Configuring Channel Moderation for Microsoft Teams Channels

Microsoft Teams now allows you to have control over some end user actions for desired Channels. This post is based on my client’s scenario where he needed it to be enabled for some of the channels (obviously not all).

Teams Channel moderation is configurable channel wise, you do not have to be an Administrator to get this done (A channel owner can configure this). Providing the ability to define who can create new posts, control weather team members can reply to existing channel messages and weather bots and connectors can submit channel messages are the main ideas behind this feature.

Once enabled, channel moderators are capable of the followings:

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.

Configuring Channel Moderation

This is enabled channel wise. Go to any desired channel and click on that 3 dots (options) and Manage Channel

Moderation is OFF by default, which means any user can start a post in this channel

Use the dropdown to switch it ON

Now the permissions, you can define the moderators here. Currently as you can see, Team owners inherit the moderation. Click on Manage button to customize this.

Add the new moderators here. Could be groups or individual. I would recommend groups so that you can add or remove people easily and it makes maintenance agile.

Take a Note:

Moderation feature slightly differs in General Channel
Moderator Capability is Not Audited in Office 365

General Channel:

And now in the other channel setting –> Permissions, I can see the option to turn on moderation with multiple permission levels configurable.

We can also target the audience directly within the message. Tap the rich text button and use the drop down list to set what you want.

Choosing the first option allows anyone to respond to this post in this channel.

If I choose the second option, only moderators can respond to this message. This is a very common scenario in corporate channels.

This is indeed a nice welcome feature for some of the specific use cases. Almost any organization might have that formal channel which needs some level of moderation.

Microsoft reference article for this functionality is here – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-channel-moderation-in-teams