At it's core, Microsoft Teams is a great tool for instant messaging. A major feature of this type of program relies on receiving notifications about new messages when and how it makes sense. To accommodate this, Microsoft Teams has many settings for customizing these notifications.
Access the Settings Menu
- The first step is to access the notification settings
- Click on the ... (Settings and more) Menu
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Then select Settings
Notifications and Activity Settings
The settings page will look similar to this image. Look along the left side at the Settings items. Click on Notifications and activity to view those settings.
General
Initially we see the General section where all notifications can be muted, regardless of the status.
With this turned off, a setting Always show urgent and priority contact notifications is grayed out. With this setting turned on, you can choose to suppress these notifications as well.
- Urgent notifications are messages or posts where the sender has marked it with the "Urgent" priority to improve the likelihood that the recipient(s) will see and read the message.
- Priority contacts are individuals specified in the Privacy settings that will always show a notification or ring (for phone calls) - even when the status is "In a Meeting" or "Do Not Disturb". These settings are illustrated at the end of this article.
Sound
The next section is for Sound. Here the tone played when a notification is received can be customized. (This is not the same as a ringtone for incoming phone calls. Those can be customized under the Calls menu.)
Play sounds with notifications
Normal notification tones can differ from urgent and priority notification tones. Select the preferred sound from this menu, pressing the play button (triangle icon) to hear a preview.
Play sounds with urgent and priority contact notifications
This setting selects a tone that can be different from the tone for other notifications. Select the preferred sound from this menu, pressing the play button (triangle icon) to hear a preview.
Play sounds with incoming calls, requests to join, and meeting start notifications
Sounds can be silenced for incoming calls, or meeting start/join notifications, though there will still be a visible prompt from Teams when these occur.
Play sounds when I'm busy or in a meeting
Sounds can even be turned on during busy and meeting times.
Display
The next notification setting is regarding the displayed notifications. These are the windows that appear in the lower or upper right corner of your main screen (depending on the operating system).
Show message and content previews in notifications
The first option allows you to display a small portion of the message you received in the window. Unchecking this will suppress the preview but show when one is received.
Show notifications during calls and meetings
The second option will continue showing these notifications while on a call or in a meeting. Leaving this unchecked will suppress these during a call or meeting.
Missed Activity Emails
Missed activity emails will send an email while Teams is not in use with information in the activity feed. For example, if Teams has been quit (due to system being shut down or if you have quit the program) and not accessed via Mobile or Web interface, an activity email will generate once every hour by default. The frequency can be adjusted to send an email for every missed activity, every 10 minutes, every hour, every 8 hours, once per day or turned off entirely.
This feature is helpful for those who are not frequent users of Teams to continue to see activity. The contents of this email are entirely dependent on the Chats and channels selections, as it is assumed to summarize notices from the Activity feed. If the activity feed is turned off for a particular notification then the activity will be entirely missed.
Chats and channels
This next group of settings control notifications from all messages in the Chats section and posts in a Team Channel. There are a couple of different types of notifications: Activity feed and Banner.
- Activity Feed is located in the upper left corner of Teams (the Bell icon). This is a collection of items from chats, teams, and calendar entries. Navigating to Activity feed offers a shortcut to recent posts and messages.
- Banner Notifications are the windows that appear in the upper or lower right corner of the main screen to indicate something has happened, such as a meeting starting, message received, or announcement posted.
Banner notifications can be easily missed or dismissed, so in most cases, it's ideal to have both options selected when possible.
@Mentions
This set of settings is about a feature called @mentions.
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@Mentions place the @ symbol before a person's name, team or channel name, a tag, or everyone to notify those mentioned.
- When this is enabled to show in their Activity feed, it will include a link to the post or chat.
- This makes it easier to navigate to the context of the @mention.
- This is useful for a callout to an individual with a question, job well done, or simply increasing the likelihood of the post being seen.
- Tags are another component of Teams. Each Team can specify certain tags that will @mention a specific person or subset of persons in the team.
- To get the attention of an entire team or chat group @Everyone may be used with the same effect.
@Mentions toggle
This turns these notifications on or off entirely.
Channel and team @mentions
This will display notifications when a team channel or team name is used.
Tag @mentions
This will show notifications for posts with a tag that includes your name.
Everyone in chat @mentions
Sends a notification when @everyone is mentioned.
Personal @mentions
Sends a notification when your name is mentioned.
Other Chat and Channel Notifications
Replies to my channel posts and replies
This setting will show a notification if someone responds to a post made by you in a channel.
Likes and reactions
These notifications will appear if your post or chat receives a reaction other than reply.
Posts in shown and pinned channels
Channels can be hidden; this option will show a notification in those channels that are not hidden.
Include replies
This has an option to display or suppress responses to other people's posts.
Meetings
The next set of settings is for notifications connected to meetings. This affects meetings scheduled in both Outlook and Teams, as they both live in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Meeting start notifications
This will prompt you when a meeting has started with a button to join an online Teams meeting.
Meeting chat notifications
When a chat begins for an online meeting, notifications can be muted, unmuted or muted until you join the meeting or interact with the chat. This could be helpful to suppress during hybrid meetings where in-person members all have laptops and don't wish to have prompts going off when something is placed in the chat.
Meet now start notifications
When the Meet Now button is selected in a chat or channel, this will enable or suppress those notifications.
People or Presence
When working closely with a colleague, it may be helpful to see when they come and go. This setting will send a notification when a person's status changes to or from Available. To set this up, click the Manage Notifications button under this setting. In the next window search for the colleague's name and select it. Press the X next to their name to remove them.
NOTE: The name of this setting has changed at the time of this article's writing and could appear as People or Presence depending on whether it has been updated.
Calendar
These settings will show new calendar invites in the Activity section, so they can be responded to within Teams. These invites may be organized in Teams or Outlook. These have the Activity, Banner, and Off options.
New invites, updates and cancellations sent to me
This setting will notify of all meeting activity. This may be seen as redundant if Outlook is preferred over Teams.
When people forward meetings I've organized
It may be helpful to know when additional people are invited to meetings you've organized. This will populate the Activity section with this information.
Privacy Settings
These settings are listed separately in the settings menu under Privacy. This is where specific people or phone numbers can be listed to notify or ring whether or not the status is set to Available. Since CUNE has Presence turned on in our phone system, phone calls are suppressed while in any status other than Available. If there is a need to receive calls in any situation, the phone number should be added here.
Other helpful links
First things to know about notifications in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support