Stop users from sending chat to a specific group in Teams

[cyberserge]

Hi, we are using Teams and users are able to start one-on-one or group chat with multiple users.

However, we want to find a way to stop users from sending chat to a specific group in Teams.

For example, there's a group for all the senior executives. We don't want users to just pop up a chat window and initiate a chat with all senior executives. We want to allow them to send email to the group, but not teams chat.

Any idea how that can be achieved?

[#2]

@cyberserge There's not a technical control to do that, you can segment the address book or use Information Barriers but it would also block email.

It's really a question of establishing a company culture where this isn't a concern, I've worked with lots of large organisations and never seen a real issue with this.

[#3]

you need to use the information barrier in Microsoft preview for Microsoft teams. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/information-barriers-in-teams Please click Mark as Best Response & Like if my post helped you to solve your issue. This will help others to find the correct solution easily.

[#4]

@eliekarkafy IB really wouldn't be a great solution for this, for example it would also prevent the exec being members of the same Team as any other users, or ever be in the same meeting as them.

[#5]

Hi @steven thanks for your reply. Well it depends what his use case is ? But technically i cant find any other solution to achieve his request. I would recommend him to test it with small batch of exec . Thoughts?

[#6]

Someone suggested Private Channel in Teams. Although that works for chat within the same team, what we are looking for is similar but apply to the Teams.

So we don't want employee to pop a chat with the entire Teams that they are not part of. They should email the Team (these are email-enabled security group), ask to join the Team. Then once joined, they can chat and see the contents within the Team Channel and SharePoint site.

[#7]

@StevenC365 I work for a large University.  We do not want the student population to direct message or call certain executive leadership.  If this were only a corporate environment, I'd agree.  But as you can imagine, with 95k active student accounts, students tend to be mischievous at times.  Would the IB help? 

[#8]

@Keith_Honaker there's a feature specifically for large educational institutions called Supervised Chats that will perhaps be your best bet Use supervised chats - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Make your students Restricted, your teaching staff Full and your Exec Limited. Then staff and Exec can talk freely, but students can't start conversations with Exec.