Microsoft Teams to Offer Admins More Control Over Meeting Chat

Microsoft Teams will introduce a new setting to give admins more control over meeting chat, allowing them to disable chat before and after meetings. This feature will be available on Microsoft Teams desktop, web, and mobile clients starting in December.

Microsoft is expanding the “Meeting chat” control in the Teams admin center with two new options: “In-meeting only for everyone” and “In-meeting only except anonymous users.” Administrators will be able to access these options by navigating to Teams admin center > Meetings > Meeting policies > Meeting engagement > Meeting chat.

According to Microsoft, IT admins will be able to choose from five options in the “Meeting chat” setting. These include On for everyone, On for everyone but anonymous users, Off, In-meeting only for everyone (new), and In-meeting only except anonymous users (new).

“Admins can select the In-meeting only options to disable the ability of meeting participants to send messages in the meeting chat before or after the meeting, for meetings organized by specific users in their tenant. When one of the In-meeting only options is selected, participants can read past chat history, but they can only send messages in the meeting chat while the meeting is active,” Microsoft explained.

New meeting chat controls arrive for all Microsoft Teams users by early 2025

Microsoft plans to roll out this new feature to targeted release customers in early December. It will become generally available for all commercial customers in January 2025, with government customers to follow in February 2025.

In November, Microsoft Teams will soon introduce a new chat and channels experience that will combine private chats and channel messages in a single view. This new view will provide three unread filters at the top to highlight unread messages, channels, and chat conversations.