Despite claimed feature parity with Classic Teams, upgrading to the new Microsoft Teams might cost you some of your favorite features

Sean Endicott
·3 min read
Microsoft Teams on Windows.
Microsoft Teams on Windows.

What you need to know

  • Microsoft is currently transitioning from Classic Teams to a new version of Microsoft Teams.

  • The new Microsoft Teams promises better performance while using less memory and has several new features.

  • There are, however, some features from Classic Teams that are unavailable in the new Teams.

Microsoft will end support for the classic version of Microsoft Teams on July 1, 2024. The tech giant will move away from Classic Teams in favor of the new Teams app. The move to the new version of Teams should result in better performance, all while using less memory on your system. There are, however, some features that will be removed when you upgrade from Classic Teams to the new Teams app.

You'll see quite a few changes when upgrading from Classic Teams to the new version of Teams. Some of those changes are from entirely new features, but others represent changes to preexisting functionality. Microsoft breaks down all of the changes in a support document, which includes the chart below:

Many of the changes are improvements or refinements of the Classic Teams experience, but there areas in which the new version of Teams is worse than Classic Teams. Specifically, there are some features that are completely removed when upgrading from Classic Teams to the new Teams.

The following features were avaialble in Classic Teams but are not available in the new version of Teams:

  • Post level notifications within a channel

  • [Some] Search box commands

  • Adding a Wiki to a channel tab

  • Activity tab in chat

  • Ability to choose EDU themed team avatar from a list in the Edit team view In Microsoft Teams for Education

  • Ability to sign out from the notification area at the far right of the taskbar (system tray).

  • Adaptive Card-based tabs in personal app tabs.

  • Third-party and custom sign-in solutions using RunAs or undocumented hooks.

Some options that have been removed have been replaced with arguably better options. For example, you can no longer add a third-party cloud storage service to the OneDrive app in Teams. Instead, you can install a third-party storage app directly from the Teams apps store.

Is new always better?

New Microsoft Teams
New Microsoft Teams

The new version of Microsoft Teams is better in several areas, such as performance and memory usage, but it's not universally better than Classic Teams. Some features and experiences have changed so much that they might as well be classified as new capabilities. Other features have been removed entirely. For those unaffected by removals, the new Teams is only a positive. But for those who rely on features from Classic Teams, the "upgrade" may not be viewed as an upgrade at all.

"I just tried switching to the new one again - assuming it had finally reached feature parity with the old one. WRONG - it STILL doesn't have contact groups. In fact it doesn't have a contacts list AT ALL," said DaveDansey in the comments section of a recent post of ours about Teams.

"I never use the "Chat" view in the old one. It's a jumbled mess of a list of chats sorted by "most recent". It's plain horrible."

Microsoft replaced accessing contacts from the Chat section of Teams with the new People app. The new experience has some of the same functionality but isn't a 1:1 replacement.

Have you used the new Teams app? Do you view it as an upgrade to Classic Teams? If it is better, do you think it has improved across the board or is it a mixed bag? Let us know in the comments below.