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Organizations are looking to achieve more—and need tools that help them work faster, simpler, and smarter. Guided by customer feedback, Microsoft Teams continues to evolve. Earlier this year, we launched the new chat and channels experience: a unified, streamlined interface that brings simplicity by default, with powerful capabilities just a click away. 

We’re introducing the next wave of innovations in Teams, with features like threads, multiple emoji reactions, and emoji-triggered workflows. These updates help make collaboration more open and organized, bringing together people and, increasingly, AI agents. They also boost personal productivity by automating routine tasks and enabling you to adapt Teams to your work style.

Threads in channels, something many users will be familiar with, are a key part of this evolution. It combines the simplicity of chat-like conversations with the structure, durability, and manageability of channels—helping you stay on top of the information that matters most without getting overwhelmed.

Let’s take a look.

Enhance group collaboration 

Efficient collaboration moves work forward—and seamless communication is key. Teams need to share knowledge, brainstorm ideas, and resolve challenges quickly. But in today’s fast-paced, always-on-work environment, the workday can feel like a blur. The Work Trend Index calls this the “infinite workday”—where the workday is stretched and attention is constantly under pressure.

To help with this challenge, we’re introducing threads in channels—to make collaboration more efficient and focused. With threads, you can reply directly to specific messages, keeping related conversations grouped together without disrupting the main flow. This preserves context and order, making it easier to stay up to date, while allowing for in-depth discussions. You can follow the threads that matter most to you, and when an important update or decision is made, you can send it back to the main conversation, so everyone stays aligned without requiring them to sift through every reply.

The Followed Threads view brings all your followed conversations into one interactive list. You can quickly access all your threads, triage and respond—without jumping between channels. And when you’re done with a thread, unfollow it to stop receiving future updates.

By default, you’ll only follow threads you’ve started, replied to, been mentioned in, or explicitly chosen to follow. ‘Follow’ helps you stay engaged with key conversations, without unnecessary interruptions.

The new threads layout complements the existing post layout. While posts are ideal for announcements and broad updates, threads are a better fit with dynamic, scaled collaboration. When creating a new channel, select between threads or posts layout, and don’t worry, this can be changed later without loss of fidelity.

By setting up dedicated channels for each project, you can keep stakeholders, files, and updates all in one place—making teamwork more connected, transparent, and efficient.

Apps are supported in the threads layout. Bots can start new threads, read messages and respond within a thread, just like a teammate. Channel meetings and ‘meet now’ are supported too, with each meeting getting its own thread to keep content grouped together and easy to find. Threads in channels are now in public preview.

Your work isn’t limited to just a desktop, so we will bring threads in channels to all devices for seamless productivity, including desktop, mobile, iOS, and Android. Threads in channels is now in public preview. 

Threads help you keep context while reducing clutter, and emojis help build meaningful connection. In a hybrid workforce, being able to express yourself on Teams helps strengthen team culture. You can now react with multiple reactions per message, enhancing your ability to express a wide range of emotions effectively. For example, react with✅ and 🙏 to convey appreciation and alignment without extra replies. And with custom emojis, introduced last year, your team can reflect its unique identity, from inside jokes to branded visuals, making interactions more personal and fun. Multiple emojis per message is now in public preview.

Boost personal productivity

Staying productive and meeting deadlines is critical. With the right tools, you can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time driving impact. These new features let you tailor Teams to your needs, helping you make meaningful progress where it counts.

You can now trigger workflows with emojis by reacting to messages in a chat or channel—streamlining tasks, reducing manual follow-ups, and speeding up responses. For example, reacting with ❗️can escalate a support issue by creating a helpdesk ticket, while 👀 can forward a message to the right channel. This helps ensure urgent items are addressed quickly and without a manual follow-up. Use emojis to automate DevOps, incident response, team collaboration, and more with the Workflows app. This is now available in public preview.

Slash commands in Teams are getting more powerful. With support for multi-step inputs, you can now complete more complex tasks—like searching for a GIF, or jumping directly to a channel using /goto—without ever leaving your chat. These enhancements help you move faster and stay in the flow. Slash commands enhancements are now in public preview.

Customize your keyboard shortcuts in Teams to work the way that’s most intuitive to you. Whether you’re used to shortcuts from other tools or have your own workflow preferences, you can now set commands that match your habits—helping you work efficiently. To set it, open Keyboard shortcuts from the top bar menu (•••), and enter your own custom commands. Customize your keyboard shortcut is available in public preview.

What’s next

These latest Teams updates help you spend less time managing work and more time making progress. By cutting distractions, streamlining communication, and automating tasks, we’re helping you reclaim focus in a world where the workday often feels infinite.

Teams enables people and agents to work together through secure, collaborative AI — from Copilot integration to agents created with Teams AI library, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, and more. The new threads layout helps bring together the right mix of people and agents for every step of the project, while keeping discussions focused and organized. We recently announced Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent to Agent Communication  (A2A) supporthich allows developers to build more comprehensive agents that can talk to one another. These updates are just the beginning of enhancing human and agent interaction in Teams and there’s much more to come.

Ready to try it out? Visit Microsoft adoption to learn more, or head to the Teams app to start using these features in public preview today.