Manage chat in Microsoft Teams meetings

APPLIES TO: Meetings Webinars Town halls

Overview

In Microsoft Teams, chat allows participants to exchange messages to each other before, during, and after meetings and webinars. For town halls, only presenters, organizers, and co-organizers can use chat with each other. To learn how attendees can use chat during town halls, see Manage event chat for Microsoft Teams town halls.

As an admin you can control:

• Whether participants in your users' meetings and webinars can read and send chat messages.
• Whether users in your organization can use chat when they're participants in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations where there isn’t a trusted relationship.

Manage chat messages for your organization's Teams meetings

The Meeting chat setting controls whether participants in your users' meetings can and read and send chat messages. This setting doesn't apply to channel meetings and is a per-user and per-organizer policy.

In addition to this Meeting chat policy, your users have their own Meeting chat control in their meeting options. When you don't set the admin policy to Off, organizers can manage chat availability in their meetings and webinars. They can choose to set chat to On, Off, or In meeting only. For more information on your users' Meeting chat controls, see Chat in a Teams meeting.

The following table describes the behavior for your Meeting chat policy settings:

Manage meeting chat for your organization's Teams meetings using the Teams admin center

To manage meeting chat for your users in the Teams admin center, use the following steps:

1. In the Teams admin center, expand Meetings and select Meeting policies.
2. Select the policy you'd like to edit.
3. Navigate to the Meeting engagement section.
4. Set Meeting chat to your chosen value of either On for everyone, On for everyone but anonymous users, Off, In-meeting only for everyone, or In-meeting only for everyone but anonymous users.
5. Select Save.

Manage meeting chat using PowerShell

You can use the -MeetingChatEnabledType parameter in theSet-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to control the availability of meeting chat.

To allow meeting chat to be on for everyone but anonymous users with this assigned policy, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -MeetingChatEnabledType EnabledExceptAnonymous

To turn off meeting chat for users with this assigned policy, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -MeetingChatEnabledType Disabled

To make chat available only during meetings organized by users with this policy, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -MeetingChatEnabledType EnabledInMeetingOnlyForAll

To make chat available only during meetings organized by users with this policy and prevent anonymous users from seeing or writing in chat, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -MeetingChatEnabledType EnabledInMeetingOnlyForAllExceptAnonymous

To learn more about chat for your end users, see Chat in a Teams meeting.

Manage chat messages in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations that you don’t have a trusted relationship with

The Chat in external meetings setting determines if users in your organization can chat in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations without a trusted relationship configured in external access. In such cases, the other organization considers your users to be anonymous. This setting is a per-user and per-participant policy.

The following table describes the behavior for your Chat in external meetings policy settings:

You can use the Teams admin center or PowerShell to manage whether users in your organization can use chat messages in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations without a trusted relationship.

Manage chat in meetings hosted by other organizations using the Teams admin center

If you'd like to choose whether users in your organization can use chat in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations, follow these steps:

1. In the Teams admin center, expand Meetings, and select Meeting policies.
2. Select the policy you'd like to edit, or create a new one.
3. Navigate to the Meeting engagement section.
4. Toggle External meeting chat to On or Off.
5. Select Save.

Manage chat in meetings hosted by other organizations using PowerShell

The -AllowExternalNonTrustedMeetingChat parameter in the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet controls the availability of meeting chat for your users when they attend external meetings.

To turn off chat in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations for users with the assigned policy, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AllowExternalNonTrustedMeetingChat $False

To allow chat in Teams meetings hosted by other organizations for users with the assigned policy, run the following script:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -AllowExternalNonTrustedMeetingChat $True 

Limitations

• Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows with a Pro license can't use chat when they join meetings as a presenter.

Related topics

• Manage chat for sensitive Teams meetings
• Teams policy reference
• Assign policies to your users in Teams
• Teams PowerShell overview
• Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
• New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
• Grant-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
• Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
• Remove-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy