Disable Chat Messaging in Teams Meeting

[DanielMinett]

Hi all,

We've been having issues with students misusing the chat section during remote learning (Teams Meeting).

It would be great to have the ability to disallow chat in meetings either during the meeting setup, or in the admin portal.

Regards

Dan

[#2 · Accepted solution]

You can disable chat for users in a Meeting policy, this will stop them from chatting in all meetings. Set MeetingChatEnabledType to Disabled using powershell.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/set-csteamsmeetingpolicy?view=skype-ps

You can't disable meeting chats per meeting, but there is an uservoice requesting this. You can vote for it here:

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/40010275-disable-chat-temporar...

[#3]

Hi Linus,

Perfect, thank you

Dan

[#4]

I found this:

It’s going to be under messaging policies now under the newish Teams Admin center. You can apply policies to students and then chat off there in that policy.

[#5]

@DanielMinett 

You can mute all students or individual students and they won't be able to post in the chat during meetings. Meetings have to be hosted on a team channel. 

[#6]

@TechTeachTyner I have always done what you said and muted the students and that fixed it.  However, no matter what setting I have on now, it appears as if they can chat whether I want them to or not.  Did something change in the last week or so?

[#7]

@goodtimo ,

Are you still hosting the meeting in the channel? Organizations have admin rights to edit meeting settings too, so it may be that. Also hard mute is a new setting that is being rolled out. 

[#8]

@TechTeachTyner Yes, in the channel.  I had him check, admin can turn the conversations OFF or ON during a meet now meeting and that is it.  We already have Chat disabled on the Left side of TEAMS for students already.  

Something changed.

[#9]

@DanielMinett 

[#10]

@TechTeachTyner Can muted students still raise their hands? 

[#11]

@TechTeachTyner when you mute the pupils this way does this disable the chat. When I say chat, I am referring to the conversation that they can have when the lesson/meeting is running.

What are the different ways to mute them from talking and stop them chatting whilst lesson is running.

Thanks

[#12]

@DanielMinett hi

[#13]

I have policy set where 'Allow chat in meetings' is set to disabled in meetings policies. I have tried changing the policy settings both through the Teams Admin Center and powershell. Students are still able to chat during meetings and also reply to the meeting chat after meetings have ended. I have found that the 'mute' option in the manage team setting prevents students from being able to do those, but it also leaves an option to attempt to resend/retry when the 'mute' option is disabled.

Are there any thoughts on why the centralised meetings policy in the Teams Admin Center isn't working for this particular setting? Is the setting bugged? Will there be a fix? I'm just trying every avenue I can.

@alice1832  I might be a bit late on this for you. I tested raising hands with a muted student and they were still able to raise their hand during meetings. I hope that is helpful.

[#14]

I would also like to confirm that we are seeing the same experience as @LPackham. The Allow chat in meetings option in the Teams admin centre is still allowing students to chat in meetings. Please could you let us know if this gets addressed.

[#15]

@lat-lukepollard Hi, you can prevent meeting chat by using Teams meeting policy. And you can prevent all other chat by using a Teams messaging policy.

If you have verified that the setting is correct applied to the Meeting policy (for ex.) you also need to verify that this policy is also assigned to the individuals, as it's a per-participant policy.

It's very common that the different policies in Teams are not assigned to users, meaning they are not taking effect as it's only the policy that has the correct value, not the user.

[#16]

@ChristianBergstrom 

Hi,

As far as I can see the Teams Meeting policy where the 'Allow chat in meetings' option is disabled is being applied to the student users via Group Policy Assignment. Further, I can see that the correct meeting policy is assigned by checking the user accounts in Teams and selecting 'View Policies'. Even with these settings selected and applied, students can still chat during meetings, no matter how the meeting is scheduled, i.e. students are invited either through a Teams channel or required attendees, they are forced to wait in the lobby and are made to join as attendees rather than presenters.

I've had a support ticket with Microsoft, but a fix hasn't yet been reached. This is a great, strong community so thought it was also worth sharing here!

[#17]

@LPackham Hi, sounds like it could be a "ranking" issue, or perhaps a delay if this was recently configured? I've experienced delays up to 48 hours when working with Teams policies.

Assign policies to your users in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs

[#18]

@ChristianBergstrom Thanks for responding again!

We have set the student policy assignment as Rank 1. There is a staff policy in Rank 2 that does have the chat enabled. The policies had been set for a little while in that configuration.

[#19]

@LPackham I see. Please update this conversation when you get an answer from Microsoft as I'm really interested in what's causing the "non-effect". Thanks!

[#20]

@DanielMinett 

This appeared in our tenant today; however, In meeting doesn't seem to work like it's worded, when it's set to this, only the Organizer can chat, but no presenters or attendees. BUT it does mean that it can be disabled to stop chat after the meeting is done.