New Microsoft Teams Activity Feed Controls Clamp Down on Reaction and App Notifications

Microsoft is rolling out new activity feed controls for notifications posted by apps and when people use reactions to respond to messages. The idea is to make the activity feed less distracting for busy users. The interesting technical issue is how to deal with notifications created by the many hundreds of Teams-enabled apps available today.

Teams Notifications Updated for Native OS Support and Better Privacy

Teams notifications can now be handled by Windows and macOS, and you can get better privacy by disabling message preview in the notifications, including on Teams mobile clients. The privacy updates are available now and support for the native OS notifications in both Windows and macOS should be available in mid-November.

Controlling Teams Trending and Suggested Notifications

If you look at your Teams activity feed, you might notice some notifications automatically generated because “you might be interested.” The suggested and trending notifications are intended to drive user engagement, which is nice, but experienced users who already have a busy activity feed might want to disable these notifications.

How Teams Priority Access Allows Notifications to Get Through

No one likes to be disturbed when they’re concentrating on something important, which is why Teams has a Do Not Disturb presence. But we all have people who are important to us, and that’s why the priority access list exists. Even when you’ve set Do Not Disturb, notifications from people on the priority access list get through. The notifications might break your concentration, but they might also tell you about something important (or not, as the case might be).