Microsoft Teams is adding a new feature to its communications platform that allows users to upload their own custom emojis to use in reactions and messages.
The feature, announced at the Build developer conference, aims to help Teams users collaborate and express themselves “in a more creative and original way.” Users will be able to start experiencing this feature through the Teams public preview next month.
IT admins for businesses using Teams will have the ability to limit which users can upload or delete custom emoji, or turn off the feature entirely. Once custom emojis are uploaded to Teams, they will only be visible within the same organization domain. Microsoft says the general availability of custom emojis is expected this July.
Microsoft Teams was late joining the party
The announcement comes three months after Microsoft employees discovered an early version of the feature in the on-premises version of Teams, finding an animated emoji of the Pepe the Frog character widely referenced in some reactions and messages. Currently, Teams only supports official Unicode emoji, which is the standardized set of public domain emoji used by most smartphones and social media platforms.
Unlike other communication platforms, Microsoft joined the custom emoji party very late. This feature has been available in Slack and Discord for years. Google Chat introduced a similar feature for Workspace users in 2022.