I was excited to hear about Microsoft Teams’ multi-account sign-in feature, but hesitant to post anything too early. You know when you really want something, but deep down you know it can’t be true? Well, this may be one of those things.
Multi-account sign-in is a much-requested feature that dates back to 2016, and there’s pent-up demand. As of today, there are 30,993 votes for the feature and counting.
So, on November 3rd, it was exciting to learn that Microsoft was finally adding a multi-account sign-in feature to its Microsoft Teams’ roadmap – that sound you heard was 30,993 people cheering.
However, this dream fizzled quickly a couple of days later when what we first thought was access to Teams’ multi-accounts (whether personal or several different organizations’ accounts) changed to:
Adding one personal account and one work/education account to Teams with the ability to change your profile picture, and switch between accounts through settings.
As of this writing, the release date for this stripped-down version of the feature is sometime this month.
Why is the Multi-Account Feature So In Demand?
If you have multiple Teams accounts in your organization, or you’re a contractor working for several different companies, a full multi-account sign-in feature could save you a lot of time, frustration, and headaches.
Right now, there are some workarounds (which are not exactly time-saving features) to access multiple accounts, including:
- On your desktop: Sign out of one account and then sign into the other.
- Web Browser: Use an incognito browser tab for the different accounts.
The worst part is that you don’t receive notifications once you sign out of an account. However, as a temporary fix, you can still set up your phone to get notifications from all of your Teams accounts. Just make sure your phone is close by.
On its multi-account user voice page, Microsoft says,
The engineering team is continuing to work on adding support for multiple accounts on desktop clients. We will first launch support for 1 work/school account and 1 personal account so users can enjoy Teams for work and personal side-by-side. Windows and MacOS. Support for multiple work accounts is still being worked on and will come at a later date.
So, if hope springs eternal, here’s to hoping that we get the full version of this feature in 2021.
If you’d like to add a new feature, review the feature list, or check the status of an upcoming feature for Microsoft Teams, you can express your “user voice” by visiting microsoftteams.uservoice.com
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