Turn on This Setting to View Full Chat Thread via Teams Search

As we know, it is impossible to view the entire chat conversation using Teams’ message search feature when the chat is older than 14 days. You will only see those specific messages for what you have searched. To spare you from this barrier, Microsoft enhanced the Teams search functionality in a way to view the entire conversation thread after clicking the specific message in search results.

Current Teams search functionality:

New Teams search functionality:

In early October 2022, Microsoft will roll out the new search experience to be available to all Teams users. To experience this new Teams search functionality, you must enable Microsoft Teams Public Preview. Users who frequently search the threads for references will find it more convenient with the updated search experience.

Microsoft Teams Public Preview provides prompt access to soon-to-release features. So, admins can explore and test the upcoming features in their organization. Admins can set the public preview in the Teams update policy using the following ways.

• Set the Teams update policy using Teams admin center
• Set the Teams update policy using PowerShell

Managing preview features in Microsoft Teams is important when you want to test upcoming functionality before rolling it out widely. Using the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, admins can easily control whether users get access to Teams Public Preview features through update policies.

• Go to Microsoft Teams Admin Center.
• Navigate to Teams –> Teams Update Policy.
• Click Add to create a new update policy.
• Fill in the name, description, and click the Show preview features dropdown.
• You can see Follow Office Preview turned on by default. Change it to Enabled and save the policy.

Find the difference between preview feature settings in Teams update policy.

Follow Office Preview – This is a default option that readily enables Teams Public Preview features for any Microsoft 365 user enrolled in Office Preview.
Enabled – Choosing this option enables Teams Public Preview regardless of Office preview enrollment. The end user must also opt-in to Teams public preview in their Teams app.
Not Enabled – If the setting is in ‘Not enabled’, Teams Public Preview feature will not be available to end users.

Note – If you create custom Teams update policy, you need to assign the policy for specific users as a custom policy can’t over-write global policy.

For admins who prefer automation, PowerShell provides a faster and more flexible way to control Teams update policies. Using the Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module, you can enable or disable public preview features with a single command.

Firstly, connect to the Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module.

To enable/disable the public preview, you can use the Set-CsTeamsUpdateManagementPolicy cmdlet. You need to specify the username and set ‘AllowPublicPreview‘ parameter to ‘Enabled’.

After enabling, check out the new Teams search functionality and get landed on the full chat thread once the message result gets clicked!