Microsoft Teams supports chats with distribution lists and other groups

Microsoft Teams is getting a new update that allows users to start a group chat by inviting members of distribution lists, Microsoft 365 groups or security groups with email. The feature respects the group chat membership limit, which is currently set to 250 people.

A distribution group (also called a distribution list) is a list of email addresses that are bundled into one contact. Allows users to send emails to a group of people without typing each email address separately. In addition, security groups with email are used to give users access to resources such as SharePoint.

As of Thursday, August 25, Microsoft Teams allows users to create tags to ping a specific group of people within a group chat, but tag management can be challenging in certain scenarios. The upcoming update allows users to choose a distribution list to broadcast information and send notifications within Teams. This should make it easier to organize chats based on a particular discussion topic, such as marketing, sales and support.

“Organizations rely on distribution lists (DLs) as a tool to create groups of users that reflect the organization’s knowledge and workflows. Bringing this awareness to target groups for specific content improves the core experience of Teams. Enabling our customers to use DLs will increase workflow efficiency and bridge the gap between legacy knowledge of the organizational structure and a new Teams structure,” the company explains in the Microsoft 365 management center.

Microsoft Teams lets users chat with distribution lists in September

Overall, the new feature should help improve time management and communication among team members. The Microsoft 365 roadmap list indicates that this update will become generally available to desktop users in September. However, please note that this date is subject to change.

In other Teams news, Microsoft plans to replace the existing Premium subscription with a new Teams Rooms Pro subscription. The company is also withdrawing the Standard subscription in favor of a Basic tier. The basic plan is bundled for free with the purchase of a certified Microsoft Teams Rooms device.

source: petri