Microsoft’s built-in Teams Live Chat is heading to the feature graveyard only about 18 months after it launched.
This retirement applies only to Microsoft’s own built-in Live Chat website widget. Social Intents Live Chat for Microsoft Teams is a separate service and will continue to operate normally.
Microsoft introduced the built-in website chat feature in March 2025. It gave small and midsized businesses a simple way to send website chats to support users in Teams. Now Microsoft is ending it almost as quickly as it arrived. The Register described the short-lived feature as another casualty in Microsoft’s effort to trim the growing collection of features inside Teams.
The Microsoft Teams Live Chat retirement date is October 5, 2026.
If your business currently uses Microsoft’s website chat widget, this is not just the end of product support. The widget will stop connecting website visitors with your team. Microsoft says that any Live Chat widgets left on a website after the retirement date will be hidden. New conversations, escalations, and customer interactions will no longer start through the widget.
The timeline is short:
- August 6, 2026: New customers can no longer set up Microsoft Teams Live Chat.
- October 5, 2026: Microsoft Teams Live Chat reaches end of support. Incoming chats are no longer relayed to Teams, and website widgets are hidden.
Microsoft is telling administrators to remove the widget from their websites before October 5. You can read the full notice in the Microsoft Teams Live Chat retirement FAQ.
Companies that chose the service because their employees already work in Teams do not need to give up that workflow. You can move your website chat to Social Intents while your team continues to receive and answer conversations directly in Microsoft Teams.
Already using Microsoft’s built-in Live Chat? Replace the Microsoft website widget with Social Intents, connect it to the Teams channel your agents will use, and keep answering customers from Teams. Your team gets the same basic workflow with a much larger live chat and AI feature set.
The migration is mostly a website widget change, not a complete support workflow rebuild. Your visitors get a new, more capable chat experience. Your employees keep working in Teams. You also gain AI chatbots, unlimited agents, better customization, proactive chat, routing, reporting, and additional messaging channels.
What Exactly Is Microsoft Retiring?
Microsoft is retiring the built-in Live Chat feature that creates a customer-facing chat widget for your website and sends chat requests to support team members in Microsoft Teams.
This retirement does not mean Microsoft Teams itself is going away. It also does not prevent businesses from using a third-party live chat app that connects to Teams.
Microsoft’s Live Chat feature was designed to provide a basic connection between a website visitor and an available Teams user. It included:
- A website chat widget
- Automatic assignment to an available support team member
- Business hours and an offline contact option
- Appointment scheduling in preview
- An optional AI chatbot for organizations with a Microsoft Copilot Studio license
- A handoff team limited to 25 users
Starting October 5, that Microsoft-operated website chat service will no longer work.
What Happens to the Live Chat Widget on Your Website?
Microsoft says the widget will be hidden after the retirement date. A visitor will no longer be able to use it to start a conversation, request a human agent, or trigger an escalation into Teams.
This creates a real risk for businesses that forget the widget is installed. The site may appear normal during a quick review, but customers will lose a contact option they previously relied on.
If live chat generates support requests, sales conversations, appointments, or leads for your business, replace the widget before October 5. Do not wait for the old widget to disappear.
Microsoft instructs administrators to find and remove the website <script> tag with id="chatbot". Your exact installation may be managed through a tag manager, content management system, plugin, or shared website template, so check every place where the code could have been added.
What Happens to Existing Customer Data?
Microsoft says previously created customer data will not be deleted when Live Chat support ends. Existing Teams channels and related Microsoft Lists data will remain available according to the Microsoft 365 retention and lifecycle policies configured for your tenant.
You should still review what you need to preserve. Export any chat or customer information that your company needs to retain independently. This is especially important if conversations are part of your sales records, customer support history, compliance process, or internal reporting.
Existing data remaining in Microsoft 365 does not keep the website chat service running. It only means the historical information is not automatically removed as part of the retirement.
Microsoft’s Suggested Replacements May Be More Than Many Teams Need
Microsoft lists Dynamics 365 Contact Center with Live Chat and Microsoft Copilot Studio Contact Center AI solutions as alternatives.
Those products may be a good fit for an organization that already uses Dynamics 365 or needs a full enterprise contact center. They can also introduce more software, licensing, setup, and administration than a small or midsized team wants for website chat.
Many businesses adopted Microsoft Teams Live Chat for a much simpler reason: their staff was already in Teams. They wanted website messages to reach people in the application they already had open all day.
Social Intents preserves that part of the experience. Visitors use a branded chat widget on your website, and your employees answer from Microsoft Teams.
Social Intents as a Microsoft Teams Live Chat Alternative
Social Intents Live Chat for Microsoft Teams connects your website chat widget to a Teams channel. When a visitor starts a chat, your team receives a notification in Teams. An agent joins the conversation and responds without opening a separate support application.
From the visitor’s side, it looks and works like a normal website chat. Visitors do not need a Teams account and do not need to know that your agents are responding from Teams.
From your team’s side, the workflow stays familiar:
- A visitor sends a message from your website.
- Your team receives the chat request in Microsoft Teams.
- An agent joins and responds from Teams.
- The visitor sees the reply immediately in the website widget.
- The completed conversation is stored in chat history for later review.
Your employees can also respond through the Teams mobile app, which helps teams cover chats while working remotely or away from a desk.
Already Using Microsoft’s Built-In Live Chat? Move Your Workflow to Social Intents
Existing Microsoft Teams Live Chat users are in the best position to make a simple move. Your team already understands how to handle customer conversations in Teams. You do not need to train everyone on a new help desk or ask agents to monitor another inbox.
With Social Intents, you can recreate your current website chat setup and keep Teams as the place where people respond.
The parts you can carry over include:
- Your existing support workflow in Microsoft Teams
- The Teams channel or team you want agents to use
- Your business hours and offline message
- Your visitor welcome message and contact fields
- Your website branding and chat colors
- Your sales and support routing process
- Your escalation rules for reaching a person
The old Microsoft widget code is replaced with a Social Intents widget snippet. New conversations then flow through Social Intents and into the Teams channel you select.
Microsoft’s historical conversations are not automatically imported into Social Intents. They remain in the existing Teams channels and Microsoft Lists according to your tenant’s retention settings. Export anything you need to preserve, then use Social Intents history and reporting for conversations that arrive after the switch.
This is also a good time to improve the experience instead of making a one-for-one replacement. Microsoft’s product limited the handoff team to 25 people and offered a relatively basic website widget. Existing users can move to Social Intents and add:
- Unlimited support, sales, and customer success agents
- AI powered by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Dialogflow
- Training from website pages, help articles, PDFs, and documents
- AI-to-human handoff with the full conversation included
- Multiple widgets for different websites, brands, or departments
- Routing to separate Teams channels
- Custom pre-chat forms and visitor fields
- Proactive invitations and visitor targeting rules
- Saved replies, file sharing, translations, and custom branding
- Searchable transcripts, chat ratings, analytics, and reports
- WhatsApp, SMS, and Facebook Messenger conversations in Teams
- CRM connections, webhooks, APIs, Zapier, and Custom AI Actions
You keep the reason you chose Microsoft’s Live Chat in the first place, which is answering customers inside Teams. The upgrade gives you a fuller live chat and AI support platform around it.
Microsoft’s Built-In Teams Live Chat Compared with Social Intents
| Feature | Microsoft’s Retiring Live Chat | Social Intents for Microsoft Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Availability after October 5, 2026 | Retired | Continues to expand and operate |
| Answer website chats in Teams | Yes, until retirement | Yes |
| Support team size | Up to 25 users | Unlimited agents on every plan |
| Microsoft 365 license requirement | Business Basic, Business Standard, or Business Premium | Works with Microsoft Teams without the same Live Chat license restriction |
| Setup permissions | Global Administrator required | Install the Teams app and connect your chat widget |
| AI chatbot | Required a Copilot Studio license | ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini options |
| AI training sources | Public website | Website pages, help content, documents, PDFs, and knowledge base content |
| AI-to-human handoff | Yes | Yes, with the prior AI conversation included |
| Website widget customization | Basic branding options | Custom colors, logos, text, languages, forms, and behavior |
| Proactive chat invitations | Limited | Page, time, scroll, and visitor-based targeting options |
| Multiple teams and workflows | Basic handoff team | Route different widgets and conversations to the right Teams channels |
| Other customer channels | Website chat | Website chat, WhatsApp, SMS, and Facebook Messenger |
| Chat history and reporting | Existing data remains in Microsoft 365 | Searchable history, transcripts, ratings, analytics, and reports |
| Integrations and automation | Microsoft ecosystem options | CRM integrations, webhooks, API access, Zapier, and custom AI actions |
Add AI Without Removing the Human Option
A replacement for Microsoft Teams Live Chat should do more than pass messages from one window to another. Customers now expect fast answers outside normal business hours, but they also want a real person when the issue is complicated.
Social Intents lets you use an AI chatbot as the first responder and Microsoft Teams as the human support layer.
You can train the chatbot using your website, help center, PDFs, documents, and other business content. The AI can answer common questions about pricing, products, policies, account setup, or support steps. You can choose from models provided by ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
When the chatbot cannot answer confidently, the visitor asks for a person, or the conversation matches one of your escalation rules, the chat is sent to your team in Microsoft Teams. The agent receives the conversation history, so the customer does not need to repeat the question.
This setup works well for common support patterns:
- Let AI answer routine questions at any time of day.
- Send sales questions directly to the sales channel in Teams.
- Escalate account, billing, or technical issues to a person.
- Collect a visitor’s name, email address, and question before handoff.
- Use AI when agents are offline and offer human help during business hours.
- Qualify leads before notifying the sales team.
AI can also use Custom AI Actions to work with your existing systems. An action can look up an order, return shipping details, collect lead information, or create a ticket through an API. Your chatbot can handle the repeatable part of the request while your team steps in for anything that needs judgment or a personal response.
More Control Over the Website Chat Experience
Microsoft’s built-in widget was designed as a simple Teams feature. Social Intents is built specifically for customer-facing live chat and AI chatbots.
You can customize the widget to match your site, including colors, logo, welcome text, contact fields, language, online messages, and offline messages. You can create saved replies for common questions and control when the widget appears.
Proactive chat rules let you invite the right visitors to chat based on the page they are viewing or how they use your site. A visitor on a pricing page can see a different message from someone reading a support article. You can also route separate websites, departments, or chat widgets to different Teams channels.
Your team gets a searchable history of conversations, chat transcripts, customer ratings, response-time reporting, and chat-volume reporting. These tools make it easier to find missed opportunities and see how your support process is performing.
Bring More Than Website Chat into Teams
Website chat is often only one place where customers contact a business. Social Intents can also route WhatsApp, SMS, and Facebook Messenger conversations to your team.
This gives employees one familiar place to respond while customers use the channel that is easiest for them. Your agents do not have to keep several messaging dashboards open or learn a separate tool for every channel.
If your immediate concern is replacing Microsoft Teams Live Chat, you can start with the website widget and add other channels later.
How to Replace Microsoft’s Built-In Teams Live Chat
You have until October 5, 2026, but it is better to switch early. That gives your team time to test the new widget and confirm that every page has been updated.
1. Review Your Current Microsoft Setup
Find every website where the Microsoft Live Chat script is installed. Check your website templates, plugins, tag manager, and any regional or campaign sites.
List the people who currently receive chat requests. Document your business hours, welcome message, offline message, contact fields, and any AI or appointment features you use.
2. Create Your Social Intents Live Chat Widget
Start a free 14-day Social Intents trial and create a Live Chat widget. Choose Microsoft Teams as the place where agents will answer chats. There is no credit card required.
Configure your branding, online and offline behavior, agent availability, notifications, and routing. You can keep the initial setup simple and add more advanced features after the replacement is live.
3. Connect Your Microsoft Teams Channel
Install the Social Intents Live Chat app in Teams and select the team or channel that should receive website chats. You can use the channel your agents already know or create separate channels for sales, support, or different websites. Send several test conversations and have different team members join and respond.
Test Teams on desktop and mobile. Confirm that notifications are visible and that agents know how to join, transfer, and close a chat.
4. Configure Your AI Chatbot, If Needed
Add your website pages, help articles, PDFs, or knowledge base content. Test the questions customers ask most often. Set clear rules for when the chatbot should transfer a conversation to a person.
AI is optional. You can use Social Intents for human live chat only, AI-only conversations, or a combination of both.
5. Replace the Microsoft Widget Code
Remove the Microsoft <script id="chatbot"> code and add your Social Intents widget snippet. Check the change on desktop and mobile. Test the widget in a private browser window so you see the same experience as a new visitor.
If your site uses a cache or content delivery network, clear it after the update. Check several pages rather than assuming one successful test covers the entire site.
6. Preserve the Data You Need
Review the existing Teams channels and Microsoft Lists used by Live Chat. Export any historical information that must remain available outside Microsoft’s retention process.
Keep the old data for the period required by your company, then use Social Intents chat history and reporting for new conversations.
What Should Existing Microsoft Teams Live Chat Users Do Now?
Do not treat October 5 as the day to start evaluating a replacement. It is the day Microsoft’s service stops working.
Your replacement should be installed and tested before then. Run both solutions for a short period if your website setup allows it, or schedule a controlled switch and have several people test the full visitor-to-agent workflow immediately after deployment.
Use this checklist:
- Identify every site using Microsoft’s Live Chat widget.
- Tell support and sales teams about the retirement.
- Choose a replacement that still works with Microsoft Teams.
- Match your current hours, forms, routing, and branding.
- Test new chats, notifications, agent replies, offline behavior, and mobile use.
- Export any Microsoft Live Chat data you need to preserve.
- Replace the old script before October 5, 2026.
- Monitor incoming chats after the change.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Microsoft Teams Live Chat being retired?
Microsoft Teams Live Chat reaches end of support on October 5, 2026. New customers have been unable to set it up since August 6, 2026.
Will the Microsoft Teams Live Chat widget keep working after October 5, 2026?
No. Microsoft says widgets still embedded on websites will be hidden. New conversations, escalations, and customer interactions cannot be started through the widget.
Is Microsoft Teams being retired?
No. This announcement applies to Microsoft’s built-in customer-facing Live Chat widget, not the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform.
Will Microsoft delete our previous Live Chat data?
Microsoft says previously created customer data will not be deleted as part of the retirement. Existing Teams channels and associated Microsoft Lists data remain subject to your tenant’s retention and lifecycle policies. Export anything you need to preserve separately.
Can we still answer website chats from Microsoft Teams?
Yes. Social Intents provides a website chat widget that routes conversations into Microsoft Teams. Your agents can continue to receive notifications and respond from Teams on desktop or mobile.
Can we use an AI chatbot with Microsoft Teams?
Yes. Social Intents supports AI chatbots powered by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Dialogflow. The chatbot can answer questions first and escalate the conversation to a human in Teams when needed.
Do website visitors need a Microsoft Teams account?
No. Visitors use the chat widget on your website. They do not log in to Teams or install an app. Only your employees use Teams to receive and answer the chats.
Does Social Intents limit the number of Teams agents?
No. Social Intents includes unlimited agents on every plan, so you can add your support, sales, or customer success team without paying for each additional agent.
How long does it take to switch?
Most teams can create a widget, connect Microsoft Teams, and install the website code in a few minutes. Allow more time if you have several websites, custom routing, an AI knowledge base, or an internal approval process.
Can we move our existing Microsoft Teams Live Chat setup to Social Intents?
You can recreate the live workflow in Social Intents, connect it to Microsoft Teams, and replace the Microsoft website script with the Social Intents snippet. Your agents can keep responding from Teams. Historical Microsoft conversations remain in Microsoft 365 and are not automatically imported, so export any records you need before the retirement.
Keep Your Website Chats in Microsoft Teams
The Microsoft Teams Live Chat retirement does not have to force your agents into another support dashboard. Existing users can move the workflow to Social Intents, replace the retiring Microsoft widget, and keep the part their team values most: answering customers from Teams.
Social Intents adds the live chat features businesses need around that workflow, including unlimited agents, custom branding, chat routing, AI chatbots, human handoff, proactive invitations, searchable transcripts, reporting, and support for additional messaging channels.
Start your free 14-day trial or learn more about Live Chat for Microsoft Teams. No credit card is required, and you can test the full visitor-to-agent experience before removing the Microsoft widget from your website.
