Bulk messaging to 1:1 chats

[marbulk]

Hi, I think Teams should have a feature of bulk messaging to 1:1 chats. Often there is a need to send the same message to many users but this message is considered private or the discussion following the message is considered private so channels or group chats are not the way. Great example are HR people that often send messages to the company employees.

What's more, different message can have different receivers group.

E.g. 1: there is a summer trip and a message about a sensitive personal topic has to go through a private message to the people that have signed in for the trip.

E.g. 2: a system administrator collects information how employees manage company's private data locally.

So far I found that I can group people into named contact groups (click "Chat" on the left sidebar -> select "Contacts"). This is good - I can group people by a message topic. However:

- I still have to send the same message x times (x = number of people in this contact group) user by user.

- I can add only one person at the time to the new contact group - I would like to enter many @xyz and then click Add button.

- (minor, but helpful) there isn't a group members count number next to the group name. With large groups this is helpful to know that all the x members (x = a number) has been added. 

What do you think about this? Maybe there is another way I don't know about to achieve what I need? Every feedback is welcome.

[#2]

Hmm, I've found another site microsoftteams.uservoice.com with Teams feature requests. Somebody knows what's the difference between these two?

[#3]

Hi @marbulk  Uservoice is where we'd like bug reports and feature requests to be submitted.  That way, other users can "upvote" them and you'll receive alerts when progress has been made on the fix.  It is monitored and managed by Teams engineering staff.

This discussion forum is just that: a place for users to discuss issues, tips, tricks, observations, etc with each other.  It is not monitored by Microsoft staff on a regular basis.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

@marbulk I would suggest not thinking about these as 1:1 scenarios, because they clearly aren't. Use Teams!

In your examples

1. there is a summer trip and a message about a sensitive personal topic has to go through a private message to the people that have signed in for the trip.

Create a Team for people going on the trip, HR then post a message an @mention the Team so everyone gets notified. They can add a Microsoft Form to their message to securely get specific answers back which are automatically compiled into a table in excel.

2: a system administrator collects information how employees manage company's private data locally.

Use a Company Wide Team (if less than 10K users) and a similar approach to the above.

When posting a new conversation, the author can press the little format button, then on the expanded compose choose if they don't want others to reply on the thread, as it wouldn't be appropriate. Collecting data via Microsoft Forms is a far better experience for people submitting data, and enormously more convenient for the person collecting it.

[#5]

Isn't Uservoice going away soon?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/uservoice-pages-430e1a78-e016-472a-a10f-dc2a3df3450a

[#6]

Hi @JimGrisham  For other MSFT products, UV might be going away soon.  But it has been extended for Teams for several more months and the replacement will likely draw the data from the existing site (at least that's what's being discussed), so we're still promoting its use.  Thanks for keeping on top of these types of announcements.