Maximum Chat Participants needs to be increased

[BMoreOs]

Hello -

With how the default Teams' notifications are setup, our leadership decided we need a mass chat for all staff.  This works much better and feedback has been positive from our staff.  We prefer the "real time" chat and how it looks compared to the Teams' forum posting format.  

With that said, the chat participant limit is 250.  WhatsApp just increased their limit to 512.  Slack has a 1,000 person limit, Telegram is 200,000!!  Does Microsoft have any plans to increase the 250 limit?  We may need to move away from it if there are no plans.

WhatsApp's Doubling the Size of Group Chats in the App | Social Media Today

Thanks

[#2]

You shouldn’t use a group chat for that. Create an org-wide team and use the channel conversations. You can have 10000 members in that.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/create-an-org-wide-team

[#3]

Thanks, but if you see my posting: "We prefer the "real time" chat and how it looks compared to the Teams' forum posting format"

By default, channel notifications are only mentions. Chat notifications are all messages unless you mute. Also, the channel posting has a community forum posting type feel that is not ideal for real time communication.

I am seeing this request/complaint all over the place. I also see Microsoft developing a way to add chats based on security/distribution groups so they must be aware of the demand.

[#4]

Well, next time just write channel conversations 😉

What do you mean by only mentions? They have these as available config.

- All new posts will notify you each time someone starts a new conversation in the channel.

- Include all replies will notify you any time someone replies to a conversation.

- Channel mentions will notify you whenever someone @mentions the channel.

[#5]

By default, all employees channel notifications are set to Custom - All new posts Off, Channel mentions - Banner and feed.

As I am sure you know, it is impossible to get the majority of staff to make this modification on their own. Channel Conversations are not the answer.

Some companies (ours) requires mass communication, real time. Like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, etc. We used channel conversations for 6 months and users hated it...prior to that, WhatsApp when we were a very small business. Now that I found a back end way of adding 200 users to a chat at one time, all feedback is "Let's not go back to channel conversations ;)"... But since there is a limit of 250 people... hence my post above.