Challenge
Within Microsoft Teams meetings, there is a chat capability visible to all attendees (those invited to the meeting) and participants (those added to an instance of a meeting).
After a meeting has ended, participants can still see the meeting chat
Roles
There are three roles in a meeting
Organiser
The person who creates the meeting. They have full access to edit the meeting in every way.
Attendee
A person who has been invited to attend the meeting and has either accepted or declined the invite. If they have accepted the meeting, then it will show in their Outlook and Microsoft Teams calendars and they will be able to join the meeting.
Participant
A participant is a person who has been invited to join a running meeting. They will not have an invite for the meeting, and it will not show up in their calendars. If it is a recurring meeting, they will attend only the single instance.
Meeting Types
There are two types of meeting:
- Those that are within Channels
- Those that are not
The chat capability is available in both types of meeting, however, for meetings within Channels, it is not available to attendees who are not a member of the Microsoft Team hosting the Channel.
Scenario Recreation
I have recreated the scenario as follows:
| Step | View from Attendee | View from Participant |
|---|---|---|
| Cara Coleman creates a meeting and invites Arden Asher | ||
| They create messages in the chat for the meeting |
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Admin user (Participant) is invited into the meeting from the current meeting
Admin user can see no historical chat messages if they have not been in the meeting before |
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| All users exchange chat messages visible to all |
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| The meeting ends | ||
| All users can still submit new content to the chat |
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Solution
Remove from Meeting
| Step | View from Attendee | View from Participant |
|---|---|---|
| From within a meeting, Admin can be removed |
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| Participants can then re-join the meeting, and they will still have access to the chat |
This process DOES NOT achieve the aim of removing access to chat content.
Remove from Chat
| Step | View from Attendee | View from Participant |
|---|---|---|
| Cara Coleman removes Admin from Chat |
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| Admin now has access to see the chat they participated in |
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| Admin cannot add new messages |
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This process DOES achieve the aim of removing access to the chat
Add to Meeting Again
If the participant needs to be added to the meeting again, what will they see?
| Step | View from Attendee | View from Participant |
|---|---|---|
|
Cara Coleman starts another meeting and chat content is added.
The meeting is ended |
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| Cara Coleman starts another meeting and chat content is added. Then Admin is invited as participant. Admin can only see the messages that were posted when they were a participant: nothing from the second meeting. |
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Participant Leaving Meeting
| Step | View from Attendee | View from Participant |
|---|---|---|
| Participants can leave meeting chats of their own accord. |
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Retrospectively Remove Access
There is no way to retrospectively remove access to chat from a participant of a meeting.