Microsoft is a great example of a company that knows how to keep the updates and enhancements coming. With Microsoft Teams, users constantly get access to a wide range of features and new functionalities intended to make life and work a little easier.
One of the most recent additions to the Teams experience was inspired by a request by Brian Bagley on the User Voice forum for Microsoft Teams. He asked the Teams professionals to provide the option for meeting organisers to temporarily disable chat during video and voice meetings. According to Bagley, his meetings were being disrupted by so many people focusing on the chat to a point where they were no longer paying full attention to the meeting itself.
The request was followed up with agreement from many other forum fans, who agreed that it would be helpful to turn off the chat function during important meetings, and sessions with students in the educational environment.
Keeping the Focus on the Meeting
Alex from Microsoft Teams Engineering recently responded to the User Voice request on the 9th of February, letting customers know that the ability to enable and disable chat functionality during a meeting is now available. You can find information about the option to turn chat off and on in the “participant settings” section of the documentation for Microsoft Teams.
Intended to help people in professional meetings and educational situations to keep the focus of attendees on the meeting itself, the option to turn chat off will be a valuable update for many employees. According to Microsoft, this service may be suitable for people who often have guest attendees too, as it will prevent participants from accidentally sharing information in the chat that might be confidential.
Users will have three options for turning chat off and on in Teams, including:
- Chat enabled: This is the default setting and will ensure that attendees can chat before, during, and after a meeting.
- Chat disabled: If you disable the chat, then no-one will be able to send chat messages, even the organizer. This setting can be turned off and on according to your needs.
- Chat during the meeting: This allows you to turn chat on just during a meeting session. The organizer will also be able to send messages whenever they choose.
To change whether you have your chat functionality switched on or off, you can tap on the meeting Settings and select an option next to the tab that says Allow Meeting Chat.
