Slash Commands Designed to Speed Access to Common Functions

For many years, Teams clients have supported shorthand commands invoked with the slash (/) key in the command box at the top of the screen. The idea behind these commands is to speed access to essential features. Originally, the set of commands focused on setting the online status for a user. Over time, Microsoft added more commands to the set, including fast access to apps like GitHub.

Now, announced in message center notification MC785024 (24 April 2024, Microsoft 365 Roadmap 120469), Teams supports slash commands in the compose message box for both chats and channel conversations. The feature is supported in the desktop, browser, and mobile clients and is scheduled for release in mid-May. General availability is expected to complete deployment to all tenants by the end of June 2024.

Available Slash Commands

As the name implies, slash commands are invoked by entering a forward slash in the message compose box. This action causes Teams to list the available commands, which are different to the set available in the command box (the same commands to set a user’s status are available):

• Apps: Add an app.
• Available: Set your online status to Available.
• Away: Set your online status to Away.
• Brb: Set your online status to Be right Back.
• Busy: Set your online status to Busy.
• Code: Insert a code block.
• Dnd: Set your online status to Do not Disturb.
• Loop: Add a Loop paragraph component.
• Offline: Set your online status to Offline.
• Settings: Open the settings app.
• Shortcuts: Open a screen to show details of available keyboard shortcuts.

The slash command only works if it is the first element in a message. For instance, Figure 1 shows the slash commands revealed when composing a channel message. The command works because nothing precedes it in the message. If you insert a forward slash after the text, it has no effect, and you won’t see the commands.

Despite what’s stated in MC785024, there’s no way to mute a conversation using a slash command. Also, while the list of commands mentions inserting a Loop paragraph, the other components supported by Teams are available and can be selected after inserting the paragraph component (Figure 2). Only a single Loop component can be inserted into a message.

A code block can be inserted into a message along with a Loop component. This is the Teams code block which is a static component. If you want to share code, you’re better off inserting Loop and choosing its code component because people can then adjust the code as necessary.

No Administrative Control

There’s no administrative control available to enable or disable slash commands. They are part of the base Teams client user interface. Of course, if you don’t want people to use slash commands, don’t tell them that the facility exists. It’s unlikely that someone will find that slash commands exist through a process of inserting random characters in messages. Or maybe that’s not true.

Will People Use Slash Commands?

Nice as it is to have slash shortcut commands, I doubt this will make much difference to the average user. If people want to set their online status, they’ll probably continue to do this using the command box. There are options to insert a code block or Loop component into a message, and I don’t think that many add an app to a message. I’ve been known to be wrong before, and clearly Microsoft believes that the demand exists for this feature. Maybe the demand comes from internal Microsoft users. Who can say?

Now Generally Available for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Customers

The July 27 announcement of the General Availability of Safe Links for Teams is a welcome development. What it means is that if your tenant has Microsoft Defender for Office 365, you can update your Safe Links policy to include real-time checking of links posted to Teams chats and channel conversations.

Licensing Requirements

Licensing Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can be a little confusing. Two plans are available, both of which build on Exchange Online Protection (EOP):

• Office 365 E3 and below have Exchange Online Protection. These tenants can license Defender for Office 365 plans as standalone options.
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes EOP and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1.
• Office 365 E5/A5 and Microsoft 365 E5 includes EOP and Defender for Office 365 Plan 2.

Microsoft sometimes refers to the “security ladder from EOP to Microsoft Defender for Office 365” as a way of describing how the features in the Defender plans build on what you get in Exchange Online Protection (Figure 1).

In this case, you need at least Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 to use Safe Links protection for Teams.

Configuring Defender for Teams

The Safe Links policy is managed through the Policies & rules section of the Microsoft 365 security center. To edit the policy, open Threat policies and select Safe Links. The important change is to set Select the action for unknown or potentially malicious URLs within Microsoft Teams to On (Figure 2).

At the same time, you should review the other Safe Links policy settings to make sure that they’re what you want. Three important settings used to detect and protect against malicious links in email also apply to links in Teams messages:

• Apply real-time URL scanning for suspicious links and links that point to files. In other words, before sending a user to a site, check that the link is not dangerous. If it is, display a warning.
• Do not track user clicks. This setting is normally off and isn’t needed unless you want to track user clicks against links.
• Do not allow users to click through to original URL. If a user clicks on a dangerous link, they see a warning page (Figure 3). You don’t want to allow people to click through the warning to open the dangerous page, so make sure that this setting is on.

You can also see in Figure 2 that I’ve opted to use organization branding on the warning page. The branding used here (and shown in Figure 3) is taken from the tenant’s browser theme.

Usually, Teams calls the default browser to open a web link and that’s when Defender steps in to display the warning page. If a malicious link is used in a channel tab (which means that someone has created a web site tab for that link), Teams opens the warning page in the tab and doesn’t call the browser. If Defender passes the link as safe, Teams opens the page as normal.

Nice Extension into Teams

It’s good that Microsoft has extended Safe Links protection into Teams. Although I suspect that most bad links will continue to arrive in user mailboxes (if not detected and placed in quarantine by Exchange Online Protection), it’s entirely possible that some users will share problematic links through Teams chats or channel conversations. If they do, and your tenant has Defender for Office 365 with a properly configured Safe Links policy, those links will be blocked. What’s not to like about that?

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