Microsoft Teams, once intended for business groups, will be available to consumers later this year. Yesterday's Microsoft 365 announcement announced a number of upgrades, but this is probably the biggest of them all.

Teams, for those not familiar with enterprise software, is a group messaging platform with chat rooms, direct messaging, and voice and video chat. it has been over three years since Teams was released, and as of March 19, it had 1 day user count exceeded 44 million, Microsoft announced (a week prior to this announcement, the number was 12 million less), setting a new record for users.

The rush to Teams may be related to the COVID-19 epidemic, but Teams' success will continue. Microsoft Teams for consumers will enter the preview phase in the summer and launch in the fall. According to Microsoft, Teams will first be offered for free, and then premium features will be available as part of the $6.99/month Microsoft 365 personal package ($9.99 for a six-person family plan), the successor to Office 365.

As anyone trying to put together a home or group of friends can attest, people can be elusive, and while Teams may seem a bit stuffy to some, for those groups where parents and friends take the lead and don't worry about being perceived as too Type A, you should love you will find a place to belong.

For example, let's say it's time to plan a birthday party for my colleague Andrew (he had to cancel his birthday party due to COVID-19 precautions.) With shared tasks in Teams, I can assign tasks so that Mike Seamless and delegate to order things to be delivered to Andrew, and Sherry can make sure Andrew is online and ready for the big reveal.

Every chat in Teams, including the virtual private group chats that are planned for all of this, has a dashboard window that makes it easy to see upcoming events for the people involved and recently shared files and photos, a section named Safe, where Teams can securely store and share sensitive data using two-factor authentication and end-to-end encryption. This way, you can share the credit card information of your orders without having to worry about where it will go.

You can also forget about Zoom and party with Microsoft Teams. The app will soon release group video calls that work with its iOS and Android apps, so you won't be left out just because you don't have FaceTime.

Teams is also positioned as an attractive alternative to Facebook and Google, and during the Teams reveal, Microsoft repeatedly reminded the press that it will not sell your data.

It is also closely tied to another Microsoft app coming soon: Family Safety. This app will help families keep track of their whereabouts, track their driving styles, and even help parents monitor the games their children play on the Xbox. Screen time limits and age restrictions can also be imposed by Family Safety.

Those already using Teams can easily move back and forth between home and professional Teams groups; as an avid user of Slack and Discord, I am not surprised to see this feature.

Those who already use Teams and love it will probably be a big key to mainstream success; I can easily imagine parents who see Teams as their primary tool in the office using it as a way to make their personal lives a little more efficient.