Microsoft Teams to Get Multi-Account Support (Updated)

UPDATE: This feature is not coming to Teams until sometime in 2021, Microsoft now says. –Paul

Microsoft Teams will pick up the long-awaited support for multiple users on desktop starting in December, according to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website.

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“Teams users will be able to add additional accounts, change their profile picture, and switch between accounts and [organizations] through Settings,” The Microsoft 365 Roadmap site notes. The feature is currently in development and will ship in December to Microsoft Teams users in commercial and education worldwide.

Note that this refers to the desktop versions of the Teams client, as you can already switch between accounts on mobile, including personal accounts. If you want to switch between accounts on desktop today, you need to sign-out of the app and then sign back in with the second account, which is obviously not ideal.

Note: News of this change was first reported by OnMST; I found out about it courtesy of Mary Jo Foley.

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Conversation 12 comments

  • truerock2

    04 November, 2020 - 4:00 pm

    <p>I have a small business that has 2 different locations. We may give this product a try.</p>

    • SvenJ

      05 November, 2020 - 10:40 am

      <blockquote><a href="#590841"><em>In reply to truerock2:</em></a><em> </em>Please don't roll it out with an e-mail saying "TEAMS was installed, everyone use it." </blockquote><p><br></p>

  • IanYates82

    Premium Member
    04 November, 2020 - 4:21 pm

    <p>Wonderful. </p><p><br></p><p>We have a pc in our conference room that's logged on as a generic user but we also need to get on as ourselves sometimes to join specific meetings. This may help with the sign out/in dance we need to do</p><p><br></p><p>Let me tear off channels into separate windows, nag me if I have a message I've typed but not sent, and give me "other user is typing" indicator in channels (not just in chat) and we're good! ? </p>

  • james.h.robinson

    04 November, 2020 - 4:41 pm

    <p>This is good. I have accounts for my employer and for my employer's parent company. I can switch between the two account on the mobile version of Teams, but I have never been able to do so on the desktop version. </p>

    • SvenJ

      05 November, 2020 - 10:35 am

      <blockquote><a href="#590845"><em>In reply to james.h.robinson:</em></a><em> </em>You can log out, and restart, which will prompt you for the login. That works for me. Two different log-ins.</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • Alex Taylor

    04 November, 2020 - 6:28 pm

    <p>Will be interesting to see how well this works. </p><p>It's a real pain point, but if they just provide quick switching without multiwindow or tab support it will still be excruciating. </p>

  • BigM72

    04 November, 2020 - 8:03 pm

    <p>Great if I can easily switch between my work account and personal. Even better if it comes with the video call functionalities. Can get rid of Zoom for personal use and get rid of using WhatsApp Web on my work PC.</p>

    • SvenJ

      05 November, 2020 - 10:34 am

      <blockquote><a href="#590886"><em>In reply to BigM72:</em></a><em> </em>Unfortunately TEAMS personal accounts don't work on the desktop (yet), just iOS/iPadOS and Android. I have more than one work account, and I swear I was able to switch between them easily by clicking my avatar picture and a dropdown let me select. That was a while back and that has since gone away. It was great. I effectively logged me out of one account and into the other, which is what I have to do manually now.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • matsan

    05 November, 2020 - 2:20 am

    <p>Working as IT-manager in a non-profit organization we are really looking forward to this. Most of our members are normally in their for-profit Teams environment.</p><p><br></p><p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">you need to sign-out of the app and then sign back in with the second account, which is obviously not ideal."</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">We have noticed that sometimes the Office 365 activation also switches when changing between accounts. Don't know if it's our E1 Non-Profit license acting up.</span></p>

  • JerryH

    Premium Member
    05 November, 2020 - 8:19 am

    <p>I wonder if this improves anything for those of us who really have one account – but that account has normal access to our tenant and then also has Guest access to another tenant? The canonical example is using Teams in your own company and with Microsoft. Switching between the two tenants requires (today) clicking the tenant name in the title bar and picking the other tenant. It doesn't require authenticating again or anything, but the UI removes all of the teams, channels, chats, etc, from your tenant and switches to what you have access to in the other (in our case Microsoft). It gets really annoying because we have to join meetings on the different tenants all day – and some of the functions don't fully work if you don't switch over. But people in both organizations are trying to contact you all day.</p><p><br></p><p>I end up having to either run one tenant in the Teams app and another in the browser or run the second in a Teams app on a VDI session. I was hoping this would fix that and promote the tenant to a top level node in the left navigation pane and show both at the same time. But it doesn't sound like this change fixes that.</p>

  • JCerna

    Premium Member
    05 November, 2020 - 10:30 am

    <p>Much needed but I wish they would instead make it so the accounts are merged, so instead of switching from one account to the next, you would just be able to see all the teams you are a member of in all orgs. Since when you post or respond you would know what team you are on and the correct account will be used because the other accounts wont have permissions, this makes the most sense to me. Even in mobile having to change from one account to another is so slow. </p>

  • ken_loewen

    Premium Member
    06 November, 2020 - 8:48 am

    <p>I received a notification from Microsoft the first step of this will allow support for 1 work or school user and 1 personal user, with support for multiple work or school users following at some unknown time. </p><p><br></p><p>This seems to me to be a very rare use case.</p>

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