For weeks now Microsoft Teams has displayed this warning every time you login.
It may be that you have come to read this article because you are noting this message and are wondering how to proceed?
However we have no guidance to offer on this that is likely to solve your problem, we are also unable to find anything that will help either from Microsoft on the more general internet. It seems that what Microsoft terms “an upgrade” from Free Teams Classic, is not any “Upgrade” as we know it, but in fact a uninstall and install a different product, and in the course lose all your Teams chatter and data.
By comparison even the FA’s striking out of Bury FC, looks mild and caring
Microsoft Teams has really grown up in the Pandemic, and at the onset Microsoft seemed belatedly to realise that they had a product here that was in demand in the “Work from Home” worldwide panic. Zoom set the benchmark, VOIP telephony proved another important tool that enabled many businesses to extend their telephone systems to include employees homes and even the local bar or coffee house. Microsoft offered teams as a free to everyone, stand alone or add-on to MS365, and you had the ability to link to more or less everybody. However managing and licensing this rapid growth seems to have just pushed Microsoft into a massive muddle
The result of this complete loss of vision of where this product might really go and how to manage, what could be a Champions League winner seems to leave MS Teams facing the prospect of relegation from the 12th April, in the case of the Paid For version to probably League 2 (certainly NOT any part of the Championship).
The “Free Teams” version will be pretty usless except perhaps for joining a meeting or presentation where the organiser has for some reason chosen Teams over a better alternative, (probably mainly because its included with their Office License), this is definitely relegation to the Vanarama league in one jump
Teams had, in our view, the potential to be a killer product getting Microsoft back into the mainstream which could have stood up to so many competitors products, holding out the yearned for possibilty of displacing traditonal telephony with VOIP based and more or less free calls and Video, Instant Chat to upset Facebook, Telegram, Whatsapp.
The way to do this is tried and tested, from Lotus 123, to Google search, to Twitter, its about getting a worlwide consumer led use of the system, and allowing “evangelists”, “Influencers”or whatever you want to call them to bring it into use in their workplaces and then allow it to gradually percolate through the system at no cost. Then, subsequently, bring in “premium” paid for additions (videoed meetings etc)
We have been playing with our teams installation, and can see no way of saving your data. Our licence and many of our clients which is for “MS365 Apps for Business”, (again, SO CONFUSINGLY named as it is for the Desktop Applications we need it NOT the Online Apps), does not in fact include Teams or Sharepoint, so we have had to purchase a couple of more expensive versions of MS365, just to continue to have experience of the product
The only way you can save stuff from your existing Chats and User Groups is to go through them manually, download your own postings, and screenshot and copy those of anyone else you want to keep, and you need to get a move on, as no-one knows what tomorrow will bring!
It may be that your version of Teams is the “Exploratory” version that was issued part way through the Pandemic, this apparently has a one year licence, (from when you first installed it?), we are equally unsure how this will react to T(erminate)-Day – April 12th
We intend to update this post if we have anything worth adding to it