What you need to know
- Microsoft Teams Premium is scheduled to become available in February 2023.
- The service offers several features to enhance the Teams experience, including AI tools, security enhancements, and the ability to customize meetings and webinars.
- Some features that have been available in the free version of Teams will move to Teams Premium.
Microsoft Teams Premium is a new service from Microsoft that will enhance the Teams experience with a range of features. Teams Premium will include options for personalizing meetings and webinars, using AI to organize communication, and protecting meetings with watermarks and other security features. The service is set to launch in early February 2023, though pricing is not confirmed at this time.
While the free version of Teams will continue to be available after Teams Premium rolls out, some features will move from the unpaid version to the version requiring a subscription (via The Register). There will be a 30-day grace period where these features remain available on the free version of Teams. Following that, tenants will have to have an appropriate license to continue to use the features.
In an FAQ page about Microsoft Teams Premium (opens in new tab), the company lists which current Teams features will move to Teams Premium:
- Live translated captions.
- Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user left or joined meetings.
- Custom organization Together mode scenes.
- Virtual Appointments: SMS notifications.
- Virtual Appointments: Organizational analytics in the Teams admin center.
- Virtual Appointments: Scheduled queue view.
Teams Premium has been in preview (opens in new tab) since December 2022, allowing organizations to test it out to evaluate if it’s worth a monthly fee. A dedicated webpage from Microsoft (opens in new tab) lists all of the features and illustrates how Teams Premium compares to the free version of Teams.
Windows Central take
While I doubt any of the features that are currently set to move to Teams Premium will be deal breakers for free Teams users, I hope Microsoft carefully considers which features it moves. I understand that the company wants to shift people from a free service to a paid service, but I hope the free version of Teams is not gutted.
It makes sense that virtual appointment SMS notifications, custom organization Together mode scenes, and some other features will require a paid subscription. I just hope that Microsoft expands Teams Premium by adding new features rather than migrating more things over from the free version of Teams.
At the moment, there’s no indication that Microsoft has plans to remove any more features from the free version of Teams. I hope it stays that way.
