Forum Discussion
Send email to private channel
Kathryn Whiteley They are working on it but so far they haven't found anything explaining the problem.
ParLinderoth Its most likely as validated.
- Most likely.
- Yes, it is set in our tenant so that is most likely why the "All" option is not visible for us. Would have been nice to have the domain restriction as default but that the team owner had the option to open up for anyone to email the channel.
I wonder if it is this setting that somehow is causing emailing to any private channel to fail since it is working for you who don't have the domain restriction set. - Yes, I have the option. My guess is once you set the option in the admin center to restrict domains to send to channel the option goes away, wonder if you have that option set Team Settings > Email integraiton section.
Kathryn Whiteley We had a similar business need. I guess it is possible to solve by using a shared mailbox and Power Automate but it is not a nice solution.
ChrisWebbTech I actually created a brand new team and a new private channel and it didn't work to email to it. Do you by the way still have the option "Anyone can email this channel"? I only see "Only members..." and "Only from these domains..." for both private and standard channels.
Microsoft's statements certainly seem to make no sense -- since we are still seeing email from non-team members being received within the private channels:
"...with the changes rolling out since February 2020 Teams groups are now fully in line with Exchange and Office 365 groups. <...snip...> The changes to Teams was fully saturated as of mid April 2020 and this is why I have been able to reproduce in all of the different set ups of Teams. If a channel is public then you are able to message the group using the email, but not if it is private."- Well that works too, so I dunno, maybe newer private channels work? I just sent from external and internal user not in the Team to Private channel and it's working.
- Wait nevermind slept since this came up.... it's you can't send from people inside the org not in the channel that is the issue.
- Yeah that makes no sense. You literally have an advanced option setting on private Team channels to specify that you want to allow e-mail from anyone......
- Glad we have an answer. But I actually still have a private channel that is receiving the occassional email from non-members (last one received was just overnight last night.)
Also, while I understand the philosophy, that answer is a bit disappointing. Our use-case was to use a private channel to manage (non IT) service requests via Teams. With a private channel we could keep the requests private from the rest of the organization, but able to assign to private channel members for resolution. Without this, we'll have to abandon Teams for this use-case.
Kat Whiteley
PATH Finally got an answer from Microsoft:
Thank you for your patience as I worked through this with the senior technicians to confirm my findings in several tests reproducing the issue as well as reach out the development team for information. I am now able to confirm that this is functioning correctly and why it changed in mid-april for all tenants.
Previously Teams was not fully governed by the Exchange and Office 365 group rules, and the private Teams channels were still being modified as they were rolled out since their release last November, 2019. The original private channels for a few months were able to receive external to the private channel members emails. But with the changes rolling out since February 2020 Teams groups are now fully in line with Exchange and Office 365 groups. This means that private channels work the same way as private groups. If you are not a member of the private group, even if you have the email address for the channel, you will not be able to send messages to it. This is bound with the same rules that govern private Exchange and Office 365 groups. The changes to Teams was fully saturated as of mid April 2020 and this is why I have been able to reproduce in all of the different set ups of Teams. If a channel is public then you are able to message the group using the email, but not if it is private.
I have already updated the team as to the findings as well as management and they will work to update the documents to explicitly state the connections and work to introduce the changes in a future update.
Now it seems like we can't email any private channel that we are not a member of, no matter if the team is "old" or "new". Can anyone confirm in another tenant?
Sindre95 Unfortunately not, I am still working with Microsoft on this.
We have the some problem, do you have any updates from the ticket? ParLinderoth
