M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-Enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups

MC408435 – Updated November 29, 2022: Microsoft has updated the content below with additional information. Thank you for your patience.

You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members.

Organizations rely on Distribution Lists (DLs) as a tool to create groups of users that mirror organizational knowledge and workflows. Bringing this awareness to target audiences for specific content will enhance the core Teams experience. Allowing our customers to leverage DLs can increase workflow efficiency and bridge the gap between legacy knowledge of organization structure and a new Teams structure. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 62354

When this will happen:

Microsoft will begin rollout in late November (previously early November) and expect to complete rollout by early January (previously late December).

How this will affect your organization:

With this update, users will now be able to select Distribution Lists as an audience to begin a chat within Teams. 

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Admins will be able to toggle this feature on or off for their tenant in the Teams admin center.

This feature will support starting a chat with Distribution lists, Office 365 groups or mail enabled security groups

As a part of this feature user can only initiate chat if Distribution lists, Office 365 groups or mail enabled security groups having <=250 members. This feature does not allow to initiate chat in situation where member list is >250.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.