This week, Microsoft added a new feature to its Teams communication app, Streaming Conversations. After promising to launch this popular feature in mid-2025, Microsoft is now releasing a public preview of the streaming conversations for Teams users to enable.
The Microsoft Teams Chains integration will debut in the Channels section of the app, where it works a bit differently than Slack, which handles streaming conversations. “You can follow the topics that are most important to you, and when an important update or decision is made, you can send it back to the main conversation so everyone stays in the loop without having to sift through every response,” explains Noga Ronen, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft will allow Teams users to create both posts and threads in the same channel, so it doesn’t look like it will be as easy to create threads as it is in Slack. Teams channel owners will have to choose a post or thread layout, depending on how the channel is used.
Microsoft has also created a Tracked Topics view for Teams where you can find all the topics you’re interested in. It’s also easy to delete noisy topics from here. “By default, you’ll only follow threads that you’ve started, replied to, been mentioned in, or that you’ve chosen to follow,” says Ronen.
In addition to public previews of ongoing conversations, Microsoft Teams finally has the ability to respond to messages with multiple emoticons. “Multiple emojis in a single message are now available for public preview,” says Ronen. Slash commands in Teams are also getting some improvements, with the ability to search for GIFs using the /gif command.
