What you need to know
- Group messaging Kaizala platform will officially be retired on August 31, 2023.
- Starting August 26, Microsoft will not allow any new users to be onboarded to Kaizala. Existing users will continue to be supported until August 31, 2023.
- Kaizala users should begin migrating to Microsoft Teams on or before August 31, 2023. After that time, all users will be moved to Teams.
- Other Microsoft messaging platforms, including Skype and GroupMe, will continue to be supported at this time.
Microsoft is officially bidding farewell to its Kaizala group messaging platform, with the service slated for retirement on August 31, 2023. Kaizala holdouts will have to migrate to Teams for their messaging needs, according to the company product lifecycle webpage.
Though Kaizala never gained much momentum in the United States, it was launched in the summer of 2017 in India as part of Microsoft’s experimental Garage division. The release of Kaiazla was promoted to help large organizations in the country stay connected and collaborate with colleagues.
In addition to overlapping with key features from its Teams release, Kaizala offered users features like surveys, task tracking, meeting invitations, location sharing, and polls. The service became part of Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription.
Since the launch of Teams, Microsoft had begun expressing interest in rolling Kaizala’s features into its larger collaboration app, but those efforts were delayed leading to both messaging platforms coexisting together. This created customer confusion, and ZDNet editor Mary Jo Foley reported that the company had heard this feedback. As a result, Microsoft will officially retire Kaizala on August 31, 2023.
Since the global COVID-19 pandemic began, most office workers were forced into remote working environments, leading to collaboration tools like Teams and rival Slack gaining momentum. Integrating Kaizala features into Teams will give Microsoft a better competitive advantage against newer upstart services.
In addition to giving an end-of-life date for the Kaizala platform, interested users will no longer be able to join the service or be onboarded by their IT administrators starting today, August 26. Instead, anyone interested in Kaizala will have to join Teams.
In addition to Teams and Kaizala, Microsoft operates other messaging, chat, and collaboration tools, including Skype and GroupMe. The company will continue to officially support these platforms for now.
