Microsoft has announced (opens in new tab) that its Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, will begin rolling out for U.S. government customers starting on July 17. The rollout will start with U.S. Government Cloud Community (GCC) users with completion expected by the end of August. Other U.S. government clouds are expected to get Teams "soon," Microsoft says.
Teams for GCC is built to meet security compliance requirements for government users. To meet those standards, there are several differences between Teams for government and the standard Teams client (opens in new tab). Most notably, apps aren't initially available, but Microsoft is working to make them available when they meet FedRAMP compliance. Email notifications and the option to email a channel will also be unsupported at launch.
Additionally, call and meeting recording, along with unified presence, won't be available initially but are planned for a future update. Finally, you'll be unable to express your feelings about all things government with Giphy unless it's enabled by an administrator. New features that hit Teams for enterprise users will be slower to arrive for government users due to the certifications involved.
Teams for GCC will begin landing in in Office 365 for US Government G1, G3, G5, F1 and Microsoft 365 for US Government G3, G5, F1 starting July 17.
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