Microsoft Teams: GitHub Notifications bot posts to channels but can’t be @mentioned to run commands

[blevine]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Apps

Body

The GitHub app in Microsoft Teams is posting notifications fine, but I can’t run any commands in channels. The bot never appears when I try to @mention it.

What works

GitHub Notifications is installed in our team. It’s listed under Manage team → Apps.
Existing channel subscriptions work. Push notifications for our repos arrive in the channel as GitHub Notifications cards, the most recent one today.
The Microsoft Teams for GitHub app is installed on our GitHub organization, with access to selected repositories.

What doesn’t work

When I type @github or @github Notifications in any channel of that team, autocomplete comes up empty. That includes the channel where notifications are already arriving.
It’s the same in the Teams desktop app and in Teams on the web.
The compose box + / Actions and apps → GitHub Notifications only opens the “create issue” dialog. I can’t send a bot command from there.
Because of this, I can’t run @github subscribe owner/repo to subscribe a new channel to another repository.

What I’ve checked

In the Teams admin center, under Teams apps → Manage apps, GitHub Notifications shows as Allowed and available to everyone.
Org-wide app settings allow third-party apps.
The channels are standard channels, not private or shared.

Questions

1. Has the way you subscribe a channel changed, e.g. a new bot name, a personal-app flow, or a settings UI?
2. Is there a known issue where the bot keeps posting but stops showing up for @mentions?
3. Can I fix this without removing and re-adding the app to the team? I’d rather not risk the subscriptions that already work.

Thanks!

[github-actions[bot]]

💬 Your Product Feedback Has Been Submitted 🎉

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[blevine]

Update / partial workaround: In the channel’s compose box, typing @ shows an Add Agent to Channel option. Adding GitHub Notifications through it let me run subscribe owner/repo, and the channel is now subscribed. But the bot still doesn’t appear in @mention autocomplete afterwards, in any channel, on desktop or web. So I can’t run follow-up commands such as unsubscribe or subscribe list features by mentioning it. This looks like a bug in how the agent is registered for mentions.

[DYNOSuprovo]

Here is why this behavior occurs in Microsoft Teams and how to reliably manage your subscriptions without risking your existing channel integrations:

---

Root Cause: New Microsoft Teams ("Teams 2.1") Bot-to-Agent Migration

This is a known issue stemming from Microsoft's recent rollout of the Copilot & Agents framework in the new Teams client:

1. In New Teams, bots added to teams are dynamically categorized as either Notification-only Connectors or Conversational Agents.
2. If the team already had an active connector/webhook subscription prior to the manifest upgrade, Teams caches the app ID in that channel as a notification sender rather than an interactive bot participant.
3. This is why the standard @ autocomplete drops the bot name from the member list, but selecting "Add Agent to Channel" in the compose flyout temporarily binds the agent context to execute a single prompt.

---

Solution 1: Manage Subscriptions via 1:1 Chat with the Bot (No Mentions Needed)

You do not have to run commands inside the public channel to manage its subscriptions or features:

1. Open your personal Chat tab in Microsoft Teams.
2. Start or open the 1:1 chat with GitHub (or search for GitHub / GitHub Notifications in the top search bar).
3. In direct chat with the bot, you do not need the @GitHub prefix at all. You can run all administrative and query commands directly:
   • To check active subscriptions across all channels:

     subscribe list
     

   • To inspect or adjust features for a specific repo in a specific channel:

     subscribe list features
     

   • To unsubscribe or silence specific notifications for a channel:

     unsubscribe owner/repo issues,pulls
     

   • Or manage subscriptions globally:

     signin
     

---

Solution 2: Force New Teams to Re-Index Bot Autocomplete in Channels

If you want @mention autocomplete restored inside channel conversations without removing/re-adding the app from the Team:

1. Go to Manage Team → Apps.
2. Locate GitHub Notifications (or GitHub).
3. If you see an "Update" button next to it, click it (Microsoft Teams requires manual approval when bots transition to agent manifests).
4. In the Teams Desktop app, clear the Teams client cache:
   • Close Teams completely.
   • On Windows: delete %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams (or %localappdata%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams for New Teams).
   • On macOS: delete ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams.
   • Reopen Teams.
5. In the channel compose box, type @ and click the Agents tab at the top of the mention popover to pin GitHub back to your channel mentions.

---

Summary:

• You do not need to reinstall the app or risk active subscriptions.
• Use the 1:1 personal chat with the GitHub bot for full command management (subscribe list, unsubscribe <features>), and use the Agents flyout / Cache reset to restore channel-level mention caching.

Hope this unblocks your subscription management! If this resolves your issue, please feel free to mark this as the accepted answer.

[blevine]

Solution 1 will allow me to receive notifications personally, but it doesn't allow me to subscribe to notifications in a specific channel. For Solution 2, there is no Update button next to the Github app. Will clearing the teams cache still fix the issue and will I lose any data if I do that?

[ibr7780a]

vnrom.net