Delete Private Chat threads
This request is for the ability to completely delete a private chat thread. (Not hide/archive.)
Again, this was pulled out into its own topic because it is still under review and no decision has been made.
To recap what has already been completed from the other topic:
1. Delete your own messages anywhere in Teams.
2. Team Owners can choose if users can edit/delete in their tenant as well as choose if admins have the power to delete any message posted in public channels.
3. The ability to hide your private chat threads (these are not the chat threads in channels, but the private chat threads that appear when you click the Chat icon on the left-side app bar).
4. The ability to mute your private chat threads. (these are not the chat threads in channels, but the private chat threads that appear when you click the Chat icon on the left-side app bar).
This topic deserves consideration and separating out hot items is something we have often done. Please don't think of this as an attempt to diminish the ask, we know that many people want this.
Thank you for your understanding and feedback.
-Warren
Warren
shared this idea
Hey everyone! We have this already. Just click the ellipses next to the thread name and select “Hide”.
Note that we cannot provide a “hard delete” due to eDiscovery and other legal reasons.
Thanks,
Suphatra
260 comments
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Mark
commented
There are many tools on the market to archive emails, chat, SMS, Facebook messages, etc. to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. It would be great if in this tool it was an option to archive them but as noted by others, this should be controlled by the client company, not Microsoft. Please consider putting that capability back in the customer's hands.
Thank you! -
Lindsay S.
commented
FYI: I just had a conversation with a MS support engineer who was similarly shocked that this feature was NOT available for Teams. He suggested creating a support ticket with Premier in order to elevate this issue. I cannot believe that MS has taken this capability out of our hands!
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Rob G
commented
The security and legal reasons should be up to the company to decide, not microsoft.
There's no way we're risking business affairs and trade secrets in an application with such a huge privacy issue. Hacks are happening more and more. This is just a huge accident waiting to happen.We'll continue using other encrypted messengers.
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Lindsay S.
commented
Can we get SOMEONE from Microsoft to acknowledge that this is a serious issue and that they're looking into a means to address these concerns?
Our company cannot have any private messaging history retained at all. A retention policy which says "delete after X" days is insufficient. No history must be collected at all if desired.
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Dan
commented
This isn't a chat feature. This is a fully archived written transcript of private conversations behind the disguise of an instant messager. The tool is pretty dishonest and should have root user access to delete messages at the very least. At it's best, the tool should not automatically remember chat past a day or two or archive anything.
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Anonymous
commented
this is really important for the sake of the usage private chat conversations sometimes are used. So if we can't delete a whole conversation users avoid to have a full use of the tool. Even more when you said legal reasons I think haven't the option is the opposite, even considering GDPR.
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Dan Smith
commented
FYI: I opened a ticket with Microsoft in order to get better visibility on this issue. They forwarded my comments on to whomever is responsible for this, but they recommended that someone with Premier Support submit an official "Design Change Request".
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Ian Davy
commented
I have been tasked to architect a roll-out of MS Teams for my company. The #1 blocker from our Legal department? CHAT! the inability to disable chat history/recording has become the primary focus of the tool. All the good features ignored because a chat can no longer be considered private.
Yes, a user can now delete their message in a chat and through the use of retention rules messages could be removed, however firstly this requires the user to take an action and secondly, the minimum retention for Teams chat is limited to 30 days.
Its a movement in the right direction but really an organization should have the option to turn off message history default. -
Dan Smith
commented
There is a serious gap in functionality which must be addressed before our tenant can be moved over to Teams from Skype for Business:
Currently in Skype for Business we have explicitly disabled the archiving of IMs as well as the saving of chat history. We've done this by applying our own customized 'CsClientPolicy'...
$CsPolicy = Get-CsClientPolicy -Identity 'ClientPolicyNoSaveIMNoArchiving';
$CsPolicy.EnableIMAutoArchiving == False
$CsPolicy.EnableServerConversationHistory == FalseOur organization explicitly DOES NOT retain any instant messages and considers them "transitory conversations" which do not need to be archived.
As Teams currently stands, there is no way to apply a similar policy to our users. This needs to be addressed before our tenant is migrated over to Teams. Once a user exits a private chat and closes the Teams app, no conversation history should persist. We do not consider allowing end-users to delete their own chat histories a viable workaround. This is a critical need for us.
Please help!
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Anonymous
commented
Please provide the option to completely delete a private chat thread (not hide) or atleast an option to clear the complete chat history of a private chat thread ( not individual delete option for every message).
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Jesse Davis
commented
The legal reason doesn't make sense. Our company does NOT want to record private chats, no more than they want to record people talking in the halls. Not only are you not allowing users to delete private chats, but you don't even allow admins to set a retention policy less than 30 days.
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JBK
commented
At the very least I should be able to select all messages and click the ellipses to delete the message and allow all of my messages to be deleted at once. Deleting messages one at a time is completely inefficient.
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Anonymous
commented
Teams has the potential to be a great communication tool. Poor design decisions like not allowing "“hard delete” due to eDiscovery and other legal reasons" makes for a poor communication tool.
Our organization will continue to use other means for communications until/unless Microsoft recognizes the business need to allow private conversations to be deleted.
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Nick
commented
I can't believe this was requested in 2016 and still isn't a thing. Skype would start with a fresh window every time it was opened. I'm not looking for the ability to delete what I want. I want my chat box to be cleared when I close it.
Sometimes I have stupid stuff like a goofy gif from someone and now I have to go out of my way to hide it or else it stays up on my screen all day. If I'm on one person's chat window, I can barely even tell I have a message from someone else.
Teams has so many more options than Skype ever did but Skype works ten times more efficiently. Why are we moving backwards?
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Stuart Vickers
commented
I think as is often the case the reason this isn't being implement is simply because... Microsoft.
There is no legal or technical reason this cannot be implemented and the current response from Suphatra only deserves ridicule.
When a product or tool fails to meet your current needs you buy a new tool. This appears to be the case now with Microsoft Teams. It no longer satisfies my current needs or those of many others.
The best and only option is to stop using Microsoft's Teams product and find an alternative. Only when a sufficient number of large Microsoft customers stop using their products and services will they listen. And even then, they may not listen; they may not even care because there are plenty of companies who will just impose the Microsoft way on their staff.
If you want these features and are in a company small and adaptable enough to change products then petition those in your company who make procurement and IT decisions, such that they can investigate alternative non Microsoft options that meet your business requirements.
Providing feedback on this minority forum will not influence Microsoft as they clearly have no desire to implement this feature and want to harvest every scrap of data they can from the companies that use their products.
Vote with your feet, not by clicking in this forum!
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IT Pro 001
commented
The MS response is inadequate, as others stated, deleting emails should not be an option if this was the case.
Some organizations archive email history and unfortunately the root folder structure includes conversation history in Skype for Business & Teams - resulting in archival of irrelevant chat history (like what's for lunch today?) and all the extras like extra time to execute archival code, space usage & etc. Sure extra lines of code can be added to loop through the various scenarios but is the cost vs value worth it?
The more I use Teams the less I like it, the little features that are popular for productivity seems to be missing where I least expect it like deleting chat history permanently. Where's the common sense and logic behind the design?
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Pete N.
commented
Hey Joe G,
thanks for your comment. Can you pleas explain to me why I can delete an eMail and not a private Chat? What is the difference regarding legal reasons? Following your thoughts it should be strictly forbidden to delete an eMail as well. So MS: just add the basic feature to delete a chat.
Thanks -
Joe G
commented
For businesses, there will unlikely ever be a hard delete as conversations do need to be logged on the backend for legal purposes. Users being able to clear history would probably be a nice feature though.
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SM
commented
I am new to the chat and very surprised that it is not possible to delete private messages. Is it realy rocket science? Thanks. Sigrid
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Be
commented
Not having this feature renders this app useless and very cumbersome. Something so simple completely ignored! Although the company has now forced us to use this, I will not be using it until the feature is added.
It's mind boggling how a simple feature like that is removed. Whoever thought this was a great idea needs to go back to the drawing board. Are you taking in user feedback?