Microsoft's upcoming Teams Premium offering will now launch in "early February 2023," according to the company. More worryingly, it's also confirmed that some of the features previously available on the standard Teams tier will be moving into the new tier.
Teams Premium was first announced back in October of 2022 and has been available as part of a preview since the middle of December. It's designed to be a new subscription that sits atop the Microsoft 365 subscription, meaning it will cost more money.
Microsoft expects that to be around $10 per user per month, but the actual price hasn't been confirmed as noted by The Register. Whatever it does wind up costing it looks like it's going to be needed by anyone who already relies on a handful of Teams features that are going to make the jump to Teams Premium.
"Some Teams features will move from Teams licenses to Teams Premium licenses," Microsoft says. Those features include:
- Live translated captions;
- Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user left or joined meetings;
- Custom organization Together mode scenes;
- Virtual Appointments – SMS notifications;
- Virtual Appointments – Organizational analytics in the Teams admin center;
- Virtual Appointments – Scheduled queue view.
On the positive side, it appears that Microsoft does intend to keep these features free as part of the existing Teams for 30 days after the Premium subscription makes its debut. But users will have to hand over that $10 per user per month if they want to continue making use of them. Now might be a good time to figure out just how much you need those live-translated captions.
Microsoft's announcement of Teams Premium didn't mention the feature change, with Nicole Herskowitz, vice president of Microsoft Teams, saying that "built on the familiar, all-in-one collaboration experience of Microsoft Teams, this new offering makes every meeting from one-on-ones to large meetings, to virtual appointments to webinars more personalized, intelligent, and secure."