Teams will soon support chatting between business and personal accounts

Source: Dan Thorp-Lancaster / Windows Central

Microsoft is making it easier to communicate between business and personal Teams accounts. Starting this month, business users will be able to start chats with people’s personal accounts on Teams. This functionality has been in preview since November 2021 and should roll out to all users by mid-January 2022, according to ZDNet.

“With this update Teams users in your organization will be able to start a 1:1 or a group chat with Teams users who are using their personal accounts and vice-versa,” says Microsoft. The company shared details about the change through its message center.

After the new option becomes available, Teams users will be able to invite anyone with a Teams account to chat by using an email address or phone number. Importantly, when a business user invites someone with a personal account to chat, the communication will still follow the policies of their organization.

The setting will be enabled by default, but admins can disable it for tenants or individuals. People will be able to chat across business and personal Teams accounts on the web, mobile devices, and desktops.

Microsoft increased its efforts to get people to use Teams for personal communication with the launch of Windows 11. The new operating system has a Chat app that’s powered by Microsoft Teams. Based on our polling, few people use the Chat app on a regular basis.