The latest Microsoft Teams update will help you waste less time at work

What you need to know

• Microsoft has steadily improved the speed of Teams in several key areas over the last couple of years.
• A recent framework upgrade improved things further, allowing people to navigate between chats, channels, and threads more quickly.
• Switching between channels, chats, and threads is one of the most frequent actions performed within Teams.

Microsoft Teams is now faster when switching between chats, channels, and activity feeds. Microsoft Principal Group Program Manager for Microsoft Teams Jeff Chen explained recently that Teams is now 32% faster when switching between chats and 39% faster when moving between channels (via BleepingComputer).

Those figures are in comparison to baseline tests performed in June 2020. Microsoft steadily improved Teams performance since then but delivered a significant bump this month.

“The most common action for a user in Teams is to switch between different chats, channels, and activity feeds,” said Chen. “Over the past two years, switching between chat threads is now 32% faster, switching between channels is 39% faster. This leads to a more fluid experience that will keep you in the flow.”

The most recent jump in performance was thanks to a framework upgrade that rolled out in November 2022. That change increased the time for switching between chats by an additional 12% and channel thread navigation by an additional 11%. Note that those percentage values are in reference to the original baseline tests from 2020.

“We are excited to share that the framework upgrade improved the join time by 21%, and responsiveness during meetings has improved. For example, the latency of raising your hand has improved by 16%.”

For those that use Teams regularly, any delay in switching between parts of the app adds up. During an eight-hour workday, a person could easily perform these actions hundreds of times. By increasing the speed of navigation between parts of Teams, workers could potentially save quite a bit of time each week.