Microsoft Teams 1 year trial coming

Microsoft’s Office365 Message Center has just announced that Microsoft Teams 1-year trials will be available to any users who have an Office365 or ADD account. Once the feature is released, users who follow links to Microsoft Teams who are not licensed will be able to start a free trial if their administrator allows it. This feature is likely to try and come close to Slack’s free tier and its ability promote viral adoption.

If you’d like to know more, here is the full announcement:

A free 1-year trial of Microsoft Teams will soon be available for any user of Office 365 or Azure Active Directory (AAD), even if the user is not yet licensed for the service. We are rolling out this trial, beginning June 1. As customers have requested the ability to control when trials are available for their users, we have a new administrative control to manage the ability for users to claim trial apps and services within your organization.

How does this affect me?

Today, if an end user does not have a valid license when attempting to use Microsoft Teams, they will see an error page prompting them to contact you to get access. When we begin rolling out this feature, this same user will now be prompted with an option to start using Microsoft Teams. Once a user signs up for this trial, they will have access to Microsoft Teams, as well as Microsoft Planner, Flow for Office 365 (Plan 1), Office Online, PowerApps for Office 365 (Plan 1), SharePoint Online (Plan 1), and Sway. The free trial applies to commercial Office 365 organizations where Microsoft Teams is turned on at the organization level. This trial is not currently available to Office 365 subscriptions in Education, Government, and Office 365 Germany. The new administrative control is available in the Office 365 admin center. Go to Settings > Services & add-ins > User owned Apps and Services. The Let users install trial apps and services option is enabled by default. Currently, the Microsoft Teams trial is the only trial in this category, but this might apply to other similar programs in the future. If this administrative control is disabled, and an end user does not have a valid license when attempting to use Microsoft Teams, they will continue to see an error page prompting them to contact you to get access.

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

If your organization is ready to trial Microsoft Teams, there is no action you need to take. While the capability to sign up for the Teams trial will be turned on by default, you can disable the ability for your users to claim trial apps and services within your organization. 1. From the Office 365 admin center, go to Services & add-ins > User owned Apps and Services. 2. Turn off Let users install trial apps and services. Please click Additional Information to learn more here about the Microsoft Teams trial.