Microsoft Teams adds 12 million users in just 7 days as employees work from home

Microsoft Teams announced it saw a spike of 12 million daily users in the last seven days bringing its total to 44 million. As millions of employees scramble to work from home, this jump in userbase isn't surprising. Microsoft Teams is also celebrating its third anniversary with new features rolling out today.

With an increase in user activity, Microsoft Teams also registered over 900 million meeting and calling minutes every day this week. Microsoft is also introducing new features for Teams available to users starting today. Microsoft Teams is getting real-time noise suspension for video conferencing by minimizing background noise.

There's also a new raise hand feature which users can select to say something during large video conference calls. Microsoft will also let Teams users pop out chats into a separate window. Microsoft Teams is also getting an offline and low-bandwidth support which will allow users to do tasks like reading chat messages and replying to them.

Microsoft has also partnered with RealWear for head-mounted devices that Teams users can use to communicate hands-free from their job sites. Microsoft Teams' device ecosystem is expanding to more products like the Yealink VC210 and Bose 700 UC noise-cancelling headphones.

Microsoft Teams' new updates come a day after its rival Slack launched a major redesign to its app. Slack's redesign offers a more simplified and customisable layout and features for its users. There's a new navigation bar, compose button and the sidebar is now more convenient. Slack hasn't reported any surge in userbase as yet.