An upcoming update to Microsoft Teams will help prevent unwanted chats from outside users in a bid to tighten the security of its video conferencing suite.
The title of the post (opens in a new tab) says: "External Access Chat Invitation Flow for Managed Organizations," suggesting that, at least for now, this change will likely only affect professional users.
As always, the company keeps information on future products close at hand. However, the description does give some details about what we can expect: “When receiving a new one-on-one chat from an external user, Teams users will now see an invitation to accept or block the external user. This also provides the ability to block external users at any time, revoking access to presence and incoming messages.
Block external messages with Microsoft Teams
The post added that the feature is expected to go live with general availability expected sometime in August 2022, expanding to desktop, mobile, and web platforms.
As more businesses turn to online collaboration tools, the move should make presentations with external guests much more seamless, helping users weed out spam and stay focused, while increasing privacy.
Another part of the company's roadmap scheduled to arrive in August will be the ability to open a content popup or in a new window, an update that will help users of dual-monitor setups view content, video calls, and documents. shared, for example, in separate windows.
Most video conferencing suites don't offer any form of chat blocking, so Microsoft hopes this new feature will give you the solution you need in terms of throttling external messages.
