Towards the end of last month, Microsoft debuted a new Teams app that’s designed to enhance collaboration among users, Microsoft indicated that the app is faster, more flexible, easy to use, and more intelligent since it ships with AI capabilities.
The application is already in public preview and Microsoft has announced several new security features and capabilities that are included in the preview. Here’s everything you need to know:
MSIX and App Installer
First up, the company has announced that the new Teams app no longer depends on bespoke solutions for deployment and updates. It now depends on MSIX packages and App Installer, both natively supported by Windows. This will in turn help reduce the maintenance cost as well as risk significantly.
Removal of Teams in the user profile
Microsoft has also indicated that it will no longer install Teams in the user profile. The company highlighted that while this approach was convenient and didn’t require elevated privileges, it featured common post-exploitation activities like maintaining persistence.
Electron > WebView2
Additionally, the new Teams app has transitioned from Electron to Edge WebView2. And while both are based on the same Chromium browser engine, Edge WebView2 fosters faster updates. According to Microsoft:
This means WebView2 runtime updates with Edge browser and independently of the Teams client, and it can be shared across multiple embedding applications (for example, Teams and Outlook). This saves storage space on the user’s device by sharing WebView2 instance between multiple embedding applications.
On the same note, the switch to Edge WebView2 has made the new Teams up more compact. It now comes in at around 12 megabytes which is significantly low compared to the classic Teams client which came in at over 134 megabytes.
Microsoft has also made some improvements on the web, we invite you to visit its blog post for more details. Share your thoughts with us regarding the new features as well as changes in the comments.
