Microsoft Teams does not ring when being called.

Chris Drexler (SHS) 51

I have a similar problem as described in this old post from a year ago: incoming call are not indicated via ring-tone. The pop-up window appears, but I do miss this window regularly. So I really would appreciate an audible notification.

No matter what adjustments to standard apps or sound devices settings i make, not ring-tone. It used to work but stopped all of a sudden some month ago. I have no indication whatsoever what could have cause this behavior.

I'm currently on 1909.1833.110, no update on 2004 is currently available for my system, otherwise I'd have tried this, too. I also removed all other devices to avoid interdependence issues, did not help either.

Any other sound related functionality is working fine.

Hopefully someone here can help me out here!

Chris

Glenn Fossey 1 Reputation point

2020-11-26T13:27:51.563+00:00

Was there ever an answer to this problem?
We are a team of about 10 and all of us have this issue intermittently.

Real irritating, might have to find another application that can call out on easily.
Chris Drexler (SHS) 51 Reputation points

2020-12-02T16:04:13.057+00:00

To my knoweldge not, I'm still tyring out different scenarios. but I'm slow in doing so because of my project work.
Next step will be the setup of a clean profile, which is not that easy with my corprate managed notebook.

I keep you posted!
jmm 1 Reputation point

2021-02-19T00:35:50.597+00:00

I had the same problem and it was based on a permission not been met. I moved the AppData folder outside user/my_user folder to another drive and setting a symbolic link for apps to reach the app data.

That was it, no ringing.

To fix it just return the AppData where it belongs nevertheless it will eat your entire System Drive.
Bruno Genovese 31 Reputation points

2021-06-10T16:26:31.857+00:00
Almost a year later:

I see below that the issue is a design flaw, as you either get rings AND the annoying pings every time someone messages, or you get no sounds at all.

The problem is still happening in version 1.4.00.11161

sigh. Voice call ringing when someone calls should ALWAYS work, no matter what other settings might be. Otherwise, what is the point of the voice call feature?
Daud Shabbir 1 Reputation point

2021-07-19T19:56:38.667+00:00

Reinstall Teams.
Chuck Gardner 1 Reputation point

2022-05-26T20:21:05.39+00:00

Please make sure that Focus Time is not turned on in Outlook.

Accepted answer

John Allen 106 Reputation points

2021-03-01T15:17:53.133+00:00

I had the same/similar problem which I've sort of resolved:

To get the ringing tone for incoming calls, I had to set 'play sound for notifications; to on (under profile picture//settings///notifications) - this mean syou get all the annoying pings everytime someone messages you BUT, you can turn these off for channels within specific teams (one by one) although apparently not on any chat threads. Kind of annoying that they don't let you distinguish between incoming calls and new messages - another one for the wish list.

cheers
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6 people found this answer helpful.
Emanuel 6 Reputation points

2021-03-05T12:12:51.727+00:00

This seems like my exact problem - I disabled this, because I specifically don't want a Ping for every single Notification.

It being combined for Calls as well seems like a huge oversight to me.

Chris Drexler (SHS) 51 Reputation points

2021-03-05T13:40:00.56+00:00

Hi John, That seems to have fixed it for me !!!! WOW. I did not remember this setting, and i also seem to have overlooked this when skimming for possible changes in my preferences!!!!!

I'll make some more tests. But right now it's working for me!

Shall I then click "Accept Anser" after verifying it?

Happy Coding
Chris

OceanMan 11 Reputation points

2022-03-21T12:25:12.863+00:00

Thanks, that certainly didn't fix it for me, but it does identify why I was not getting a ring tone for incoming calls.
Here we are another year later and there's still a ridiculously stupid option: "Play sound for incoming calls and notifications". No thank you, if it's all the same to you I'd rather have a sound for incoming calls when someone is trying to speak to me, while at the same time actually concentrate on my work without pings for all other Teams messages.
So that is not a fix for me, and for now I'll have to miss some calls for the sake of my sanity. I'll try to follow this up with Microsoft through my company.

Bruno Genovese 31 Reputation points

2022-03-21T12:43:28.167+00:00

I completely agree with you OceanMan-8994. Microsoft did many things right with Teams but completely missed the boat with others and they stubbornly refused to fix their mistakes for years. For example,

1) This thread's main issue, as they completely fail to understand that voice calls have a much higher priority on our attention than written messages. Let's face it, when people have something urgent they will call by voice, because they know that answering text messages is something most people do "at their own convenience". They even missed the boat with recognizing that we might want to be notified when we receive messages from certain people (like our own immediate team) but not from anybody else or worse... some of those extremely spammy group chats. They need to give us the ability to choose whether to be notified by text chat, and regardless of choice give us the ability to flip the choice for specific people or group chats.

2) Another big (but unrelated) miss that they just won't let us have a SMALL window for team, like old IM apps used to do. Just show a list of names of recent chats, an icon to show if there are messages pending (or a call missed), and the text of the selected chat. It would be so simple to implement such a compact interface, but nope, although they've promised it... years have passed and nothing.

Frankly it is very sad. We expect this kind of inattention to customer needs from Google, but Microsoft is supposed to be better than this.

OceanMan 11 Reputation points

2022-03-22T10:37:25.007+00:00

If you'd like this Teams issue properly resolved, please can you upvote this feature request.

Add the ability to turn off notifications for chats but not for calls
Thanks!
Also thanks to my company's IT group for finding this.

Merkelz, Curt 0 Reputation points

2023-06-07T20:43:22.53+00:00

This fix does not work for me
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14 additional answers

Chris Drexler (SHS) 51 Reputation points

2021-02-05T07:10:42.94+00:00

Hi, Thanks for providing this! Unfortunately I tried this already. I even disabled and/or disconnected every other device and made sure that the remaining internal Connexant Audio Device was selected: no success :-(

I'll get a completely fresh installation within the next weeks, then I can check again. I gave up on my current system :-(.
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Tanya Harper 1 Reputation point

2021-02-10T20:56:33.163+00:00

Do you have a docking station for your laptop? Check your device settings, my dock has a sound card but doesn't seem to play sound. It keeps taking over every time I dock my laptop so my calls go to the dock station sound card rather than my laptop. Have to change it back.
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Chris Drexler (SHS) 51 Reputation points

2021-02-11T06:11:53.967+00:00

Dear TanzyHarper,

Thanks for the Hint! I had no docking station connected when I tested all this, and even the one I have does not have a soundcard. To avoid any side effects I even disconnected every other USB device.
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Zuckero, Ginny 1 Reputation point

2021-02-11T22:22:38.803+00:00

We have just started having this problem. Team will ring on my phone but not my desktop and screen sharing on a phone is not at all effective. I found that if I find a chat from the person calling me I can click on that and the Join button is there and I can take the call that way, but I shouldn't have to. This only started about two weeks ago. Before that it rang on all devices with no issue at all.
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Mike Grove 1 Reputation point

2021-08-17T08:33:13.633+00:00

Having read this post - I checked Windows Notifications - but that didn't have anything for sound, so within Teams, went to Settings, Notifications, - there is now a button for Play sound for incoming calls and notifications - and when enabled - my user now gets a ringing sound...
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Bruno Genovese 31 Reputation points

2021-08-17T10:50:22.337+00:00

Mike,

This is a known band-aid that might work for a few users, but it is largely inadequate.

The problem is that most people need voice calls to ring all the time, and most "person to person chat notifications" to be visible and make a sound unless individually muted, and maybe even some group chat notifications to be visible/make a sound. But while most other chat/voice systems make it very granular in Teams it is pretty much all or nothing.

So, in Teams you either lose all notifications or submit yourself to extremely annoying spamming.

Unfortunately nothing can be done about it unless Microsoft sees the light on this topic, and they seem to be blind as a bat... at least for now. Which is why many of us use the muted Teams combined with alternative tools for more "urgent" communications.
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