have been prominent through Teams licenses to its new Teams Premium license.

The news follows a month-long trial period of Teams Premium that offered users a taste of new features for the communications platform that included live translation of 40 different languages, custom meeting templates, end-to-end encryption, and more.

In a little less than a month, regular Teams users will need to figure out how to get back the following:

• Live translated captions
• Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user leaves or joins a meeting
• Custom organization Together Mode scenes
• Virtual appointments: SMS notifications
• Virtual appointments: organizational analytics in the Teams admin center
• Virtual appointments: scheduled queue view

Per Microsoft’s licensing guide for Teams, users of regular Teams will retain its Teams Premium leveraged features for 30 days following the transition, at which point, the features become a Premium edition exclusive.

For users who were highly dependent on the siphoned feature set, Microsoft suggest admins purchase the Premium add-on and assign Teams Premium licenses for that unfortunate group.

Admins can pick up a Microsoft Teams Premium license for roughly $10 per user starting in Feburary and gain access to content watermarking, labels during meetings, and user-based restrictions among other features.

via The Verge