Microsoft Teams might have launched its most annoying feature yet
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Making yourself heard on Microsoft Teams just got a whole lot easier (and a lot louder) thanks to a new update.
The video conferencing service has announced that it is working on a new feature that will allow chat participants to call everyone in a group at once.
Just as users can currently “@call” a specific person in a chat, Microsoft Teams users can now have the option to @mention “Everyone”. This means that all participants in the chat will be notified, meaning everyone gets a nudge, but also leads to a potentially deafening cacophony of pings and alerts on devices in your office.
Microsoft Teams @Everyone
In his entry on the official Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in new tab), the company says the new feature “takes out the hassle of saying each person’s name one by one or missing someone.” How true (or terrifying) this may turn out to be, only time can tell.
The feature appears to be inspired by Microsoft Teams’ great rival Slack, which already allows chat participants to name anyone in a chat by typing “@here”.
The new addition is currently listed as “in development” but has an expected general availability date of December 2022, so users shouldn’t wait too long. At launch, Microsoft says the feature will be available to all users on Android, Desktop, Web, Mac, and iOS.
The news is the latest upgrade to the Microsoft Teams chat feature as the company strives to make the platform a comprehensive communication offering for users everywhere.
This includes a solution that allows users to discover entire chat conversation threads after clicking the results of a search message. The update means that when users search for a chat message in Microsoft Teams and click on a message result, they will be taken to a view that contains the entire thread containing the desired message, rather than just a single line of text like the previous case.
Recently, it has also become possible to combine consumer and business accounts, allowing business users to initiate chats and meetings with customers and partners who may be using their personal Teams login.