Send email to private channel

Copper Contributor

I have created a private channel.

I go to "more options" - "Get email address" and then "advanced settings".

I then see the following three options which are the same as for a standard channel.

  •  Anyone can send emails to this address.
  •  Only members of this team.
  •  Only email sent from these domains.

Although the first option is selected only people who have access to this channel can send emails. People who do have access to the team but not to the private channel cannot send emails to this private channel. As a result it is not "Anyone".

Is this a bug or is this works as designed?

If it works as designed then why does is say "Anyone"? And is there a workaround so that people who do not have access to the private channel can send emails to this channel?

 

Update :

We added our domain name in the "Email integration" at "Accept channel email from these SMTP domains".

This solves the problem for private channels in new Teams that are created after we added our domain.

But this doesn't solve the problem for an existing private Channel in an existing Team. Also the problem remains for a new private Channel created in an existing Team (Team created before we added the domain).

24 Replies

@Wim_Vanhove  Check these settings in teams admin console, they must be enabled for this to work.

org-Wid Settings -->  teams Settings -> Email integration  ->>  

  1. Allow users to send emails to a channel email address
  1. Accept channel email from these SMTP domains
 
I think that's not the issue...by default we can send e-mails to any channel in Microsoft Teams so something IMHO is not right
I can reproduce this as well. Seems to be a bug. You can send to the e-mail from outside the org with external e-mail fine, just seems to be something checking e-mails with your domain and not sending them through.

@Safeer khan thanks for your reply

We checked all settings and everything is as it should be.

@Chris Webb good to hear that we are not the only ones with this problem.

I can also send emails to the private channel from another domain without a problem.

I will ask our users to do this as a work around.

We will open a ticket at Microsoft support.

@Wim_Vanhove Have you received any solution to this from Microsoft? We have the same issue with only members being able to email private channels.

Hi Par, no at the end we didn't open a support ticket. We will implement a work around.

@Wim_Vanhove Ok, we will open a ticket then. If we get some info I will share it here.

@Par Linderoth 
any updates from the ticket you opened?

 

Thanks!

Kat

@Kathryn Whiteley They are working on it but so far they haven't found anything explaining the problem.

We have the some problem, do you have any updates from the ticket? @Par Linderoth 

@Sindre95 Unfortunately not, I am still working with Microsoft on this.

Now it seems like we can't email any private channel that we are not a member of, no matter if the team is "old" or "new". Can anyone confirm in another tenant?

Finally got an answer from Microsoft:

 

Thank you for your patience as I worked through this with the senior technicians to confirm my findings in several tests reproducing the issue as well as reach out the development team for information. I am now able to confirm that this is functioning correctly and why it changed in mid-april for all tenants. 

     Previously Teams was not fully governed by the Exchange and Office 365 group rules, and the private Teams channels were still being modified as they were rolled out since their release last November, 2019. The original private channels for a few months were able to receive external to the private channel members emails. But with the changes rolling out since February 2020 Teams groups are now fully in line with Exchange and Office 365 groups. This means that private channels work the same way as private groups. If you are not a member of the private group, even if you have the email address for the channel, you will not be able to send messages to it. This is bound with the same rules that govern private Exchange and Office 365 groups. The changes to Teams was fully saturated as of mid April 2020 and this is why I have been able to reproduce in all of the different set ups of Teams. If a channel is public then you are able to message the group using the email, but not if it is private. 

 

I have already updated the team as to the findings as well as management and they will work to update the documents to explicitly state the connections and work to introduce the changes in a future update.

Glad we have an answer. But I actually still have a private channel that is receiving the occassional email from non-members (last one received was just overnight last night.)

Also, while I understand the philosophy, that answer is a bit disappointing. Our use-case was to use a private channel to manage (non IT) service requests via Teams. With a private channel we could keep the requests private from the rest of the organization, but able to assign to private channel members for resolution. Without this, we'll have to abandon Teams for this use-case.

Kat Whiteley
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Yeah that makes no sense. You literally have an advanced option setting on private Team channels to specify that you want to allow e-mail from anyone......
Wait nevermind slept since this came up.... it's you can't send from people inside the org not in the channel that is the issue.
Well that works too, so I dunno, maybe newer private channels work? I just sent from external and internal user not in the Team to Private channel and it's working.

Microsoft's statements certainly seem to make no sense -- since we are still seeing email from non-team members being received within the private channels:
"...with the changes rolling out since February 2020 Teams groups are now fully in line with Exchange and Office 365 groups. <...snip...> The changes to Teams was fully saturated as of mid April 2020 and this is why I have been able to reproduce in all of the different set ups of Teams. If a channel is public then you are able to message the group using the email, but not if it is private."