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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

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  • Bob commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    @Suphatra your answer has to be a joke - hiding is not deleting! We need a delete feature NOW!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Are you joking? Deleting history due to eDiscovery - Please don't talk utter rubbish. At least state you cba to do it which is the correct interpretation

  • Get with the times commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Completely and utterly ridiculous. This is hands down the WORST messaging softwear I have used since the inception of the internet in the 80's.

    How is it, as time goes on softwear become LESS functional than it was 20+ years ago?

    After several responses from ADMIN (over a 7 month period) that the request was under review this is what you come up with??!!

    So 50 years from now when I am DEAD these messages will still be lingering here.

    The ability to shred my personal information in real life and virtual is my fundamental right.

    This softwear could also use serious improvement in several other areas. Custom sounds and not "disappearing" into the task bar if you don't immediately notice a message are 2 biggies.

  • Kunal Ashar commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    That's *complete* ********, Suphatra and Microsoft. Emails, especially those residing in Outlook, have an identical legal precedent. If you can allow emails to be deleted, you can allow chat threads to be deleted.
    Worse, we, as an organization, take GDPR requirements very seriously. When an employee leaves out organization and requests a right to be forgotten, his/her chat threads *MUST* be deleted.
    I don't know whether this is a cop-out by your engineering team, or pure laziness by your product team or misinformation by your legal/eDiscovery team, but I see this as the beginning of considering a move *out* of MS O365 and into a competitor.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I don't mean to be disrespectful Suphatra but your are completely missing the point.

    The facility to permanently delete a chat, mention or activity is a basic fundamental requirement. Imagine Outlook without a delete function. You have to respect privacy concerns.

    Quoting legal reasons is simply a cop-out, in actual fact you are legally obliged under GDPR in the EU to service deletion requests. I should also remind you that under the GDPR a request for data or deletion and removal of data can be made through any public channel, including email, telephone, support tickets, social media etc. UserVoice would also be relevant. You'd also have 30 days to comply.

    I'm sure if you started receiving deletion requests for Teams data your "legal reasons" wouldn't stand up at all, you'd soon get sick of the requests and implement a deletion function.

    I can't believe MS aren't taking this seriously, you have to offer a deletion function not just for an individual message but for an entire chat, mention etc.

  • [Deleted User] commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    ********** - the „legal“ reasons are NOT valid for every region or company. Here we are bound to be able to keep privat chats privat! So they cannot be subject to edisc and have to hard deleted

  • Steven M commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    @Suphatra- please provide additional clarification. Can an Admin force a thread to be hidden from EVERYONE involved? Otherwise, your team is missing the point.

    To express our use case in a different way:
    Employee A starts a chat thread with Employee B, C &D.
    In this thread, though it started perfectly professional, it devolves into a conversation that clearly violates company policies.
    How can an administrator close that chat thread and remove everyone's ability to comment or continue to view it?

    If it needs to be retained in cold storage to fulfil data integrity policies that is fine.

    It is not relevant HOW you implement an Admin's ability to close down a chat thread, remove it from view, and/or prevent additional participation. There are numerous options at your disposal (give admin the ability to forcefully remove users from a chat thread one at a time; the ability to remove all users but the admin with one click; the ability to "lock" the thread to prevent additional comments and hide it from everyone's view, etc)

    Right now you have a chat system where the Admin cannot do their jobs correctly, and all the MS Team keeps saying is "it is a feature, not a bug."

    This is unacceptable for business software.

  • Infrastructure Team commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    In O365 email - users can permanently delete email under normal conditions.

    As an admin I have the option of placing a person under Legal Hold or perform an eDiscovery (point in time or ongoing) that lets me prevent permanent deletion.

    In Skype/Skype for Business our users can also delete all their conversations (and history in Outlook if enabled) - We need this same functionality in Teams chat

    #1 reason - someone shares data they shouldn't in chat like a password - sure they could delete it themselves if we turn that on - only that one comment - but it would still be stored somewhere since the marker exists showing the deleted comment - my understanding is that as an admin I could still recover that chat. --- The big problem is actually expecting the end-user to realize they shared something they shouldn't and then delete it themselves - By having all chat histories configurable for deletion after 1/7/14/30/90 days it allows us to be sure this kind of data does not stick around for someone to scroll back up to.

    -Slack/HipChat/Stride - all allow admins to flush chat after set periods to help meet compliance

    Chat is immediate communication and often focused on completely different things every time the same two people chat again - I don't want to keep that data forever - the Teams groups/channels are for discussions that need history

  • Kathy Wriht commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    If you hide a conversation, how can you get it back if you need it. Since we can't hard delete.

  • Michael Dickerson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is not really a solution. Teams chat should be no different than email. I can delete emails if I want, and they go to trash, and then to recoverable, and eventually go away. If there are legal holds or other reasons to keep them, then retention policies take care of that. Today our users can delete an email message and when it makes it's way through the trash and recoverable it goes away for good. Teams should be the exact same way!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    "Hide" is not the act of deleting... based on this, you have not resolved the issue that your customers are asking for. I hope you don't close this issue out with "try this instead."

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Thanks, but not useful. Being able to delete a chat should be an option by Each company/user and should not be subject to Microsoft's eDiscovery. I think your developers need to go back to the drawing board and make something that works for everyone. Not everyone ones to have inane chat saved. Please take a second look at providing a tool we can all use effectively as a user.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Yeah, we have chosen not to use this tool because of this limitation. Since it won't be changed, we will stick with what we have. Thanks.

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