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I don't use Microsoft Teams. How do I stop people form messaging me and turn off all notifications?

Copper Contributor

I don't use Microsoft Teams, nor do I have any desire to use it. I randomly get emails saying my Teammates are trying to message me. They are not. None of my teammates us Teams. They are people in other parts of the organization. How do I make it so people can not try to message me in teams since I will not see it or respond and how can I stop the email notifications?

6 Replies
best response confirmed by VI_Migration (Silver Contributor)
Solution

@Buddylicious To change your notifications login into Teams (web version if you like), top right click on your image (or the person image) and select Settings.  From there you can change your preferred notifications - for you, they will all be Off.  Your Team administrator may have auto-added you to certain Teams, so if you are allowed you could remove yourself from that Team.  However, Teams can be associated with an Office 365 Group, which you may without realising be using.  As to removing you from Teams all together, I suggest you contact your tenant administrator as I believe this can only be done by them, and the consequences of removing you from a Team should be discussed.  Hope this helps.

Thanks @Tanya Denton for your response. I have turned off all of my notifications and I'm glad that the web version now supports Mac. This doesn't seem to do anything for the core flaw with this system in that people not in any of your teams can message you when you are offline. Now, I won't get the vague notifications prompting me to login to a system I don't use, but that doesn't do anything for the random person who messages me expecting a response that they will not receive. I have set a status that says I do not use this platform and to not expect a response, but even that is not visible when someone messages me. They must hover over my name.

@Buddylicious You will need to speak to your Teams administrator (or Global Admin of your tenant).  I believe they can set up a policy to disallow you using chat and possibly Teams, but as I said before have a chat with your IT guys and see what they can do as presumably your organization has made the decision to use Teams.  BTW Teams is good, it has helped us minimise the amount of email we all get and has improved communication :)

Sounds to me like your Senior leadership and or IT department need to set a policy around Teams use. Either you guys don't use it at all or you should be using it even if you don't like it.

It's not your decision alone to decide if your re going to ignore if everyone else expects that is the way your organization will communicate. I mean you can, but if I were your boss, and that's an agreed tool that the company is going to utilize, then it's your job review that will get hit with not following agreed on standards that will get hit :P. But it sounds like nothing has been communicated and it's just randomly getting used.

Anyway, it sounds like there is a communication gap here with the tool and it either needs to be disabled across the board, or some policies and expectations need to be implemented and communicated around it, or people need to be told to not message people unless their presence is showing as online.
The problem is that my organization is large and full of multiple independent units. I'm sure Teams is a fine platform, but the Provost requires me to use Slack and Zoom, so I do. It appears that IT uses Teams/Skype and have enabled it for the entire organization. I use Skype for Business when I have to join one of their meetings. I want to help the central IT people when they have a question about the technology I manage, but at some point you have to draw the line at how many chat applications you have running.
I don't see the end of it, specially when you involve as you say separate groups. Sounds like your IT folks need to set you up as Skype Only so that all your chats go to Skype. But if you are getting added to some Teams then you'll have to have another app :p if that is something you'll need to participate in, otherwise you shouldn't get notifications in Teams if you aren't in a Team and your account is set to Skype Only.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by VI_Migration (Silver Contributor)
Solution

@Buddylicious To change your notifications login into Teams (web version if you like), top right click on your image (or the person image) and select Settings.  From there you can change your preferred notifications - for you, they will all be Off.  Your Team administrator may have auto-added you to certain Teams, so if you are allowed you could remove yourself from that Team.  However, Teams can be associated with an Office 365 Group, which you may without realising be using.  As to removing you from Teams all together, I suggest you contact your tenant administrator as I believe this can only be done by them, and the consequences of removing you from a Team should be discussed.  Hope this helps.

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