Microsoft Teams User Tip #16: Guest Access & Searching Chat History

The Problem

If you have 1 to 1 chats with Users who are a guest in your Account and you are a Guest in their Account and you both are Guests in other Accounts. You could conceivably have 1 to 1 Chats with one Contact scattered among many different accounts: You could have a chat with the user as a guest in your Account, you as a guest in their account, or you both are a guest in unlimited numbers of other Accounts.This will make searching for a past conversation history very difficult, since users cannot search across all accounts.

Searching for Your Conversation History for User (in 1 or more Accounts)

So if you want to search for history for a specific user it means switching to each of the Accounts a conversation might have happened with a particular user and searching for the contact. So switch to an Account and then type the search string in the Search of that Account and click Search.

Most likely you will now need to filter the search string by user. Click on the Filter button.

Now reenter the search string and type in the user. (sadly you can’t copy and paste the user name! you need to let Teams “build up” the name, so you need to be paying attention you select the correct user!)

How to Work Around the Problem

I’m not really sure if there is a good solution to this problem. One way to go about it is to have a personal practice of only initiating Chats (1 to 1 conversations that aren’t related to a specific Team) in your own Account. This would mean adding them as a Guest even if you are already a Guest in their Account. But this forces the other user to have their history spread among various accounts.

I suppose another practice is to not use Teams for 1 to 1 Chats and use Skype for Business instead. Once again, not a great solution.

Summary

This is definitely a significant challenge for Chat / 1 to 1 / Adhoc conversations in Microsoft Teams.

To see more Microsoft Teams User Tips:
http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/search/label/MicrosoftTeamsUserTip

.[Video] Learn Microsoft Teams in 5 Minutes:
http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/2016/11/learning-microsoft-teams-in-5-minutes.html