Microsoft Teams inconsistencies with channel notification settings

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

 

Below are a few items about Microsoft Teams notification settings that I find confusing and that have confused some others where I work.  I would appreciate any help or clarification.  Some of it appears to be broken to me, but perhaps I'm missing something.  For the following I'm using the Teams desktop application.
 
There are two types of notifications concerning channels that I get asked about most often:  1) Notifications when the name of the channel is @mentioned and 2) Notifications when a new conversation is posted to a channel.  And there are two places to set these notifications:  1) In the "Notifications" section of Teams' main "Settings" area and 2) In the "Channel notifications" settings for each individual channel.  I take a look at each of these notification cases below:
 
Notifications when a channel name is @mentioned (Channel mentions notification settings)
This one seems pretty straightforward.  From what I can tell, the main Channel mentions setting in Teams acts as a default and that default setting will become the individual setting for any new channels unless the setting is overridden on a per-channel basis.  For example, if I set the main Teams' Channel mentions setting to "Only show in feed" and create a new channel, I see that the initial Channel mentions notification settings for that new channel is indeed "Only show in feed."  Related, if I customize the channel's Channel mentions setting and then click "Reset to default," the setting will revert to "Only show in feed."  So that seems to work well.
 
A related nuance that makes sense but I think is worth understanding:  If any channels have been left with their Channel mentions notification settings set to (or reset to) the default, then changing the default setting in the main Teams' notification settings *will* actively change all of those individual Channel mentions settings to align with the new default.  On the other hand, if a channel's individual Channel mentions settings have been customized, then changing the default won't affect that channel (unless "reset to default" is used at some point).
 
So far so good with regard to Channel mentions settings.

Notifications when a new conversation is posted to a channel

This one is more confusing (and perhaps a bit broken).  The confusion starts with the fact that the setting that originally controlled this is the Followed channels notification setting in the main Teams settings.  The concept of following channels has been replaced by per-channel notification settings, but the Followed channels setting is still there.  I'd like to think that it's simply not named well but that it would still act as the default setting for the per-channel All new posts setting ("Notify me every time this is a new post in this channel"), but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Instead, the default setting for All new posts for any new channel (and after clicking "Reset to default") seems to be "Off" no matter how Followed channels is set in the main settings.  As far as I can tell, Followed channels is an orphaned notification setting and doesn't actually do anything anymore.  Is that true?  And what setting does control the default for All new posts on a per-channel basis?  It's odd that we can control the default for Channel mentions but not for All new posts.  It's also odd that there's still a setting called "Followed channels" at all given that there is no longer the concept of a followed channel.

Main settings and per-channel settings don't align

Although the main Teams Channel mentions setting acts as a default for the per-channel setting, the values that we're able to choose for each one aren't perfectly aligned with the per-channel setting counterparts.  Note the difference between the Channel mentions options in the main settings area compared to the options available in the per-channel settings:
 
The main settings allow for four options, "Banner and email," "Banner," Only show in feed," and "Off" :
 
​​​​​​​GlennLeavell_0-1587505576176.jpeg

 

 
 
However, there are only three corresponding per-channel options: "Banner and feed," "Only show in feed," and "Off" :
 
GlennLeavell_1-1587505576178.jpeg

 

 
If you tweak the main/default settings, here's how the four default settings translate to the individual per-channel settings:
 
Main/Default Channel mentions setting
Resulting Per-Channel Channel mentions setting
Banner and email
Banner and feed
Banner
Banner and feed
Only show in feed
Only show in feed
Off
Off
 
This is highly confusing because the main "Banner and email" and "Banner" setting both map to the "Banner and feed" setting, which doesn't mention "email."  However, I know email works with this setting, so maybe it should be called "Banner and Feed and Email," because that's how it seems to work.  I assume the fact that these values don't align in a bug of some sort.  If it's not a bug, I can't yet make sense of it.
 
Can any of you help me with this confusion?   Are some of these known "bugs" that are getting worked out?  Thank you!
2 Replies
Hi @Glenn. I agree it's confusing and I'm interested in seeing an official answer to these quesitons too. I too think that 'Followed channels' in Teams Settings > Notifications, is an orphaned setting. I've seen Microsoft Support docs that previously pointed to the "Follow a Channel" topic, redirect to setting Channel notifications at the channel level. So it appears you can't even find out from support docs, what the setting 'Followed channels' actually does.

@Darrell WebsterThanks very much for the feedback.  Even if the 'Followed Channels' notification settings is indeed orphaned and does nothing, I still wonder what replaced it?  In other words, as far as I can tell, the 'All new posts' setting for every channel in your shown list is now always 'Off' unless you manually change it for each channel individually.  Back when the single 'Followed Channels' notification setting worked, you could at least use it to set your preference for all current and new channels without having to attend to each one individually.