That company once known as Facebook is now partnering with enterprise rival Microsoft. The goal is to integrate its Workplace tool with Teams in a potential foreshadowing of future Metaverse collaboration.

The partnership will see a cross-pollination of features between the two apps. Starting in early 2022, Workplace users, for example, can live stream Teams video meetings in Workplace groups. Meanwhile Team users will have access to Workplace content without having to switch between apps.

The communication tool will visually appear as a pinned tab in Teams. In a statement to CNBC Meta’s head of Workplace, Ujjwal Singh, said the partnership was geared primarily for businesses that already use both Teams and Workplace to solve different problems

“Teams is arguably best in class around productivity, so this is really two best-in-class products coming together to solve an employee-experience problem,” Singh told CNBC.

Microsoft called the Mesh and Teams integration a “gateway to the Metaverse”. The company describes the partnership as “a persistent digital world that is inhabited by digital twins of people, places and things.”