We recently started running into issues with Windows 11 Focus Assist Do Not Disturb feature blocking interaction notifications.

I have seen this negative effect in 2 ways.  First, I've seen it block the alert of an incoming call altogether so the agent only receives a not responding message after the interaction fails to be delivered.  Second, I've noticed that when DND is on, auto-answer tends not to work correctly.  If the call is delivered the agent has to manually answer.  The feature is automatically turned on several ways such as by using the Genesys app full-screen or sharing your screen in Teams.

So far our IT has not been able to find a way to block or manage the feature remotely.

I assume others have run into this issue.  How are you managing this feature?  

We have not started out Windows 11 rollout yet but, I would recommend your IT department look at rolling out a GPO to block Focus Assist. When Edge/Chrome rolled out the sleeping tabs we ran into issues with WebRTC based phone solutions (AudioCodes WebRTC & Gen Cloud WebRTC) where agents could not get calls delivered to them as the browser tab was in the background, it would go into sleep mode. We had our IT team that handles GPO's create one to whitelist our WebRTC solutions in the browser to never put those tabs to sleep.

For Focus Assist, the GPO I found to configure would be:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Notifications > "Turn off Focus assist" - Enable it to Turn it Off.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1364392/central-setting-(gpo)-for-turning-off-focus-assist 

We recently started running into issues with Windows 11 Focus Assist Do Not Disturb feature blocking interaction notifications.

I have seen this negative effect in 2 ways.  First, I've seen it block the alert of an incoming call altogether so the agent only receives a not responding message after the interaction fails to be delivered.  Second, I've noticed that when DND is on, auto-answer tends not to work correctly.  If the call is delivered the agent has to manually answer.  The feature is automatically turned on several ways such as by using the Genesys app full-screen or sharing your screen in Teams.

So far our IT has not been able to find a way to block or manage the feature remotely.

I assume others have run into this issue.  How are you managing this feature?  

We have not started out Windows 11 rollout yet but, I would recommend your IT department look at rolling out a GPO to block Focus Assist. When Edge/Chrome rolled out the sleeping tabs we ran into issues with WebRTC based phone solutions (AudioCodes WebRTC & Gen Cloud WebRTC) where agents could not get calls delivered to them as the browser tab was in the background, it would go into sleep mode. We had our IT team that handles GPO's create one to whitelist our WebRTC solutions in the browser to never put those tabs to sleep.

For Focus Assist, the GPO I found to configure would be:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Notifications > "Turn off Focus assist" - Enable it to Turn it Off.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1364392/central-setting-(gpo)-for-turning-off-focus-assist 

We recently started running into issues with Windows 11 Focus Assist Do Not Disturb feature blocking interaction notifications.

I have seen this negative effect in 2 ways.  First, I've seen it block the alert of an incoming call altogether so the agent only receives a not responding message after the interaction fails to be delivered.  Second, I've noticed that when DND is on, auto-answer tends not to work correctly.  If the call is delivered the agent has to manually answer.  The feature is automatically turned on several ways such as by using the Genesys app full-screen or sharing your screen in Teams.

So far our IT has not been able to find a way to block or manage the feature remotely.

I assume others have run into this issue.  How are you managing this feature?  

Unfortunately, we don't use on -premise GPOs any longer. We use Intune.

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Daniel Cross
Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC

Original Message:
Sent: 09-10-2024 08:48
From: Brad Carroll
Subject: Windows 11 Do Not Disturb

We have not started out Windows 11 rollout yet but, I would recommend your IT department look at rolling out a GPO to block Focus Assist. When Edge/Chrome rolled out the sleeping tabs we ran into issues with WebRTC based phone solutions (AudioCodes WebRTC & Gen Cloud WebRTC) where agents could not get calls delivered to them as the browser tab was in the background, it would go into sleep mode. We had our IT team that handles GPO's create one to whitelist our WebRTC solutions in the browser to never put those tabs to sleep.

For Focus Assist, the GPO I found to configure would be:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Notifications > "Turn off Focus assist" - Enable it to Turn it Off.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1364392/central-setting-(gpo)-for-turning-off-focus-assist 

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Brad Carroll
Auto Club Insurance Association Co.

Original Message:
Sent: 09-09-2024 13:31
From: Daniel Cross
Subject: Windows 11 Do Not Disturb

We recently started running into issues with Windows 11 Focus Assist Do Not Disturb feature blocking interaction notifications.

I have seen this negative effect in 2 ways.  First, I've seen it block the alert of an incoming call altogether so the agent only receives a not responding message after the interaction fails to be delivered.  Second, I've noticed that when DND is on, auto-answer tends not to work correctly.  If the call is delivered the agent has to manually answer.  The feature is automatically turned on several ways such as by using the Genesys app full-screen or sharing your screen in Teams.

So far our IT has not been able to find a way to block or manage the feature remotely.

I assume others have run into this issue.  How are you managing this feature?  

#Unsure/Other

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Daniel Cross
Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC
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