Microsoft Teams' Chat

Question

Hi -

We recently migrated to Azure and are using Teams. When our company was small, communications were sent out via WhatsApp. We want to get rid of WhatsApp and use Teams. I have a few questions:

1. Is there any way to "force" staff to be logged into Teams or at least make it easier? We noticed a lot of our mobile staff not logged into the mobile app.
2. Is there a way as an admin to force notifications on a particular Team? Using company devices and a Team that is for all team members, we would like to ensure notifications are on in case we have urgent communications
3. For WhatsApp, we chat with everyone in the company. Now that we are getting rid of that, we want to have a "chat" setup in Teams for everyone in the company. Not a Team, but a chat. Is the only option to add every single email address one by one? Or can I add distribution groups, etc? I searched for distribution groups within the Chat and it only shows individual users. The Team section does not really function as a chat and is more of a posting board.

These answers are critical for us to adopt Teams, so I hope someone knows the answers! =)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi @BmoreOs ,

For question 1 and 2, totally agree with the replies provided by michev.

Regarding the 3rd question about chatting with everyone in the company, if the users in your organization is less than the limitation 250, you can refer to the steps below to create a chat for all users in one go:

1. Prepare a member list which includes everyone. You can get this by exporting the membership of a distribution group that includes all using Exchange powershell, or assuming you have an org-wide team in Teams, you can export the member list via Teams admin center:
   
2. Open the file in Excel, convert the email address column into a comma separated row. You may refer to the methods shared in the link below to prepare the email address list:
   Convert a column into a comma separated list
   (Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.)
3. Create a url link that follows the deep link format, then copy the link into the browser, choose Open Microsoft Teams and you will get a chat with all users included: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=<user1>,<user2>,...&topicName=<chat name>&message=<precanned text>

I tried testing in my lab tenant and it works fine:

Reference: how to add multiple users in teams chat in one go

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Answer 2

1) No, users decide which apps to use on their devices, even if the device is managed

2) No, notifications are configurable by end users only. In any case, for "urgent" communication you should probably look into the so-called "urgent" messages: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/mark-a-message-as-important-or-urgent-in-teams-ea99d5b6-1317-4550-8d75-86ff14cd4462

3) There's no such thing as "company-wide" chat. Maximum of 250 users can be added to a chat, and you can add them one at a time, or by selecting a "tag" (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-tags-in-teams-667bd56f-32b8-4118-9a0b-56807c96d91e)

Answer 3

@Vasil Michev @Yuki Sun-MSFT Thanks for your replies. I understand for questions 1 and 2.. maybe it will be something possible in the future.

For question 3, I will try the steps you outlined, @Yuki Sun-MSFT . Do you know if Microsoft has any plans to make this possible? It seems silly that it's not, especially when admins have to go through workarounds to do it. Any ideas as to why it is not a feature?