Microsoft Teams Channel Moderation is here

Hello Readers,

I hope you’re well.

This is a quick post on a new feature in Teams.  Channel Moderation is a new feature in Teams that allows team owners the ability to decide who in a team can to create new posts in a channel and control whether team members can reply to posts.

Why would you want to configure channel moderation?

I think the target for channel moderation is for information or announcement only channels where you don’t want just anyone to create posts and you don’t want any debate afterward.  Maybe you have a channel that is used to announce specific company information such as when expenses are due.  And because there are only a certain few people that know this, they are the ones that can/should create posts about it.

So in this case, the team owner can grant the moderator right to these privileged few individuals.  And because the flow of information is one way, maybe a response isn’t needed.  Here’s the date, done.

What can channel moderators do?

Channel moderators can:

• Start new posts in the channel. When moderation is turned on for a channel, only moderators can start new posts in that channel.
• Add and remove team members as moderators to a channel. Keep in mind that by default, team owners are channel moderators and can’t be removed.
• Control whether team members can reply to existing channel messages and whether bots and connectors can submit channel messages.

How to enable channel moderation

Next to the channel you want to manage, click on the ellipses and Manage Channel

By default, channel moderation is off which means everyone can start a post

Turn channel moderation on

You can see that team owners are already moderators.  This can’t be removed.  To add a new moderator click manage

Enter the name of the moderator

And select them to add to the list.  Repeat if you want to add more than one moderator

Click done to save the changes

You can see the person you just added.  You can also define member permissions which includes bots and connectors as well as people.

Owners and moderators can also decide by post, who can reply.  Tap the rich text button and use the drop down list to set what you want.

Wrap up

I think this is a welcome feature for specific use cases.  I’d love to hear what you think so leave a comment or reach out.

That’s all folks!

More info

• Set up and manage channel moderation in Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Docs) – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-channel-moderation-in-teams