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How to have notifications more prominent and stay open?
We are trying to use Teams in our business, instead of Slack. The main reason is to have additional project related systems in one place. We can use Teams for video, files, notes, and even add in Asana tabs. The less software to do all we want the better.
But we are struggling to make the final move over from Slack because we keep missing activity. We have enabled as much as we can we think, but what happens is a banner appears in the top right (on my Mac) and a little noice I think, but then it goes. There is then no alert on the screen. So if I leave my desk for 5 mins and come back, there is nothing to alert me of a chat. Same for my team mates, I send them a chat and am waiting HOURS until they notice it, then the chats are all full of apologies for missing it.
If we use teams, my current workflow is start a chat on teams, then use Slack to tell them.
Clearly something is wrong here. We cant switch to teams if we keep missing chat. Chat needs to be responded right away. I dont mind missing some other activities like someone uploaded a file. If they need my attention they should start a chat, but without proper notifications Teams is un-productive.
Teams is not appearing in the Mac notifications settings where I can choose to make it a persistent banner and things like that. But my colleagues are on Windows and have same issue so its not a Mac thing.
Am I missing some setting somewhere, I cant imagine millions of teams users having this same issue?
Thanks!
- There are two steps you need to do. Initially, the Mac:System Preferences: Notifications tab won't even show Microsoft Teams in the list of Apps. To remedy that you must use the instructions shown on this page. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-your-notifications-style-in-teams-0da93820-93d0-4da3-86b6-fc28d19908e3. Do that, then close and reopen the Mac:System Preferences:Notifications tab and find "Microsoft Teams" in the list. Once you do that, you need to hit the Enable switch and configure them as you want! I just completed those steps and now I have persistent notification just like Slack.
Hope this helps.
28 Replies
Hi All,
It's 2023 and it's still an issue. IHMO, this is partly due to fact that Windows handles all notifications as 'toast'-type notification thru the Notification Center. Remember the old Outlook popups you could drag anywhere? PLEASE BRING THOSE BACK!!!! I use multiple monitors and have completely whiffed on a Teams conversation because I wasn't looking at my primary monitor. Furthermore, even when you see Teams blinking in the taskbar, the notification is unrelated to who sent it; rather, the title is the active conversation, even though there's nothing new in it. For these 2 reasons, I have missed many a notification. I can't even call Teams notifications terrible, as it's an insult to other terrible notifications...
I have a similar issue using the Teams web page, on Windows 11.
I'd like the option for the web version of Teams to issue persistent notifications (that are logged in the Windows notification list, just like the Outlook web page's notifications), rather than the temporary ones it currently uses.
- There are two steps you need to do. Initially, the Mac:System Preferences: Notifications tab won't even show Microsoft Teams in the list of Apps. To remedy that you must use the instructions shown on this page. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-your-notifications-style-in-teams-0da93820-93d0-4da3-86b6-fc28d19908e3. Do that, then close and reopen the Mac:System Preferences:Notifications tab and find "Microsoft Teams" in the list. Once you do that, you need to hit the Enable switch and configure them as you want! I just completed those steps and now I have persistent notification just like Slack.
Hope this helps. AmityWeb This may be really trivial to many but I found that I had to move the Teams icon up on the icon tray so that it is always visible on the Desktop. Then I don't have to go and click anywhere to check on new activity. Like so (no new activity = tiny green checkmark):
- this is not a solution, sorry, work is intense and I am not "gazing boringly at my icon tray" as the day goes "by"...
- Your users need to get in the habit of checking teams or looking at the teams icon. When you get new activity you have a visual queue of such activity. You have unread notification etc. you also have the option to @mention them in chat and make sure it’s added to activity feed. Other alternatives are using mobile app and you can set notifications there to stay. But we’ve been using teams for years now and never have these issues so not sure why your users have issues not seeing notifications. They must just not be using teams ever to notice the notifications because the app itself points out when you have activity.
I mean even email is the same way. Notifications don’t stick around either to emails and people seem to see those no problem too. Teams works pretty much the same way.ChrisWebbTech No users should not "get in the habit of checking teams" that's why we have notifications. If wanted to send someone a message they have to check, I'd send am email. IMs are supposed to be instant, in your face notifications, that require an immediate response. Teams is woefully lacking it's notification abilities.
ChrisWebbTech "... get in the habit of checking teams or looking at the teams icon." ... REALLY ??? You are CLEARLY DISCONNECTED with your customer's use-models, and should REALLY be in the habit of advocating for features they need vs. you giving them UNREASONABLE suggestions!!!!!!
My customer use-models? lol. I don't work for Microsoft.
Anyway, my opinion on the matter is we don't get enough options. Never have at times. Teams really doesn't work different from e-mail in that sense, notification badges don't stay up etc. And people see e-mail. My point was that people should treat it as such and make sure they just are in the habit of checking it was my point at the time not that I didn't agree that it needed more options.
That said with the New Teams client in development I'm sure improvements are coming in this area. At least I hope because it's still lacking. And Windows Notifications def. are not the solution.
The way I see it is that MS Teams is being used in many organizations as a replacement for an internal instant messaging platform. My expectation from such a platform is to give us at least the option to make the pop-ups stay open, espcially "direct messages". I get it that one may be involved in numerous teams, and prominent dialog boxes with all the mentions and update could be annoying, but it would be very useful to make the direct messages a priority in this context. For instance, to have the option to keep open the direct messages' pop-up, and not all other updates.
majedd If you switch to Windows Notifications then notifications from Teams will follow the rules you set for notifications, how long as a pop-up (you can increase the default from 5s to 5 minutes) and after that they remain in Windows notification centre.
In the future I expect to see Teams for Work and School also connect to the Chat list in Windows 11, providing a sort of shortcut into active conversations.
