Setting up Audio and Visual Notifications of Live Chats in Microsoft Teams

Follow these directions to set up your Activity notifications right in teams when a new chat request arrives.  

In some cases, we've heard reports that Microsoft Teams users are not receiving these notifications even after following these directions.   If this is the case, see Step 3 below to use browser notifications instead.

1. Turn on your channel banner and feed notifications.

By default, new post notifications are turned off. To make sure you never miss a live chat request, turn on your channel notifications. Just click the 3 dots on the right side of the channel you want to receive the notifications in. Then on the popup, choose All New Posts: 'Banner and feed', then Save.  This will cause you to see a desktop popup notification on Windows or Mac of any new Live Chat request.  

Note that this will NOT create an audio or sound notification, just a visual one.

Now click the 3 dots next to your channel and select Pin channel.  This makes this channel pined to your Teams.

Turn on notifications in Microsoft Teams

You can also choose to display notifications 'Only in feed'. Either will work fine

2. Turn on your Teams sound notifications.

If you also want to receive an audio alert when a new chat request is sent, you can do this in your personal settings.  Every team member wanting to do this will have to follow these directions.

On the top right side of Teams, select Profile, then Settings.  On the popup screen choose Notifications, then scroll down to the Notification Sounds setting.  Choose 'All' to receive a sound notification for all new channel messages.  This setting applies to your profile system wide, meaning that you will hear an audible sound for every new conversation post.

Audio notifications in Microsoft Teams

Now you should receive visual and audio notifications of new chats in Microsoft Teams.

3. Still not seeing notifications in Teams? 

There are a couple more options if you are not seeing your chat request notifications in Teams.

Make sure you've added your Live Chat tab to the Channel You Want

First make sure that you have added the Live Chat Tab to every Channel that you want to receive the chats in.  Once you do this, it's a good idea to go to the Posts in this Channel and mention our live chat bot by typing '@Live Chat help' in the text.  If we respond, then we're receiving your messages on our end.

Next, make sure that you have your Chat widget routing chats to this Team.  Go to your Live Chat Settings from the left sidebar (add Live Chat if it's not already there), and look at the "Route Chats to Team" dropdown.  Make sure this field is routing to the team you want.

Open our dedicated chat console for browser notifications.

Finally, we have heard reports that Microsoft Teams notifications still do not show properly for certain customers.  If you've followed these directions and are still having issues, you can use browser notifications from our Live Chat instead.  

Simple go to your Live Chat Console from the channel you've set up for live chat.  Click on the Keep your chat console open in a separate window link.  This will open a dedicated chat console in a browser where you can receive browser notifications.  You can keep this minimized on your desktop and it will notify you of every new chat that arrives.  You can chat in this dedicated window or in teams.