Create/start a chat for a Contact Group
It would be great if we can create/start a new chat based off a Contact Group. Rather than adding each person individually to a chat, the fact that they are part of a group would be so convenient to just right-click the Contact Group name, say 'Start Chat' and it would initiate a new chat will all members in the group.

172 comments
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GLY commented
This is long overdue for microsoft teams to have the ability (not an option or feature) to add/import bulk contacts!
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Amber Harover commented
Our organization heavily uses the ability in Skype for Business to message a contact group which we manage in Active Directory. This is used constantly all day throughout all of our departments for various reasons. We absolutely cannot function without this capability. It isn't realistic for our users to manually create a group of people every time they need to contact another department, or to have to manually update groups that they have already made when people are hired, transfer departments, etc. We already have department-based groups in Active Directory that are managed by IT when employees enter and exit the company or transfer departments. There is no reason this shouldn't be an option to message in "Chat".
As a healthcare organization a "Team" for this isn't realistic. Team messages don't notify the same way as Chats and many of the ways our departments use messaging groups in Skype for Business now are extremely time-sensitive (relating to patient care). It also isn't realistic to expect users to @mention every other user in a "Team" that they need to see a critical group message.
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Trev commented
Seems alot of people have misunderstood the intention of this request with all the comments about importing (which would also be good to have BTW).
Our org has a retention policy of 3 days so the inability to use a contact group to initiate a group chat leads to tedious work by the end user in having to add everyone indvidually each time a group chat is created.
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Spectra commented
Please allow the facility to import contacts from a csv list and also to import from Outlook in MS Teams. I have looked all over but cannot get my contact lists into MS Teams except for adding one by 1.
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Anonymous commented
Yes I agree! We can create the contact group, it only makes sense to be able to use it...
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Thomas D. Millett commented
I agree. I have created hundreds of outlook contacts over 20 years and now struggle to use teams to comminicate with them. I just added MS voice/telephone and assumed this would not be a probelm
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Anonymous commented
Lets go microsoft... Its time to work on contact import in teams.
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Eli commented
This should be a top priority. There's a strong business case for this feature in each of the thousands of companies who use your product. Bringing this feature to production will make who ever is the product owner a hero. If you're a Microsoft developer and you're reading this comment, take up this cause! It could easily be translated to productivity dollars!
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Jean-Marc Timmermans commented
It would be useful to develop a solution to import contacts into a Teams. Now members need to be added one by one and there is no import function. Adding multiple people to a teams via an import file (excel, csv or the like) would be really useful. Adding one by one is not feasible for larger groups....
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Aaron commented
Should be able to import/export contacts into Teams (for calls and chat) as well as reference them from a directory / shared contact list. This is an obvious missing feature. No one is happy migrating from SfB to Teams as long as this is missing.
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steve kelly commented
It would also be very efficient to be able to one-click to send an email to all team members and guests.
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Jon commented
Typical Microsoft give us a replacement for skype that cannot do the basic functions that skype can. A bit like windows search every update has been a step further away from the perfect search in XP.
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Brenda commented
I agree as well. I have a group of colleagues that I communicate with throughout the day. It is a major pain to have to create a group chat and add their names individually. I know that you can click on a previous conversation but since you can't name those conversations I have no way of knowing which conversation to click on without opening up all of them to see which was the group chat.
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Elliot Susseles commented
Teams is useless if you cannot directly import contacts from Outlook!
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Sam commented
Surprisingly this feature is not part team's MVP features. contacts needs to be accessed everywhere within Office 365.
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Chris commented
yes, please!!!!
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Anonymous commented
Another epic fail by Microsoft. Absolutely absurd that Teams cannot pull Outlook contacts in with a click. Bulk add is a MUST to keep clients.
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Anonymous commented
I have a lot of users that needs to import their contacts to MS Teams! and we cannot add them one by one.
Need to find a solution for this ASAP
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Anonymous commented
I have hundreds of contacts in Outlook - why on earth can I not import them as my contacts in Teams? I need hundreds of people in different sub-teams (why are they called channels - so confusing!) but I would have to add them separately each time. Currently on this single issue I am losing the argument with my managers to start using Teams.
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Anonymous commented
Please add feature as follows:
Synchronize all Company contacts (customers, Suppliers etc) so everyone in an organisation can access a Company's Global address list - thereby avoiding the need for each person within an org to upload their contacts to Teams/Outlook.
Ideally it will also be good to be able to click a link and be directed to call from Teams within Edge, Chrome and any CRM.