As companies spend more time in Microsoft Teams as the new “hub” for hybrid work, there’s a growing need for business leaders to rethink compliance policies. The correct policies in your business not only make a difference to your regulatory strategies, but can also improve the work experience for team members, minimising issues like harassment.
Microsoft introduced the “Microsoft Purview” solution for compliance within all Teams, Yammer, and Exchange communications. With this service, companies can establish policies for compliance, using either pre-existing templates suggested by Microsoft, or an intelligent policy builder.
The solution also comes with a workflow builder, and recommended actions to help businesses respond effectively to potential compliance problems according to industry standards.
Part of the compliance solution is the new “Report a Concern” feature in Microsoft Teams.
The “Report a Concern” Feature in Microsoft Teams
Once your policies and permissions in place, your users will see the “Report a Concern” option in Teams chat messages. Availability for user-reported messages addressing communication compliance issues was introduced by Teams in May 2022, However, Microsoft notes this feature may not be available to every organisation until August 31st, 2022.
For companies leveraging communication compliance following July 2022, user-reported messages availability may take up to 30 days from the date when you set up your licensing with communication compliance. Notably, communication compliance is available with the following subscriptions:
- Microsoft 365 E5/A5/F5/G5, trial or paid version with the Microsoft Compliance add-on
- Microsoft E5/A5/F5/G5 with the Insider Risk Management add-on
- Microsoft Office 365 E5 (Trial or paid)
- Microsoft Office 365 A5 (Trial or paid)
Provided you have Purview Compliance switched on for your Microsoft Teams instance, the “Report a Concern" option in Teams chat will be available to view for all users by default.
This can be managed via the Teams admin center “messaging policies” section. The admin centre also allows businesses to assign specific policies to individual users or teams, depending on their compliance needs. Notably, users in your Teams environment will be automatically assigned to your “global” policy, unless you create and assign custom policies to individual users.
How to Report a Concern in Microsoft Teams
When the compliance features are enabled in Microsoft Teams, your users will be able to click on the “…” or “more options” section on a Microsoft Teams comment or message. This is the same feature you’d use to reply to, save, or pin a message. The “Report a Concern” option is located underneath the “Share to Outlook” option.
When a user clicks on the “Report a Concern” message, they’ll see a pop-up, with a captured version of the message being reported. They can choose whether to cancel the report, or submit the message for review. When users click on the “report” option, they’ll receive a confirmation of their submission, while other participants in the chat don’t see anything.
The message will be submitted to the users in your team with the “Review” permissions within the compliance section. These are the staff members responsible for tracking potential compliance issues. A dashboard is available within the Compliance section of Teams for tracking incoming reports, and keeping an eye on resolved or pending issues.
When a message is submitted for review, the “Review” members in your team will receive a notification allowing them to immediately remove the message from Teams. Reviewers can see all messages and remove them from view for other users instantly.
