Schedule a broadcast on Teams

Send a message to your intended audience at a specific time

Melita Gandham avatar
Written by Melita Gandham
Updated over a week ago

Watch the tutorial video below, or read one for detailed instructions on how to broadcast a message to your staff on Microsoft Teams.

1) Compose your message

Once the necessary permissions have been granted, it's time to compose a message for your broadcast. This message will be the first notification that your receiver gets in their inbox.

2) Visit your list of broadcasts

On the side bar select the button that says ‘Broadcasts’. Then choose ‘schedule new post’. Please note that you will be asked to select your timezone only once before you create your first broadcast.

3) Set up your broadcast

First select the message you watch to send to your audience from the drop down list:

Now it's time to build your broadcast audience by choosing your target(s) from the following:

The bot audience includes anyone who has used the bot, been targeted by a broadcast, or added to a segment and has not opted out.

Teams are the groups found on your Teams tenant.

Segments are groups of people who have been added via "Manage Segments" or have opted in to receive alerts. Click here to find out more about broadcasting by segment. Please note that segments will not show up on this list, unless you have created them for your bot. You can do this by going to the "Manage Segment" section under "Broadcasting".

Once you click any of the targets, a drop down menu will appear where you can set up your intended broadcast audience:

You can choose multiple targets to build your audience. So for example, if you wanted to target a general group but avoid broadcasting to those who chose to opt-out, you would set up your broadcast like this:

You will notice a little blue box underneath these settings. This will give you a summary of what your bot audience includes:

Please note that this box will turn orange if there is an issue with your bot audience set up.

Once you have set up your target, you can add a filter by attribute. For example:

As you can see, any filters added will also show up in the bot summary. Please note, that you will note be able to filter by attribute unless you have established a target first.


4) Notification type

Select which notification type you would like. The options are described in detail below.


5) Choose to repeat the broadcast

To schedule a recurring post, tick repeat and choose how often you want the post sent. The earliest start date demonstrates the first possible day of sending, the message will be sent out on the next named day that you have set. Eg. a recurring message that’s scheduled on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday but you’re creating the message the Friday before, then the date you pick if you select “now” will be Friday, but of course, the message will not be sent until the following Monday. Once you have set up a recurring broadcast, you will be able to edit it by clicking the "Edit" button. This allows you to change the settings of the recurring broadcast, as well as view how the broadcast has been originally set up.


6) Wait for the results

After a few minutes past the scheduled time if you refresh the page, you will see how far along the platform is sending them.

Duplicating broadcasts

Broadcasts that have already gone out can now be duplicated. Simply go to the broadcast page in the platform and look for the broadcast you're hoping to duplicate. If it's been fully sent out, and is not still recurring, you will be able to see a "Duplicate button".

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Troubleshooting

If a teams broadcast is stuck on "Searching", you may need to double check the app policies to see if all custom apps are disabled for any of the recipients. Your Teams tenant might "Block all apps" for any third party app and any custom app. If this is the case, add the bot to "Custom apps - Allow specific apps and block all others". Changes may take up to 24 hours to take place.

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