Chats can now be disabled during Microsoft Teams meetings

With the ability to disable chats during meetings, its a bit easier to keep people focused while on Teams.

What you need to know

• Microsoft Teams now lets you disable chat during meetings.
• Chat can be disabled or enabled on a per-meeting basis.
• You can also set it so attendees can only chat during the meeting.

Thousands of people requested for Microsoft Teams to gain the ability to disable chats within meetings. Microsoft has responded and rolled out the feature to Teams. Now, people can enable or disable chat on a per-meeting basis. A Microsoft engineer explains the feature in a Teams feedback forum (via ZDNet).

"Please allow meeting organizer to temporarily disable chat during a meeting," asked the original piece of feedback. Adding, "We often have people so focused on the chat, they don't pay any attention to the actual meeting. We'd love to be able to turn off chat at the beginning of the meeting, and then turn it back on at an appropriate point."

A Microsoft engineer confirmed that the feature is now avaialble, and shared a link to a Microsoft support page.

The page explains that there are three options for chats during meetings:

• Enabled (default): Attendees can chat before, during, and after the meeting.
• Disabled: No one, including the organizer, can send chat messages.
• During the meeting only: Attendees can chat during the meeting. The organizer can send messages at any time.

To swap between these settings, use the option next to Allow meeting chat.

Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams allows you to collaborate with colleagues, upload files, send messages, and chat through video. It integrates with Office 365 and several other cloud services.