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]

I just had a person give feedback about this today. There is a User Voice item in the wild for this feature: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/36007927-no-chat-notifications...

[#3]

Does anyone know if this is still on the roadmap?  The previously linked Roadmap number doesn't seem to there any more?

Thank you

[#4]

@MAlpha I sure hope it is.. 
We are still seeing this issue at least.

[#5]

@Andreas_F 

I've discovered the "Webinar" feature of meetings where people have to actively sign up to the meeting which arrives at a similar conclusion but still has it's drawbacks (chat only works in meeting, and only if you look for it...unless I'm doing something wrong)

[#6]

Thanks for the tip, will look into it as an option to get around the worst of the spam.. It not exactly appreciated when users are invited to several meetings on different topics to choose from at the same date and time and then getting chat from several meetings at once. 🙂

[#7]

@Andreas_F Ideally we should not be doing workarounds, instead Microsoft should fix this behaviour, how difficult could that be?

[#8]

@dannygm - Ideally there are three options: 1) Attending, 2) Not attending but I'd like to read the chat later, 3) Not going, leave me alone, I have too much work to do, Yes I am being anti-social.  

Seriously, option 2 should be an "Opt-In".  By default, if I am attending I should get the chat.  If I decline the meeting, I do not get any of the notices about the meeting, or the attendant meeting features.

I work with a part of the company in Europe.  My phone goes crazy at 4am because someone set up a meeting badly. DIng...Ding!!... Ding-ding!... di-ding-din-ding-ding! (Dings coming in so fast the last one doesn't finish...)   

[#9]

Exactly, but a full decline should not add you to the chat, in my company, there are plenty of meetings that I'm not interested in joining, and I still get a lot of notifications from these messages, is not being picky, I can always click on "leave" and then "hide" but that's not the ideal scenario.

[#10]

@dannygm This is still happening, late October 2021.  I declined a meeting, which was a repeat of a previous meeting I did attend, and I am getting notice of every post on their chat.  I never joined the meeting, have no option to 'leave' the meeting and it is showing as muted, but I still get the buzzing.  I made the mistake of asking to be removed from the chat, which only served to make me get EVERY post notification.  This is not tenable.

[#11]

Yes, this is a completely non-sense feature, that MS probably will never fix, in my company, there are about 5 - 6 meetings per week which I decline and I'm still getting added into those. What's the point of declining something then?

[#12]

Extremely frustrating that Microsoft don't seem to be looking at this one! We do a lot of "Everyone" invites for brown bag sessions or mandatory training where you select one of 4 sessions to join. 
Would love to be able to not have to Leave and hide the chat for the sessions I decline! 

[#13]

@vijayjois  I noticed that people who are invited to multiple team sessions and who accept, decline or not accept, still get notification 'ping' sounds when those attending the session engage on chat. This is quite annoying to those who did not even accept, or decline the invite issued, or accepted the first session, and did not accept the other invite sessions offered. It seems if you sent an invite, you get all the chat sounds/notification, which seems illogical to me.  How can I fix this so that those invited, who did not accept or decline a teams meeting does not constantly hear or see the chat notifications. Thank-you Tracey 

[#14]

Almost December 2021 and this problem still persists... this should not be that hard to fix, it's completely counter-intuitive that the issue exists in the first place

[#15]

@Zaldenski I know right! 

[#16]

It's 2021 and I'm still having this issue. And I don't want to mute it, if I decline, I don't want anything to do with it. Is that an option?

[#17]

And I think we will jump into 2022 with the same issue, Microsoft doesn't seem to listen to people to gather feedback.
It's just complete nonsense, I gave up.

[#18]

I couldn't find the link you've posted, but this item is about the same issue: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/f83b6033-272e-ec11-b6e6-00224827bbc2?q=declined. Can we all vote there please? It should really be fixed!

[#19]

Is this bug still not acknowledged by Microsoft?

[#20]

@jaknudsen Evidently not. Still an issue for us, and it's terrible for Teams adoption.

[#21]

@ransue2021 

Hi in 2022 this is still an issue.  Has anything changed? Thanks