Priority Notifications in Microsoft Teams: Use-cases

Have you heard about priority notifications in Microsoft Teams and left wondering what a use-case may be for this feature? We all have unlimited access to this feature until April 1, 2020 so now’s the time to check it out! (see what will happen after April 1st below).

Link to excerpt below: Managing messaging policies in Teams

Users can send priority notifications If you turn this on, users can send a message that uses priority notifications. Priority notifications notify users every 2 minutes for a period of 20 minutes or until messages are picked up and read by the recipient, maximizing the likelihood that the message is picked up and acted upon in a timely manner. For a limited time, unlimited Priority Notifications in Microsoft Teams will be made available for all customers. This promotion is extended to April 1, 2020 from its original end date of December 31, 2019. After April 1, licensed users will be able to send Priority Notifications according to the terms of their subscription. For more information, see Messaging policies licensing.

In this modern world of notification-overload, this is one of those features that shouldn’t be over-used. It’s a good idea to have some specific use-cases for how your organization will use these notifications before starting.

I was having a hard time coming up with those use-cases so I tweeted this question and received a long list of responses spanning numerous use-cases and industry verticals.

Thanks to everyone who responded and for some great ideas. Here are the responses in 1 consolidated list grouped in high-level “categories”:

Human Resources

• Time-sheet approvals were due at noon and you haven’t done yours yet, so none of your people are getting paid

Information Technology

• Enterprise IT system outages… for platform owners
• IT service outages or Severity A/1
• Anything with a deadline… Sending RFP for example. Though if something is that urgent I would likely resort to deliver the message face-to-face or by phone (real-time) to make sure the person got the message rather than rely on Async messaging
• Business Continuity (E.g. a site is inaccessible, instructions to staff)
• Conference room help required to on-site support (meetings get expensive real fast)
• Service delivery team notifying system outage to a key support tech
• Information Security incidents requiring immediate response
• Incident response team and other crisis management situations
• Support call response up to SLA breach

Legal/Compliance

• Any sort of legal contract review, or any other government document like a regulatory or patent application or response. Time is of the essence!
• Any compliance or audits having a deadline (E.g. weekly Health and Safety compliance checks that are overdue)

Health and Safety

• Notices about nefarious people. For instance, someone going around to banks trying to clear out someone’s bank account. Send notice to all tellers/managers.
• Security incident where you need urgent assistance (I wonder if it can be combined with e911 as an also notify)
• Alerting First Aid trained staff to an incident
• Severe incident/weather warnings (E.g. Stay out of an area in the building, don’t leave the building, go home now etc.)

Education

• Classroom technology support team using it to notify and dispatch for urgent AV support requests

Social

• I’m your carpool driver and this car is leaving in 20 minutes 🚕💨
• I’m picking up lunch today and I need your order ASAP or you’re on your own
• I’m picking up everyone’s Tim Hortons coffee order… want one? (#OnlyInCanada)

Other

• Notifications from reception (E.g. courier waiting, your car is blocking someone in,  etc.)
• Reminder to meeting participants who accepted your meeting but are not there 5 minutes after the scheduled start time
• Deadline for approval. Due EOD.

Great ideas! If you have others not listed, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

-JCK