Published Dec 4, 2023
The message details the unification of contact lists across Outlook and Teams, allowing visibility and edits to be shared between both platforms. An initial migration has occurred, and a full transition to a unified contact experience is expected by April 2025. Organizations are advised to update documentation and encourage contact backups in Outlook.
Updated November 12, 2024: We have updated the content and rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Today, users can see Outlook contacts created with their Entra ID (AAD) account in Teams, but contacts created in Teams are not available in Outlook. To provide a consistent experience we are making changes to allow Teams contacts, created with a user's Entra ID (AAD) account, to be visible in Outlook as well.
Upcoming changes to contacts in Teams and Outlook:
Currently, Teams and Outlook maintain separate contact lists for enterprise users. Based on your feedback, we plan to introduce a unified contact experience, ensuring a consistent contacts experience across Outlook and Teams. In future, changes to contacts in users’ organization (Entra ID) account in Teams will reflect in Outlook and vice versa.
What's Happened so far:
What's Coming:
Users will gradually upgrade to the new unified experience from December 2024. The new experience will be enabled for each user across all endpoints (Desktop, Mobile, Devices etc.) simultaneously. Once the new experience is enabled for a user, they will see same set of contacts in Outlook and Teams. Any change in Outlook will reflect in Teams and vice versa.
All Teams contact changes (creations and edits) made since January will be included in the unified store. During creations, a small set of users may see duplicate contacts in the unified store. To help users navigate the transition, category label ‘Teams Conflict’ will be applied to duplicate contacts. This label will help users see any conflicts (duplicates or inconsistencies) that need their attention.
When this will happen:
This activity is expected to be completed for all active users by April 2025 tentatively. Once this activity is complete, users will work with a single contact list across Teams and Outlook.
How this will affect your organization
Once this change is complete, users will be able to see created contacts across both Outlook and Teams and vice versa.
What you need to do to prepare
Action Required: Update your organisation documentation and training materials to reflect the upcoming changes for the new unified contact experience.
You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate. If users wish to retain a snapshot of their existing contacts in Outlook, please encourage users to back-up their existing contacts using the export capability in Outlook.