Account Switching for Microsoft Teams – what is it?

Teams is Microsoft’s group productivity tool that provides a workspace for teams to collaborate and communicate. It is underpinned by the Microsoft 365 suite and provides file storage, meeting tools, chat, voice and video and can connect to a huge variety of Microsoft and third party apps to provide a rich working environment.

For employees of a single company, the Teams desktop application works great – they just log in and get working. However for those of us who provide consulting services and project management to a variety of clients, a major limitation of Teams has been the requirement to constantly log out of one account and log in to another account to have access to the full Teams experience for each client.

Why account switching in Teams matters

While we all recognise the benefits of Teams, if you work across multiple accounts, the inability to quickly switch between accounts has been a real time suck and a drain on productivity – the very thing that Teams is supposed to support!

From the very beginning when Teams was launched back in 2017, users have been requesting a quick way to switch accounts – so clearly this is a common problem.

It seems Microsoft has been listening to its Teams users and they now have account switching on the product roadmap for Teams.

When is Teams account switching likely to happen?

According to Microsoft Teams product roadmap, release is slated for December 2020.

However, there is no guarantee that this will appear before the end of the year. It is not unusual for roadmap items to be delayed for a variety of reasons. With Microsoft, you get it when you get it – so don’t hold your breath.

It is also not clear exactly how this will be implemented.

According to the Teams roadmap description, “Teams users will be able to add additional accounts, change their profile picture, and switch between accounts and orgs through Settings”. It remains to be seen how slick the interface is and how quickly the switch between organisations takes place.

It also makes no mention of being able to have two (or more) instances of desktop Teams open and logged into different tenancies. If it supports this scenario, that would be ideal for many.

It’s good to see that Microsoft is listening to its users and we’ll see when this welcome addition to Teams arrives.

Need Help with Teams?

Teams is a great productivity and collaboration tool – if used properly. It has been a lifesaver for many organisations during recent lockdowns with so many working from home.

However, implementation and user adoption doesn’t always run as smoothly as we would all like. Getting the best out of Microsoft Teams requires careful planning, good governance and some user education.

If you need help getting Teams set up for success (or if you need to recover an unsuccessful implementation!) get in touch and we can set up a Teams meet to see if we can help!

We are based in the UK, but we and our partners work with clients across the globe – one of the great advantages of Teams. If you want to talk to an expert about how to get the most out of Microsoft Teams for your business, email us and we’ll get right back to you.

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