Meetings - participants that declined are still being notified of meeting chat messages

[johnnr892]

We're facing a quite annoying problem with Teams meetings that causes all participants that were invited - irrespective of their response (unknown, decline, tentative) - to be brought into the meeting chat when the organiser begins the meeting and types in the chat box. We're getting a lot of users being confused as to how they ended up in a meeting chat and getting annoyed about chat notifications. Imagine how bad this is when you schedule a meeting for 'all' staff.

Steps: 

1 - Schedule meeting "Test meeting" in outlook or teams and select multiple participants - either through a distribution group or one by one

2 - Have one of the requested participants 'Decline' the invite

3 - Begin the meeting as the organiser

4 - Write 'Hi folks' in the meeting chat

5 - The person that declined the invite then get's a notification for 'Hi folks' for the meeting chat of "Test meeting"

 They then need to leave the meeting or mute it.

Has anyone else had this and got any fixes or workarounds? Currently for large meetings, we're copying a link from another meeting and pasting it in the the invite in outlook so neither Teams or Outlook realises that it's a Teams meeting.

[#2]

They are releasing an update soon that will mute meeting chats unless you join the meeting. This will help alleviate this, but longer term they will hopefully work with the Outlook Team to fire off an update to the meeting when a decline happens as it doesn't now.

But as of today there is nothing you can do.

[#3]

Thanks, Chris. Is there somewhere I can track the bug / roadmap item? Would be good to know if the initial fix was to client or not etc...

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Yup.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=Meeting%2Cchat

[#5]

We still have this problem.

If someone declines a Team meeting in Outlook,

they still get notifikations in Teams (gets into the meeting).

Microsoft should have fixed it. 

Mute meeting chats in Teams

By default meeting chats in Microsoft Teams will be muted until you either send a message in the chat, or join the online meeting. This will reduce notifications, but still allow you to keep track of the conversation.

• Featured ID: 54637
• Added to Roadmap: 12/4/2019
• Last Modified: 1/9/2020
• Tags: Microsoft Teams, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), General Availability

[#6]

@Chris Webb--  Thank you for this information.  It is very useful.  Unfortunately I don't see the issue in the backlog.

Problem:

Users that declined a Teams meeting, still are asked to Join and still receive notices from the chat.

Why is this a problem?

I work with a number of group worldwide, many 6-12 hours separate from me.  I decline many of the meetings because they occur at 2 or 3am in my local time zone.  Unfortunately, we also use Teams for our on-call operational support.  I cannot turn off Teams Notifications.  :(

SOoo…  Where can I find the address to send suggestions for the backlog?  :)

[#7]

You’ll need to contact support but a few things to note. If these meetings are scheduled to a channel in your team and you are set for notifications on that channel you are going to get notifications for the meeting regardless since it’s chat takes place on a channel thread.

I don’t know if this is the case here but a hunch because the meeting chats should not notify you unless you join and or participate in the chat first. But the exception to this would be a channel meeting with channel notifications turned on.

[#8]

@Chris WebbChannel meetings!  <D'uh!> Of course.  Now that makes since.  Thank you!

[#9]

II have a customer that is part of a distribution group that was sent a teams invite. She declined the meeting and got an e-mail that she now had SPAM in her account she needed to review. The e-mail was the "Declined Teams Meeting" e-mail. Is this part of this bug or something else?@johnnr892 

[#10]

Hi @Chris Webb ! We have this turned on but are still getting chat notifications in our Chat section of Teams. It no longer shows in the "Activity" area but does show in Chat. This will then muddy up the Chats area with meeting chats you declined. Any other way to stop all chat for meetings that are declined?

[#11]

I still get the notifications and it is a general meeting invite sent through Outlook and it's not in a channel. Very annoying.

[#12]

March 2021 and this is still happening, no matter how many meetings I decline, I still get added to the meeting, see comments and get notifications about it. Instead of sending the people to mute the setting, how about fixing the bug?
If people decline a meeting they should NEVER get added into the meeting itself. That's the whole reason for declining a meeting.

[#13]

Is this problem still persistent? I had invited all staff to a meeting and several of them either didn't accept or explicitly declined but continued to see all chat notifications. The worse part was they kept seeing it even if they were invited to an external Teams meeting. Any way to overcome this problem?

[#14]

@vijayjois of course it is still happening, check the data in my post and the post date itself.

[#15]

Guess it's not enough Votes on UserVoice...
https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36007927-no-chat-notifications...

[#16]

@dannygm Have you tried the Leave button?

[#17]

@Peter2wxin You just discovered fire, didn't you? the fact the leave/hide button exists doesn't change the fact that you get annoyingly added to a meeting that you already declined.

The correct behavior should be:
- Declines a meeting
- Doesn't get added to it or the chat anyway.

It'll be nice if people avoid adding unnecessary comments that don't help at all.

[#18]

Doesn't need a rocket scientist to discover that but that is not the point at all. Perhaps you didn't understand the problem to start with?

[#19]

@Peter2wxin- The issue is that if the user declines they should not have to take an additional step and also Leave the meeting. Often they've declined and months later start receiving Teams messages for a meeting they've long forgotten about and will not attend. Ultimately "declined" should equal "leave" without taking additional steps.

[#20]

@Steph523 I concur. People drop off projects all the time. They should not continue to be peppered with chats of a meeting they haven't attended in months. And they should not have to interrupt what they am doing and 'leave' the meeting. Its declined so they am not there. Its been since Dec 2019 when this was brought up. Please fix this. To be absolutely clear:

If I decline a meeting, I should not have visibility to the chat. The end.