Public Preview and Developer preview provides early access to unreleased features in Microsoft Teams. You can test new features before it becomes general availability (GA) and analyse it to see if the new features will be useful for the organization.
Preview feature can be enabled per Team user or for the whole organization. You can use Teams Update policies for enabling the preview feature setting. Its best if you create a separate Teams update policy and apply it to few users who will be testing the new features for example IT Administrators.
You can enable the preview version of Microsoft Teams by Launching Microsoft Teams Client –> Click on three dots next to your picture on top right hand side corner of Teams Client and then click on About and from the list of options presented you should see Public Preview and Developer Preview option. If you are not able to see these options then probably its not enabled for you.
In below screenshot, we can see that there is no option to enable Preview features from Teams client.
In this blog post, we will see how to create a custom Teams update policy to enable preview features and apply this policy to few users then we will logout from teams and log back in to check if the Public preview and Developer preview options are visible.
| For Enabling Developer Preview, you need to make sure that Upload custom apps setting is enabled. To Enable this setting open Login on Microsoft Teams admin center and find Setup Policies under Teams apps -> Click on Global (Org-wide default) and check the setting Upload custom apps. Make sure this setting is switched on. |
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Teams Update Policy
Create Teams Update Policy
You can create Teams update policy easily by using below steps:
- Login on Microsoft Teams admin center
- Click on Teams -> Teams update policies
- Click on + Add to create a new custom teams update policy
- Give a name for example: Teams Preview Feautes Enabled
- Write a Description of the policy
- Show preview features -> Enabled
- Click on Apply to create the policy
Assign Teams update Policy
Once the policy is created, you can assign it to users who will be able to enable preview features in their Teams client.
To Assign the Teams update policy. Select the Teams Preview Feautres Enabled Policy we just created and then click on Assign users.
On Manage users page, you can search for the users from your organization and click on Add to add it to the policy. Once you have added the users. Click on Apply to save the changes.
If the user is logged on to the Teams App, they may need to logout and log back in to get the new policy. If the new options are not immediately available then wait for few hours and then try again.
The options are available but not yet enabled until you click on it. Once you click on Public preview or Developer preview option, Teams client will restart and a prompt will be shown for accepting the risk which the unreleased feautres might bring as they are still under development. Click on Switch to public preview which will restart Microsoft Teams Client.
Now, if you go back to the Teams Client –> Click on three dots –> About –> You can see that Developer Preview and Public preview options are enabled.
You can notice that there is a P icon next to your teams profile picture.
Conclusion
Enabling of Teams Preview feature is useful for admins and power users who want to test Teams features which are not yet Generally Available. By default the policy does not allow users to enable preview version of Microsoft Teams client. A Teams update policy can be created and applied to select group of users who wish to participate in the testing of unreleased / currently under development features. As we have seen in this blog post, its very easy to enable the previous feautres for the users. Please note that after you have created the policy in Teams Admin center, it could take some time for the policy to get affected.
