I installed the New MSTeams last night, and the first thing I noticed this morning was, where is the 'Contacts View'??
I had set up Groups within Contacts View, it is so organized, efficient, fast to see who in a certain Contact Group is online to invite to a mtg or chat, so efficient for real time conversation. Having to enter one person at a time to see, is so-and-so on, no, let me check... and go through one by one to find someone online and available, ugh, so inefficient!
I did take the suggestion to "Pin" and have pinned two group chats, the people I most often talk to as a group. Hint/workaround: you go into the group chat and click on the symbol for 'people' in the upper right corner and you can see who is in the group and their status.
I too hope MS brings back 'Contacts view' as I used it every day, it created simplicity and efficiency!
I had about 10 groups set up in "Contacts View", to "Pin" all of those groups is too much, and its too many keystrokes to get to what you want... "Contacts" gave you that information 'at a glance'.