TEAMS - Follow Channel option on a Channel is now Channel Notifications

[Gary Murphy]

Microsoft have removed the Follow Channel option in a Teams Channel and replaced it with the option Channel Notifications. This appeared for my Tenancy on the 1st of July 2019. The thing is that the changes made appear to mean that the email option is no longer available and they also make the tool contradict itself.

1st off when you go into Channel Notifications for a Channel there is now no mention of an email option and secondly when you go into Teams Settings and Notifications the setting for Followed Channels still exists and it has an option for email.  What has it actually done and how does it now work?  How can these options co-exist?

All responses gratefully received.

Regards

Gary

[#2]

Same with the mobile app. I don’t think the feature is fully rolled out yet. But technically follow is having channel notifications set to new messages and check the replies box but something does need done about that option and wording.

[#3]

@Chris Webb, did you see any notification about when the feature is rolling out, to targeted release and to general availability? The Support documentation is lagging on this too. It still refers to Following and Favouriting channels. 

[#4]

far as I can tell it's fully rolled out in desktop, mobile still has follow. No idea if they even remembered to change the mobile UI or not tbh :).

[#5]

@Chris Webb I'm working on creating Learning Pathways site. It's goal is to keep the resources up to date for you, so you don't have to create them yourself when they change.

The existing resources still point to favourite/follow. I'll be keeping an eye on this as an example. If it is updated without my intervention, brilliant. But I think it will be a new support page and will therefore need to be added to a playlist. 

We'll see. 

[#6]

@Gary MurphyDid you ever learn how these separate and contradictory notification settings work?  I'm still confused about how a general setting to receive Banner and E-mail notifications for followed channels dovetails with a specific channel's "Channel Notifications" setting that doesn't even have an e-mail option.  And if I set one setting to "Only Show in Feed" and another to "Banner and Feed," which setting applies?  Thank you!

[#7]

Feed is activity feed. Banner is the pop up box when. It comes in.

Email only happen when you are not actively use Teams but in terms of the notification it’s based on your follow option and or channel mention setting in your overall notification settings.

[#8]

@Chris Webb  Thanks very much for the reply.  I think I understand the notification concepts.  However, there are now two places to set notifications, and I don't understand how they work together.  Here's one specific example (there are others):

Within the main notification settings, the options for "Channel mentions" are:

Banner and email

Banner

Only show in feed

Off

However, within a specific channel, the "Channel notification" options for "Channel mentions" are:

Banner and feed

Only show in feed

Off

Notice that the options aren't aligned.  What does it mean to select "Banner and email" in the main/general settings and then "Banner and feed" for a specific channel?  Does that turn off email notifications for channel mentions for the given channel?   I assume not because there are no options within the specific channel's settings concerning email at all.

Also, the "Default" option for a the specific channel mention notification setting is "Banner and feed."  If a channel's options are left to that default, what does it mean to set the more general channel mention setting to "Only show in feed" or "Off"?  Does that now do nothing given that all of the channels have  a more specific default setting of "Banner and feed"?

It would make sense to me if the two sets of options were aligned and if the selections made in the more general area constituted the default settings with an option to customize the settings on any given channel.  But that doesn't seem to be how it works.

I may just be missing an insight that's obvious to others, but I have received questions from other people at our organization asking for clarification about how this all works.  I'd appreciate any additional information you have.  Thanks again!

[#9]

@Gary Murphy Hi - I have just created a channel in Teams, but it doesn't seem to display the red alert icon (like you get on the Chat tab) when a new message or notification is sent in the channel.

I have looked at all settings and they are all set up as much as they can be, but still no red alert icon seems to appear when new messages is sent to a channel. It means I miss messages and have to regularly go into a channel to check there for message updates.

Is there anyway to fix this?

[#10]

@HarryHunt Hey, how does your Channel notification settings look like? (I've customized them). 

1. Try sign out and back in manually from the top right corner.

2. You can always clear the Teams cache as well. Type %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams and hit enter (via Start) and delete all content in the folder.

[#11]

No red alert icon's go onto/next to channels unless you are @mentioned. New messages will only appear in your activity feed which should have a toast count when you have unread new activity. The channels you have shown will bold when you have unreads, but no red pill unless mentioned.

[#12]

Would like to attach a couple of links to the Teams support pages for notifications but as far as I can tell (using mobile on the run) they are not updated yet.

[#13]

@ChristianBergstrom 

Finally! Thank you for that Microsoft!

'Microsoft Teams: Simplified Global Notification Settings'

https://www.microsoft.com/sv-se/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=65636