Microsoft Teams mimics some of Slack’s best features

Microsoft has announced significant changes in Teams that seem to be inspired by its rival Slack, the communication platform for professionals. One of the highlights is the future introduction of threaded conversations, a highly anticipated feature that will allow messages to be organized more clearly and enable direct responses to specific topics within threads.

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Although this functionality will not arrive until mid-2025, Microsoft has another major change prepared that will soon affect the way of viewing chats and channels on the platform. In November of this year, the company will launch a new unified user interface that brings together both chats and channels in a single view, available in a public preview.

As explained in a blog post by Jeff Teper, President of Collaboration Apps and Platforms at Microsoft, this new user experience “will simplify the digital workspace by bringing together chats, teams, and channels in one place under Chat.” This will allow users to manage their workflows more easily by having quick access to their most important conversations in a more organized manner.

The upcoming update aims to resolve one of the traditional inconveniences of Teams: the separation of chats and channels, which forced users to switch sections to keep up with different conversations. With the new interface, users will be able to choose to keep them separate or integrate them into a combined view. Additionally, Microsoft will add a favorites section where the most relevant chats and channels can be pinned, as well as new controls to customize the experience, such as the option to view message previews and order channels in a single list.

Another notable update is the new view of @mentions, which will specially highlight direct messages or channels where the user has been mentioned. This major update to Microsoft Teams will arrive on both mobile and desktop applications next month, and testing of threads in conversations will begin this quarter, extending until early 2025.

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