Microsoft Teams will support Targeted Release for commercial cloud customers.

With this support, users opted-in to Targeted Release will be the first production users to see the latest Microsoft Teams features and help shape the product by providing early feedback.

Prior to this, Targeted Release provided early access to OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Office for the web, Microsoft 365 admin center and some components of Exchange Online.

What is Targeted Release?

Targeted release allows early access to high quality feature releases across Microsoft 365 apps and services, which customers can opt-in to prepare for the upcoming changes before they roll out to the rest of the organization.

Customers can choose to have a select set of individuals, or the entire organization receives updates early via Targeted Release.

Note:

• All the users in Targeted release will have access to the preview of new Teams as per the MC post MC533687. To learn more about Teams support for Targeted release and list of latest Teams features in Targeted release, please refer to this blogpost.
• We have decided not to proceed with the “EA”, to indicate Early Access, on the profile picture change and it is rolled back for the initial users who received it. Thank you for your patience.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 117577

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release (if applicable): Rollout is in progress and expected to complete by mid- June 2023.

[How this will affect your organization:]

If you already have users set up for Targeted Release on a test or production tenant, these users will start getting early access to new and updated Microsoft Teams features.

If you would like to set up Targeted release for specific users or your organization to receive early access to Microsoft Teams features, please follow the process to set up the release option in the admin center. PS: this will also provision the users to targeted release for other M365 products. If you desire to have users just in early access for Teams then please use Teams admin preview policy.

Note: Tenants with users currently in Teams Technology Adoption Program (TAP) will remain in TAP, and this change will not impact those users

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Review: Set up the Standard or Targeted release options.

Update your training and documentation as appropriate.

Please encourage your users to send feedback about new Teams features through Help > Give feedback and following the prompts. Their feedback will help shape the Microsoft Teams experience for rest of your organization.