Managing Notifications in Microsoft Teams

Tags Teams

This article explains how to manage and receive notifications for chats, teams, and meetings in Microsoft Teams.

Receiving Notifications

There are several ways to receive notifications in Microsoft Teams:

Activity Feed

The Activity Feed provides updates and notifications about what's happening across your teams and channels.

Chat

This is where your one-on-one and group conversations happen. Notifications for chats will appear here.

Desktop (Banner) Notifications

These are temporary pop-up notifications that show in the bottom-right corner of your screen on Windows and the top-right corner of your screen on macOS. If you are using Teams through a web browser, some browsers will block notifications and sounds by default.

Email

If you want to receive emails to stay on top of Teams conversations and activity, you can set your notification settings to receive Missed Activity Emails and choose how often you get them. Click your profile picture at the top-right corner of Teams, click Settings, and then click Notifications. Scroll to Missed Activity Emails and change your settings.

Changing Notification Settings

To customize your notification settings:

  1. Click the ellipsis (...) next to your profile picture at the top-right corner of Teams.
  2. Click Settings and then click Notifications. From here, you can fine-tune the notifications that you receive and where they show up.

Channel Notifications

Team channel notifications allow you to receive notifications for when a post and/or reply is made within a team. This can be useful if you want to stay on top of conversations happening within a specific channel. To enable channel notifications:

  1. Go to a channel that you want to receive notifications from within a team.
  2. Click the ellipses [...] and then click Channel Notifications.
  3. Choose what activity you want to receive notifications for and where they show up. By default, channel notifications are turned off and all new posts will only show in Activity.

Hiding Teams and Channels

If you don't want a team or channel to show in your teams list, you can hide it, which also turns off activity and desktop notifications for that particular team or channel. Showing the channel will re-enable activity and desktop notifications for that particular team or channel.

  1. Go to a team or channel that you want to hide or show.
  2. Click the ellipses [...] and then click Hide or Show.

Turning Down the Noise

If you are receiving too many notifications and want to focus on the activity that's most important to you:

  • Select Only Show in Feed or Off to turn off notifications for activities you don't need to respond to right away.
  • Hide a channel to turn off activity and desktop notifications. Hidden channels will show in your list if a message is marked important or when someone @mentions you or the channel.
  • To get some quiet time, set your presence to Do Not Disturb by clicking your profile picture and selecting your status as Do Not Disturb.

Further Reading