Turn Off Notifications for Selected Teams Conversations

Mute Notifications for Chatty Conversations

The Microsoft support article Manage Notifications in Teams explains how the desktop client supports the ability turn off notifications at a conversation level. The code is still in beta (but documented) and when it’s released, you access the option from the […] menu at the top of a conversation thread (Figure 1) and choose Turn off notifications.

The concept and implementation of muting a conversation is very similar to the way that you can choose to mute notifications for a complete channel. The big difference is that you can only mute a conversation after it starts.

A user’s general notification settings might mute notifications for all conversations or the user might have muted notifications for the channel. If this is the case, they can unmute a specific conversation that they want to receive notifications for.

When to Mute Conversations

Muting notifications for a specific conversation is useful when the thread becomes very chatty and multiple responses are received in a short period. This causes the Activity Feed to be swamped with updates. You might have responded at some point but have now lost interest in the conversation.

After you mute a conversation, Teams still sends notifications if someone @mentions you in the conversation or reacts (for instance, likes) a reply you posted to the conversation. If you want to restart notifications for the conversation, go back to the menu and select Turn on notifications.

The support article also points out that you can “turn down the noise” by hiding a particularly busy channel or simply set your presence to Do Not Disturb when the time comes to get work done without interruption (what the MyAnalytics people call “focus time”). These are the kind of useful tips that should be communicated to users to help them use Teams more productively.

Mobile Devices

You can’t mute a conversation with the Teams mobile client. However, because muting a conversation affects what appears in the Activity Feed, you won’t see notifications on mobile clients for muted conversations.

---

Need more information about Teams? Look no further than the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. It’s packed full of information, some of which is even useful.