Microsoft is retiring Live chat in Teams about 18 months after launching it, saying it wants to “focus investments on newer customer engagement and communication experiences,” The Register reported.
The feature retires on Oct. 5, when customer messages stop reaching Teams. Microsoft blocked new setups on Aug. 6 and told customers to remove the chat widget from their websites before the cutoff. Any remaining widgets will be hidden afterward. Existing customer data and Teams channels stay available, but no new conversations, escalations or interactions will be possible.
Live chat let businesses embed a widget on their websites and route visitor messages to a support team in Teams. It came with the Teams versions of Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium, and administrators could set business hours and assign up to 25 people to handle conversations.
Microsoft is pointing customers to Dynamics 365 Contact Center, which includes live chat, and to Copilot Studio’s contact center AI tools. Companies that built support processes around the Teams widget will need to plan a move before October.
When the feature arrived in March 2025, Brenna Robinson, then general manager for Microsoft 365 and Copilot in small and medium business, wrote: “Today we’re excited to take that customer experience to a new level with the introduction of live chat in Microsoft Teams – a faster and more engaging way for you to connect with your customers.” Robinson is now Microsoft’s general manager for AI Business Solutions.
Part of a wider Teams cleanup
Live chat is the latest Teams feature Microsoft has dropped. In February it announced the end of Teams live events in favor of a Teams “events experience,” and its documentation lists June 30, 2026, as the support cutoff. Together mode, which placed meeting participants in a shared virtual space, was also retired.
Microsoft hasn’t said which newer engagement experiences will get the investment, but recommending Copilot Studio suggests AI agents will take on more of the customer-chat work.
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