Microsoft Teams service description

• 7/30/2020
• 3 minutes to read
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Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. The Teams service enables instant messaging, audio and video calling, rich online meetings, mobile experiences, and extensive web conferencing capabilities. In addition, Teams provides file and data collaboration and extensibility features, and integrates with Microsoft 365 and other Microsoft and partner apps.

Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021, which was announced on July 30, 2019. Microsoft Teams is an entirely new service, built for the cloud from the ground up by leveraging Azure and other service innovations from Microsoft. Microsoft Teams is built on Microsoft 365 groups, Microsoft Graph, and with the same enterprise-level security, compliance, and manageability as the rest of Office 365. Teams leverages identities stored in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). These services are delivered from Microsoft data centers and are accessible to users on a wide range of devices from inside a corporate network or over the internet. For more information, see the Microsoft Teams IT architecture and telephony solutions posters.

Microsoft remains committed to the security of your data and the accessibility of our services. For more information, see the Microsoft Trust Center and the Office Accessibility Center.

For your reference, we've included this master table of the subscriptions that enable users for Microsoft Teams. For detailed plan information, see Find the right Microsoft Teams for your business. For additional Office 365 in Government plans, see Office 365 Government plans. Office 365 G1 through G5 include access to Teams features.

For detailed product feature implementation guidance, see the Microsoft Teams admin documentation. This service description details the key differences between services provided across the various cloud installations. Microsoft Teams core functionalities do not differ among the subscriptions. The availability of compliance capabilities depends on your subscription level. To learn more, see Security and compliance in Microsoft Teams. For a detailed list of features available in each subscription, see Microsoft 365 and Office 365 platform service description.

Cloud voice features: For audio conferencing, your organization must buy and assign an audio conferencing license to each user who will be setting up dial-in meetings. For Teams features that require calling plans, each user needs a phone system and a domestic or domestic and international calling plan. To learn more, see Microsoft Teams add-on licenses.

Live Events: This offering in Office 365 replaces the retired Skype Meeting Broadcast. Live events capabilities are available for licensing plans as detailed within the Stream service. Please review the Microsoft Stream licensing details here. The Live Events service can be accessed through Stream, Yammer, or Microsoft Teams. To learn more about live event capabilities, see Live events across Microsoft 365 in Yammer, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Stream.

All supported subscription plans are eligible for access to the Microsoft Teams web client, desktop clients, and mobile apps.

Microsoft Teams is not available as a standalone service.

Feature category reference

This table lists Microsoft Teams feature availability across licensing plans or cloud instances. Certain caveats apply. Please see the footnotes for further information. This table may change without notice. Refer to Microsoft 365 Message Center notifications for core service change messaging and to the Microsoft licensing terms reference documentation.

¹ Microsoft Teams in GCC-High and DOD support 2500 members in an individual team.
² Microsoft Planner is not currently available to access in private channels.
³ Microsoft OneNote is not available in DOD clouds. Applications and application publishing are not available in these clouds at this time.
⁴ Live Events is not available in GCC-High or DOD at this time.

Next steps

Begin planning your Microsoft Teams deployment by visiting the Microsoft Teams technical documentation. Stay up to date on Teams features and capabilities by joining our community and visiting our Microsoft Teams blog.