Microsoft has been making a lot of updates to Teams recently. Yesterday, we found out that it is updating some licenses for the online collaboration software to bring some of its premium features to more customers. We also learned that is now enforcing the new Teams calendar UX and removing the toggle to switch to the old calendar view. But now, it seems like the company is slowing down development on at least one "enhancement", likely because it is a bit controversial.
As spotted by Forbes, Microsoft has updated its public Microsoft 365 Roadmap to delay the release of a feature that would have allowed an employer to find out your general location. Basically, Teams would be able to detect the identity of the Wi-Fi network that you are connected to, and then update your work location to reflect that. So, for example, if you were connected to your organization"s "Building123_WiFi" network, your work location on Teams and Outlook would show up as "Building 123".
Of course, the flip side of this was that if you are late for work, do some work from home, or do anything on Teams and Outlook from any network that is not your organization"s, your employer would know about this. This obviously did not sit well with workers who either work in hybrid setups or do not appreciate this type of invasion of privacy.
While Microsoft is seemingly trying to find a balance for this by disabling this location tracking feature, requiring IT admins to turn it on, and then have end-users opt-in, it doesn"t really help. This entire process falls apart if your organization enforces the enablement of location tracking as a mandatory policy, giving its workforce no way to opt out.
Although location tracking in Teams was initially set for general availability on Windows and Mac in January, it was pushed back to February, and is now delayed once again to March. It"s unclear why Microsoft keeps delaying it, but it might have to do with walking the fine line between giving employees more flexibility versus giving employers more control over their workforce"s asset usage and availability. Of course, both approaches have their pros and cons, but we"ll likely find out how organizations react once the capability does eventually land.