Microsoft Teams is adding a favorite Slack emoji feature

Microsoft is adding a new feature to its Teams communications platform that allows users to upload their own custom emojis to use in reactions and messages. Announced during the Build developer conference on Tuesday, Microsoft says the new custom emoji will be available for testing next month through the Teams public preview, with the aim of helping Teams users collaborate and express themselves.” in a more creative and authentic way.”

IT administrators at companies using Teams will be able to limit which users can upload or delete custom emojis, or they can disable the feature entirely. Once custom emojis are uploaded to Teams, they will only be visible within the same organization domain. Microsoft says general availability of custom emojis is expected in July of this year.

The announcement comes three months after Microsoft employees discovered an early version of the feature in an internal version of Teams, finding an animated emoji of the widely-remembered Pepe the Frog character in some reactions and messages. Currently, Microsoft Teams only supports official Unicode emojis – the standardized set of public domain emojis supported by most smartphones and social media platforms.

In contrast to other communication platforms, Microsoft is very late to the custom emoji party. It’s been a prominent feature on Slack and Discord for years, while Google Chat launched a similar feature for Workspace users in 2022.