Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration platform.  Being on top of your communications can be a vital part of successful collaboration in any virtual environment.  Microsoft Teams provides you with a number of ways to be notified of activity happening within your teams, channels and chats. Microsoft Teams notifications alert you about new tasks, mentions and comments related to what you’re working on, or need to look at. And although the notification setting section looks like just another option menu, it actually has a few customizations you can use to make your work life more intuitive. 

There are four notification types.

  • The Activity Feed
    You’ll find this in the top left corner of Teams. This is where we’ll let you know what’s happening across your teams and channels.
  • The Chat
    This is where your group and one-on-one conversations happen.
  • Desktop pop-in banners
    In Windows 10, these will show in the bottom right corner of your screen, then move to the Action Center.
    In Mac OS, these show up in the top right corner of your screen, then move to the Control Center.
  • Email

    If you want to use email to stay on top of Teams conversations as they happen, use the missed activity email. You choose how often you get them.
    If you want a summary of the day’s activity, use the digest email. You'll get this email at the beginning of each day.

If you change nothing about your Teams notifications, you'll receive both desktop notification banners and activity feed alerts for @mentions, direct messages (chat), and all new conversations and @mentions in the channels and teams that show in your teams list.

 
Managing your notifications in general

 
Access notification settings by selecting your profile picture in the top right corner of Teams, then Settings > Notifications.

 
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Once you have the Notifications screen open, you will find a wealth of individual settings that will help you reduce the clutter and focus your attention on the right conversations. 

 
Here you can set notification types for Mentions (we'll talk about those in our next weekly tip) Messages, Team Membership Changes and Meetings. There's even a section at the very bottom for setting up notifications for when someome becomes available or goes offline.

 

 

Turning off Notifications for a certain channel/conversation.

Click the elipses [...] and select Channel notifications then choose Off to turn off or for more granular controls, choose Custom.

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On the Channel notifications settings you can see that there are a few ways to handle the notifications if you want to still receive some instead of simply turning them all off.

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You are all set!