Microsoft Teams has made distance learning a lot easier, but it has come with its own issues. One of these is that students can engage in inappropriate private chats, and educators wouldn't have a clue about it.
Fortunately, Microsoft is bringing a feature that will let you monitor chats in your Teams environment.
Current 1:1 Chats in Microsoft Teams
Currently, any user in Teams can initiate a private chat with any user. There's no monitoring policy in place to control these chats. One option that the admins have is to turn private chats completely off, but it has its own issues.
If the feature is turned off, even the essential 1:1 chats can't be initiated.
Basically, you either turn off private chats completely or you keep them on for anyone to use.
Supervised Chat in Microsoft Teams
In Microsoft 365 roadmap, Microsoft notes that it's bringing a feature called Supervised chat to Microsoft Teams. With this feature, educators will have better control over private chats in their Teams environments.
The company describes this feature as:
Use Teams administrative policy to ensure students are supervised by an educator during private 1:1 or group chats. With Supervised Chat, students will not be allowed to engage in chats without a supervising educator present.
Restricted Chats in Microsoft Teams
Using this feature, educators will be able to block users from starting private chats when a monitor is unavailable. This means, if an educator is not present to oversee the chats, the chats can't be started.
Educators won't have the option to remove themselves from the chat. Also, the other members of the chat won't be able to remove the educator.
This ensures that all private chats are held under the supervision of a staff member, and this will likely help avoid inappropriate chats.
Enable Supervised Chat in Microsoft Teams
Supervised chat currently only exists in the roadmap of Microsoft 365, and an official rollout is awaited. It's likely the feature will be launched sometime in April.
Although the feature is intended for educational institutes, you can enable it in any Teams environment and it'll work just the way it should. The feature will come disabled by default and you'll need to open the admin's settings menu to enable it.
Oversee Private Chats in Microsoft Teams
Private chats, especially in schools and colleges, can sometimes cause inappropriate problems. With this new feature in Microsoft Teams, you'll have a bit more control over 1:1 chats in your organization.