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Remind Me Option Sets Reminders for Chat and Channel Messages
All good ideas tend to be replicated in different forms. Outlook has the ability to flag messages with reminders, and now Teams messaging (both chat and channels) does too. According to message center notification MC1470887 (11 September 2026, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 565869), targeted release tenants will see the new feature in early October 2026. Microsoft plans to move swiftly to general availability later in October 2026.
Microsoft says that adding reminders to Teams messaging will “help users track follow-ups and stay organized. Users can turn messages into actionable reminders, improving productivity and ensuring important conversations are not missed.” In other words, Teams will prompt you about messages in the hope that you’ll remember why you flagged them and what action you intended to take.
It’s kind of interesting to see Microsoft acknowledge that the array of other Microsoft 365 features like personal Planner plans, To-do, Loop task lists, and Outlook tasks don’t serve a need for people who discover that they need a lightweight method to remind themselves of something raised in a chat or channel conversation.
I use reminders to mark conversations where I believe more work is needed for a resolution. For example, if I ask someone a question and they respond by saying that they need to check something or with somebody and will get back to me, I add a “next week” reminder to make sure that I’ll be prompted. It saves adding a To Do item, which is the alternative.
Using Remind Me to Create Reminders
Reminders are private to individual users and are enabled by default for both member and guest accounts. There is no administrator control to disable Reminders for either a user or the tenant. But there’s no need to stop people using reminders. At least, I can’t think of a good reason to do so.
Reminders are set through the new Remind me option in the action menu for messages (Figure 1). Teams uses the same user interface for chat messages.
Teams doesn’t pay any attention to user working hours configured in Outlook Using “later today” pushes a reminder out by about two hours. Tomorrow goes to 9am. When a reminder is set for a message, a small clock icon appears beside the message. Hovering over the icon reveals when the reminder is due.
The Reminders View
Teams clients include a new Reminders view in the Quick Views list where users can see, edit, or remove reminders. Figure 2 shows three reminders for channel messages with one message selected. You can reply direct to the message from the view.
Clients configured for the combined view of channels and chats see a single set of reminders for both types of messages. On the other hand, if you prefer to see chats and channels in separate views, separate reminder views are shown for chats and channels.
The Reminders view is exposed by default (you won’t see it if you have no reminders) but can be suppressed so that it only appears when a reminder is due (Figure 3).
When the time comes for a reminder, Teams updates the “pill count” (number of unread items) for the Reminders view and sends a toast notification.
Sensible Reminders
Reminders are a useful addition to Teams which removes workarounds such as using To Do, saving messages, or using the chat with self feature to post messages. They are not a task management solution, but reminders do recognize how people actually work.
I wonder if Microsoft will eventually add a command shortcut such as /remind 18:00 or /remind tomorrow. Slack’s /remind command works well, and a similar capability would fit naturally in Teams. Then again, perhaps that would be taking the good-idea analogy a little too far.
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