How to use tags to manage group mentions in microsoft teams
Tags let you quickly reach a group of people all at once.
With tags, you can categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. For example, a “Nurse” or “Manager” or Designer” tag will enable you to reach groups of people in Teams without having to type every single name.
Once a tag is added, just @mention it in a channel. Everyone who has been assigned that tag will receive a notification just as they would if they were @mentioned individually.
Another way to use a tag is to start a new chat and then select the tag that is assigned to the people you want to reach.
Create and manage tags in Teams
Select Teams on the left side of the app and find your team in the list. Then select More options and choose Manage tags .
Here, you can create tags and assign them to people on your team.
@mention a tag in a channel
In a channel conversation, simply @mention a tag in your message and select the tag from the list. The tag will appear just like any @mention, and the people associated with the tag will get notified.
Using tags in a chat
To start a chat with the members of a tag, select New chat , start typing the name of the tag, and then select the tag from the list. Everyone in the tag group will be added to the To: field.
Manage settings for team owners
Team owners can choose which members of their team are allowed to add tags. Select Teams on the left side of the app and find your team in the list.
Go to More options , select Manage team , choose the Settings tab, and then navigate to the Tags section. Here you can control whether team members or team owners can manage tags.
Note: If you’re unable to create or manage tags, your organization might not have the feature enabled or you are not a team owner. If tags are enabled and you are not a team owner, you can still view tags that have been applied to yourself or other team members.
Note: Tags are not yet available in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) organizations.
Tags let you quickly reach a group of people all at once.
With tags, you can categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. For example, a “Nurse” or “Manager” or Designer” tag will enable you to reach groups of people in Teams without having to type every single name.
Tap Teams on the bottom of the app and find your team in the list. Then select More options and choose Manage tags .
Once a tag is added, just @mention it in a channel. Everyone who has been assigned that tag will receive a notification just as they would if they were @mentioned individually.
Another way to use a tag is to start a new chat and then select the tag that is assigned to the people you want to reach.
Note: If you’re unable to create or manage tags, your organization might not have the feature enabled or you are not a team owner. If tags are enabled and you are not a team owner, you can still view tags that have been applied to yourself or other team members.
Note: Tags are not yet available in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) organizations.
Tags let you quickly reach a group of people all at once.
With tags, you can categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. For example, a “Nurse” or “Manager” or Designer” tag will enable you to reach groups of people in Teams without having to type every single name.
Tap Teams on the bottom of the app and find your team in the list. Then select More options and choose Manage tags .
Once a tag is added, just @mention it in a channel. Everyone who has been assigned that tag will receive a notification just as they would if they were @mentioned individually.
Another way to use a tag is to start a new chat and then select the tag that is assigned to the people you want to reach.
Note: If you’re unable to create or manage tags, your organization might not have the feature enabled or you are not a team owner. If tags are enabled and you are not a team owner, you can still view tags that have been applied to yourself or other team members.
Note: Tags are not yet available in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) organizations.
Microsoft Teams became highly popular after the Covid outbreak, growing from 20 million users in November 2019 to 75 million users in April 2020. As employees of companies all over the world started using Office 365 to boost productivity, Microsoft responded well. In the last twelve months, Microsoft Teams introduced plenty of new features and options. Tags is one of these new features offered in Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams tags are introduced to make @references more practical and resourceful. As tags can eventually make @references more useful, they turn out to be the hashtags in Microsoft Teams. You can create and manage tags to notify a certain group of people easily. First, you need to create tags and configure them to make sure the desired people are included in that tag. Using tags in Microsoft Teams is easy. Below is a clear idea about how tags function.
Uses of Tags in Microsoft Teams
By using tags, you can connect with a subset of users in your team quickly. Using tags in Microsoft Teams, you can categorize users in your organization based on roles, skills, projects, and even location. Once you have created and assigned tags to the desired users, it is ready for use. You can then use those MS Teams tags as @mentions in channel posts. Furthermore, you can even use these tags to start the conversation with a selected group of users too.
How to Create and Manage Tags
Steps to create Microsoft Teams tags:
- Sign in to your Microsoft Teams account.
- Click on the Teams icon on the left menu bar.
- Look for your Team on the list and click on the More options
- Click Manage tags
- If you have no tags already, you will see a window like this.
- Click on Create tag option to view a new window.
- Enter tag name and assign it to appropriate people.
- Select Create to complete the process.
- Once you have created one or more tags, you will see the window below when choosing Manage tags
- You can also start a group chat from the previous window with the desired subset of users by choosing the tags.
Make the Most of Tags
You can use MS Teams tags in two ways. The first and the most popular way is to type “@mentioning a tag” in your channel conversation, i.e., @SEO Team (shown in the above illustration). To perform this, all you need is to go to the desired Team and in the text field, then enter @mention as usual, and then choose the desired tag from the populated list.
Everyone assigned to the tag will be notified when you post this message to the channel.
You can also start a new chat with the users associated with a tag by going to the New chat window and entering the tag name in the To section.
Choose the desired tag from the list and everyone assigned to the tag will be added to the chat right away.
How to Configure Who Can Manage Tags
For using tags in Microsoft Teams in the best way, you should configure who can manage tags. Team owners can do this from the settings tab of each channel. The steps below will enable you to make the desired configuration changes.
- Go to the Teams list from the left menu bar and find the desired team.
- Click on More options icon and choose Manage team.
- Click on the Settings tab and select the Tags
- Choose whether team owners or team members should have the privilege to manage tags.
Follow these steps and make the most of the Microsoft Teams tags. Let us know how it helped your organization to make the most of the Microsoft Teams platform. It will be a great experience using hashtags in Microsoft Teams using the tags option. We will be posting more useful Microsoft Teams blogs in the coming days. Stay tuned.
Written by Alex K Joseph
Alex Joseph is a Digital Marketing Strategist with explicit knowledge in Content Marketing and Microsoft Technologies. A writer by day, Alex is a night owl and a DIYer. Alex’s theory is to make businesses achieve success with modern solutions and smart exploitation of resources.
Microsoft Teams lets you tag users so that you can mention or chat with an entire group of people at once without typing everyone’s names. Here’s how to set up group tags and add as many coworkers to it as needed.
Mentioning people with an “@” is common in a lot of apps these days, whether it’s Slack, Discord, Microsoft Office, or many other apps. Teams is no exception to this, but now you can also create “tag groups” that let you add users and then mention that group to notify everyone in it without having to mention each individual name.
Let Everyone Create Tag Groups
By default, only the owner of a team can create a tag group, but any member of the team can add a user to a tag group. If you want your team members to be able to create tag groups, click the three-dot menu icon next to the Team name and then click the “Manage Team” button.
Next, select “Settings” and change the “Who Can Add Tags” option from “Owners Only” to “All Members.”
Create Tag Groups
To create a new tag group, click the three-dot menu icon next to the Team name and then then “Manage Tags.”
From there, select “Create Tag.”
Give your tag a name, add team members, and then click the “Create” button.
How to Use a Tag Group
A tag group can be used in two ways: you can mention a group in a channel just like any other user, or you can start a chat with a group that will automatically include everybody tagged in that group.
To mention a group in a channel, type “@” and then the name of the group. The tag group will appear in the autocomplete just like a user’s name would.
If you mention a group, everyone in that group will receive a notification.
To start a chat with a group, click the “New Chat” button and start typing the name of the group. The tag group will appear in the autocomplete just like a user’s name would.
All members of the group will receive a notification for the new chat just as if they’d been mentioned by name.
Overview
Tags in Microsoft Teams let users quickly and easily connect with a subset of people on a team. You can create and assign custom tags to categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, or location. Or, tags can be automatically assigned to people based on their schedule and shift information in the Shifts app. After a tag is added to one or multiple team members, it can be used in @mentions by anyone on the team in a channel post or to start a conversation with only those people who are assigned that tag.
As mentioned earlier, there are two kinds of tags in Teams.
- Custom tags: Team owners and team members (if the feature is enabled for them) can manually create and assign tags to people. For example, a “Designer” or “Radiologist” tag will reach those sets of people on a team without having to type their names.
- Tagging by shift: With this feature, people are automatically assigned tags that match their schedule and shift group name in the Shifts app in Teams. For example, the “EngineerOnCall” tag reaches all engineers who are scheduled in Shifts to work at the time the tag is used in a chat or channel post. With tagging by shift, Teams takes the guesswork out of knowing the name of on-shift staff when users need to quickly relay information. Tagging by shift can also be backed by major workforce management systems like JDA, Kronos, and AMiON by integrating them with Shifts in Teams. To learn more about how to set up this feature, see Set up tagging by shift.
Tags are not yet supported in private channels. Tags are not available in GCC High, or Department of Defense (DoD) organizations.
How tags work
A tag can be manually added or automatically assigned to a person on a specific team. It can then be used in @mentions on the To line in a chat or in a post on any standard channel of the team. Here’s some examples of how tags can be used in Teams:
- A store manager posts an announcement to a channel to notify all cashiers.
- A hospital administrator sends a message to all radiologists in a channel.
- A marketing manager starts a group chat with all designers.
- A nurse sends a message to all on-call cardiologists. (coming soon)
- A system engineer posts an announcement to a channel to notify all on-shift field engineers. (coming soon)
When a tag is @mentioned in a channel conversation, team members associated with the tag will get notified, just like any other @mention.
Manage custom tags for your organization
As an admin, you can control how tags are used across your organization in the Microsoft Teams admin center. Currently, you can’t use PowerShell to manage tags.
A team can have up to 100 tags, up to 100 team members can be assigned to a tag, and up to 25 tags can be assigned to a single user.
Set who can add custom tags
By default, team owners can add custom tags. You can change this setting to allow team owners and team members to create, edit, delete, and manage tags or you can turn off tags for your organization.
In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, click Org-wide settings > Teams settings.
Under Tagging, next to Tags are managed by, select one of the following options:
- Team owners and members: Allow team owners and members to manage tags.
- Team owners: Allow team owners to manage tags.
- Disabled: Turn off tags.
Configure custom tags settings
You can configure the following tags settings to control how custom tags are used across your organization.
In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, click Org-wide settings > Teams settings.
Under Tagging, set the following, depending on the needs of your organization.
- Let team owners override who can manage tags: When you turn on this setting, team owners can set whether team members can create and manage tags within a team and the value of the Tags are managed by setting is the default value for each team. If you turn off this setting, the Tags are managed by setting can’t be changed per team.
- Suggested default tags: Use this to add a set of default tags. You can add up to 25 tags, and each tag can contain a maximum of 25 characters. Team owners and members (if the feature is enabled for them) can use these suggestions, add to them, or create a new set of tags.
- Let custom tags be created: Turn on this setting to let people add tags other than the suggested default tags that you set. If this is turned off, people can only use the suggested default tags. If you turn this off, make sure that you add one or more default tags.
Manage custom tags settings for a team
If you turned on the Let team owners override who can manage tags setting in the Microsoft Teams admin center, team owners can set whether members can add tags at the team level. To do this, on the Settings tab for a team, go to Tags, and then choose who can add tags.
Use tags
Here’s how to add custom tags and how to set up tagging by shift (if you’re using the Shifts app in Teams). To learn more, check out Using tags in Teams.
Create and assign custom tags
To create and assign custom tags, select Teams on the left side of the app, and then find your team in the list. Select Л™Л™Л™ More options, and then choose Manage tags. Here, you can create tags and assign them to people on your team.
To delete a tag, select Л™Л™Л™ More options next to the tag, and then select Delete tag.
Set up tagging by shift
Tagging by shift allows your users to reach the people on-shift in real-time. Teams automatically assigns users with tags matching their schedule and shift group name from the Shifts app, enabling dynamic role-based messaging. Notifications are sent only to those people who are on shift at the time a tag is used to start a chat or in a channel post.
- In Teams, go to the Shifts app.
- Create shift groups and name them after an attribute such as a role. For example, EngineerOnCall. The shift group name will be the name of the tag.
- Fill out a schedule by assigning shifts to members of your teams. When you’re finished, in the upper-right corner of the Shifts app, select Share with team.
- Wait 15 minutes for the scheduled shifts to populate the tagging service.
- Use the tag anywhere you use tags in Teams.
Microsoft Teams became highly popular after the Covid outbreak, growing from 20 million users in November 2019 to 75 million users in April 2020. As employees of companies all over the world started using Office 365 to boost productivity, Microsoft responded well. In the last twelve months, Microsoft Teams introduced plenty of new features and options. Tags is one of these new features offered in Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams tags are introduced to make @references more practical and resourceful. As tags can eventually make @references more useful, they turn out to be the hashtags in Microsoft Teams. You can create and manage tags to notify a certain group of people easily. First, you need to create tags and configure them to make sure the desired people are included in that tag. Using tags in Microsoft Teams is easy. Below is a clear idea about how tags function.
Uses of Tags in Microsoft Teams
By using tags, you can connect with a subset of users in your team quickly. Using tags in Microsoft Teams, you can categorize users in your organization based on roles, skills, projects, and even location. Once you have created and assigned tags to the desired users, it is ready for use. You can then use those MS Teams tags as @mentions in channel posts. Furthermore, you can even use these tags to start the conversation with a selected group of users too.
How to Create and Manage Tags
Steps to create Microsoft Teams tags:
- Sign in to your Microsoft Teams account.
- Click on the Teams icon on the left menu bar.
- Look for your Team on the list and click on the More options
- Click Manage tags
- If you have no tags already, you will see a window like this.
- Click on Create tag option to view a new window.
- Enter tag name and assign it to appropriate people.
- Select Create to complete the process.
- Once you have created one or more tags, you will see the window below when choosing Manage tags
- You can also start a group chat from the previous window with the desired subset of users by choosing the tags.
Make the Most of Tags
You can use MS Teams tags in two ways. The first and the most popular way is to type “@mentioning a tag” in your channel conversation, i.e., @SEO Team (shown in the above illustration). To perform this, all you need is to go to the desired Team and in the text field, then enter @mention as usual, and then choose the desired tag from the populated list.
Everyone assigned to the tag will be notified when you post this message to the channel.
You can also start a new chat with the users associated with a tag by going to the New chat window and entering the tag name in the To section.
Choose the desired tag from the list and everyone assigned to the tag will be added to the chat right away.
How to Configure Who Can Manage Tags
For using tags in Microsoft Teams in the best way, you should configure who can manage tags. Team owners can do this from the settings tab of each channel. The steps below will enable you to make the desired configuration changes.
- Go to the Teams list from the left menu bar and find the desired team.
- Click on More options icon and choose Manage team.
- Click on the Settings tab and select the Tags
- Choose whether team owners or team members should have the privilege to manage tags.
Follow these steps and make the most of the Microsoft Teams tags. Let us know how it helped your organization to make the most of the Microsoft Teams platform. It will be a great experience using hashtags in Microsoft Teams using the tags option. We will be posting more useful Microsoft Teams blogs in the coming days. Stay tuned.
Written by Alex K Joseph
Alex Joseph is a Digital Marketing Strategist with explicit knowledge in Content Marketing and Microsoft Technologies. A writer by day, Alex is a night owl and a DIYer. Alex’s theory is to make businesses achieve success with modern solutions and smart exploitation of resources.
Mentioning People, Channels, and Tags in Microsoft Teams is an essential part of modern collaboration. This article explains how to @mention a Tag in Microsoft Teams with the help of Power Automate and the Graph API.
2 days ago · 5 min read
While Power Automate is a great tool for building fully automated workflows and integrating natively with Microsoft Teams, not every scenario is supported out of the box or can be solved with true no-code. Sometimes it needs a bit more tender, and so it’s the case when you want to @mention a Tag in Microsoft Teams with Power Automate.
What are Tags in Microsoft Teams? Tags in Microsoft Teams let users quickly and easily connect with a subset of people on a team. You can create and assign custom tags to categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, or location. — Source: docs.microsoft.com
If you want to mention a Channel instead of a Tag, check out my previous article.
A Million Ways of @Mention in Microsoft Teams using a Power Automate Flow.
This is a short story about mentioning people or a channel in Microsoft Teams from within a Power Automate flow — All…
Create a Cloud Flow to @mention a Tag
Go to Power Automate and create a new Cloud Flow or modify any of your existing flows.
As the f i rst step, we need to initialize 4 variables and fill in the corresponding values.
- teamsId — the Id of the Team which holds your tag
- channelId — the Id of the Channel you’d like to issue a message in
- tagId — the unique Id of the Tag you want to mention
- tagName — the display name of your Tag as created in Teams
How do I get these IDs? Getting the IDs isn’t straight forward, so I’ve put the steps in its own section at the end of this article.
Once you have all your variables initialized and all of the IDs set, add the HTTP with Azure AD (Premium) action to the end of your flow.
When prompted enter for both URL fields and click Sign in.
Choose POST as the method and add Content-Type: application/json to the list of headers.
Enter the following URL for the request:
I’ve prepared a sample request body from where you can start and adopt it as needed. Just copy and paste it from the gist below (click view raw first).
Once you’ve saved your flow and ran it, you should see a new message in Teams with an @mention of your Tag. All members subscribed to that Tag will be notified by Microsoft Teams.
Right now, there is no easy way to get all of those IDs. So, in my opinion, the simplest way for an ambitious citizen developer is to look behind the scenes using the Microsoft Graph Explorer.
The Microsoft Graph Explorer lets us talk with the Microsoft Graph, the unified API layer powering most of Microsoft’s products today. It’s targeted at developers but can be very helpful for more advanced citizen development tasks like this one.
Create a Tag and issue a sample message
As a first step, make sure you’ve created a tag inside your sample team. Open that team and manually issue a new message mentioning that tag. This simplifies the lookup of all the IDs later on.
Once you’ve issued the message in Teams, hop over to Graph Explorer and click the Sign in to Graph Explorer button.
On the left side, search for the my joined teams sample query and click Run query. In the response preview, look for the name of your sample team and copy away its id .
Next, search for the channels of a team which I am a member of sample query and replace
To find the Tag id, we need to find the sample message that we issued manually.
For this, search for the messages (without replies) sample query on the left. Then, in the URL field, replace
When successful, the Response preview should list all of your recent messages in that channel, including the one mentioning your tag. Search for that message and copy the tag id . Also, note the mentionText which is the name of your tag.
That’s it. Now you have all the necessary IDs to complete your Cloud Flow like described above.
Mentioning People, Channels, and Tags in Microsoft Teams is an essential part of modern collaboration. This article explains how to @mention a Tag in Microsoft Teams with the help of Power Automate and the Graph API.
2 days ago · 5 min read
While Power Automate is a great tool for building fully automated workflows and integrating natively with Microsoft Teams, not every scenario is supported out of the box or can be solved with true no-code. Sometimes it needs a bit more tender, and so it’s the case when you want to @mention a Tag in Microsoft Teams with Power Automate.
What are Tags in Microsoft Teams? Tags in Microsoft Teams let users quickly and easily connect with a subset of people on a team. You can create and assign custom tags to categorize people based on attributes, such as role, project, skill, or location. — Source: docs.microsoft.com
If you want to mention a Channel instead of a Tag, check out my previous article.
A Million Ways of @Mention in Microsoft Teams using a Power Automate Flow.
This is a short story about mentioning people or a channel in Microsoft Teams from within a Power Automate flow — All…
Create a Cloud Flow to @mention a Tag
Go to Power Automate and create a new Cloud Flow or modify any of your existing flows.
As the f i rst step, we need to initialize 4 variables and fill in the corresponding values.
- teamsId — the Id of the Team which holds your tag
- channelId — the Id of the Channel you’d like to issue a message in
- tagId — the unique Id of the Tag you want to mention
- tagName — the display name of your Tag as created in Teams
How do I get these IDs? Getting the IDs isn’t straight forward, so I’ve put the steps in its own section at the end of this article.
Once you have all your variables initialized and all of the IDs set, add the HTTP with Azure AD (Premium) action to the end of your flow.
When prompted enter for both URL fields and click Sign in.
Choose POST as the method and add Content-Type: application/json to the list of headers.
Enter the following URL for the request:
I’ve prepared a sample request body from where you can start and adopt it as needed. Just copy and paste it from the gist below (click view raw first).
Once you’ve saved your flow and ran it, you should see a new message in Teams with an @mention of your Tag. All members subscribed to that Tag will be notified by Microsoft Teams.
Right now, there is no easy way to get all of those IDs. So, in my opinion, the simplest way for an ambitious citizen developer is to look behind the scenes using the Microsoft Graph Explorer.
The Microsoft Graph Explorer lets us talk with the Microsoft Graph, the unified API layer powering most of Microsoft’s products today. It’s targeted at developers but can be very helpful for more advanced citizen development tasks like this one.
Create a Tag and issue a sample message
As a first step, make sure you’ve created a tag inside your sample team. Open that team and manually issue a new message mentioning that tag. This simplifies the lookup of all the IDs later on.
Once you’ve issued the message in Teams, hop over to Graph Explorer and click the Sign in to Graph Explorer button.
On the left side, search for the my joined teams sample query and click Run query. In the response preview, look for the name of your sample team and copy away its id .
Next, search for the channels of a team which I am a member of sample query and replace
To find the Tag id, we need to find the sample message that we issued manually.
For this, search for the messages (without replies) sample query on the left. Then, in the URL field, replace
When successful, the Response preview should list all of your recent messages in that channel, including the one mentioning your tag. Search for that message and copy the tag id . Also, note the mentionText which is the name of your tag.
That’s it. Now you have all the necessary IDs to complete your Cloud Flow like described above.
How to use tagging in Microsoft Teams
Tags in Microsoft Teams let s users quickly and easily connect with a subset of people on a team. You can create and assign custom tags to categorize people based on attributes such as role, project, skill, or location.
A tag can be manually added or automatically assigned to a person on a specific team. It can then be used in @mentions on the To line in a chat or in a post on any standard channel of the team. Here’s some examples of how tags can be used in Teams:
- A department manager posts an announcement to a channel to notify all team members.
- A sales manager sends a message to all sal espeople in a channel.
- A marketing manager starts a group chat with all designers.
To create and assign custom tags, select Teams on the left side of the app, and then find your team in the list. Select ˙˙˙ More options , and then choose Manage tags . Here, you can create tags and assign them to people on your team.
@mention a tag in a channel:
In a channel conversation, simply @mention a tag in your message and select the tag from the list. The tag will appear just like any @mention, and the people associated with the tag will get notified.
Using tags in a chat:
To start a chat with the members of a tag, select New chat , start typing the name of the tag, and then select the tag from the list. Everyone in the tag group will be added to the To : field.
Manage settings for team owners:
Team owners can choose which members of their team are allowed to add tags. Select Teams on the left side of the app and find your team in the list.
Go to More options , select Manage team , choose the Settings tab, and then navigate to the Tags section. Here you can control whether team members or team owners can manage tags.
Often times a single channel is accessible by many users of the channel. Let’s say a situation in which channel is used by many Teams of different roles. If you want to address only one specific team you can use at mentions for everyone in the Team. Otherwise, you can use tags in Microsoft Teams.
Jump to:
- How to create Tags in Teams.
- How to edit a Tag.
- Start a group chats with members of the Tag.
- Teams tags important points.
- Verdict.
People also search for:
With tags, we can club different members of a team under one tag and mention them all together whenever necessary.
How to create tags in Teams:
- Go to the necessary Team.
go to the necessary team
- Click on the ellipsis button.
Additional options button
- Select the Manage Tags option.
Manage tags option
- Click on the Create Tag button.
Create tag button
- Give a Tag name.
Giving the Tag a name
- Add all the necessary people that you want in the Tag.
- Click on the Create button.
Click on Create button
This will create the new Tag to the Team.
How to edit a tag:
- You can go to the All tags tab.
All Tags button
- Click on the tag.
- Add/Remove members.
Start a group chat with the members of the Tag:
- Go to the All Tags tab.
All Tags button
- Click on the necessary Tag.
- Use the Chat with group option to start a group chat with just the Tag members.
Chat with group button
Teams Tags important points:
When a tag is used to mention a group of people in a Team, we can get a notification against the message as shown in the image.
@ mention on the chat message
We will also get a notification in the notification pane.
Verdict:
Tags are a very useful way of grouping a set of people under one tag. This makes addressing or starting a chat with the group very easy.
Here we have step by step guide to how to make a Tag in Microsoft Teams. If you have any doubts, please ask in the comments below.
For more posts on Teams, please stay tuned to TecKangaroo.
