@ Mentions
Sending messages is great for conversations starting, but when a flurry of messages appear it can be hard to see what applies to whom. Depending on working preferences, it may sometimes be possible for key people to miss a message if that have muted notifications for a specific channel or Team. To address this, mentions and message importance exist to ensure people receive it at the right time.
To mention a specific person in a channel, simply type the @ symbol followed by a search term with their name. A menu will appear as you type and narrow down search results as necessary. If the user doesn't show up, there is a chance they may not have an Office 365 licence activated yet. Please speak to the IT Service Desk if this persists to ensure your users are signed up and you have been assigned to the correct team(s).
If you wish to broadcast a message en mass, the @channel mention will give each channel member a notification (If they have muted popup notifications for the channel, a notification dot will still appear on their Teams icon and show up in the Activity tab). To broadcast to others in the Team, especially in the General channel, the @team mention will send this to every user, regardless of if they are part of the channel or not (again, notification rules apply).
Message Importance & Announcements
Like emails in Outlook, messages on Teams now come with Importance attached, which changes how Teams behaves when the message is received. This varies slightly depending on if you're having 1:1/group chats or posting to a channel.
In all messages, the importance can be selected by clicking the "!" button below the message box and choosing the required delivery option, depending on if you're message is important (colours it red, rather than purple and heads it with "IMPORTANT!") or urgent ( 1:1/group chats only, also marks it red, heads it at "URGENT!" and displays the notification popup every 2 minutes until the message is read or 20 minutes has passed). Write your message as normal and send it using the "paper airplane" button or pressing the enter key on your keyboard.
In Channels, the option of Announcements can also be made. Publishing these doesn't carry any more weight in notifications over sending regular messages (unless marked as important), but will appear more prominently than standard messages and feature an orange megaphone icon to denote its status. To make a message an announcement, select the "A" button below the message box to open the Rich Text Editor. From the top section of the editor, select the menu labelled "New Conversation". From the menu that appears, click on Announcement to change the post type. Your editor will now provide you with new fields to complete as well as an option to have a coloured or picture background for your headline. Complete the message as normal from here and send it using the "paper airplane" button.
Figure 16 - Dekstop Version
It is not currently possible to create announcements on the mobile version.