New icons in the Microsoft Teams interface
This feature is currently in Public Preview so maybe you don't have this yet).
This morning, when I opened Teams, I noticed a new feature in the appearance of my Microsoft Teams client.
If you talk with external users, you will get the folowing alert banner with the message compose box in any chat, meeting, or channel that includes external participants.
Replying to external participants.
In your chat list, this icon also appears next to people’s names.
This is due to the Trust indicators feature currently in preview.
Alert banner
The banner design uses color-coding to indicate risk level: it appears in neutral grey when one or more external users are present, but switches to red if any of those users are "External-unfamiliar" or "Unverified".
Trust Indicators come in different sizes
Trust Indicators in Teams are intentionally designed in multiple visual formats to stay effective yet unobtrusive across all experiences. They come in three badge variants:
- Full badge
- Truncated badge
- Icon-only
These variants ensure the indicator scales across different UI surfaces without losing meaning.
Personal opinion
Trust indicators are useful in Teams, but personally, as I am a solopreneur, I find this setting particularly ugly because every single one of my chats has this icon.
I particularly dislike having the Replying to external participants banner on every conversation, even if I close it, it reappears when I return to the conversation.
According to Microsoft documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/trust-indicators), this appears when the person I’m talking to is outside the organization and no explicit allow or block list is configured.
For some companies, maintaining such lists is challenging, and I hope Microsoft will offer a way to change this or at least make it more discreet.
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