Support for Private Channels
Private channels enable focused private collaboration among a subset of your team. You can find detailed information on the capabilities and management of the private channels feature here - https://docs.microsoft.com/MicrosoftTeams/private-channels. Note: Work to release for the government clouds is in progress.
There are four other types of channel functionality on our backlog that we will continue to track – feel free to upvote and/or comment on the items listed next to each:
- Channel only members: to enable collaboration with people outside the team in a specific channel, without granting them access to the team itself. The channel member could be someone in your organization, or external to your organization (guest). https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/31374577
- Shared channels within an organization: allow people in different teams to collaborate on a shared project or v-team in the context of their own teams. A channel can be shared across teams in the same organization https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18615565
- Shared channels across organizations: allow people in an organization other than yours to collaborate on a shared project or v-team. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/32987917
- Public channels: to provide an outbound communication window for a team to engage with everyone in an organization. These channels are accessible to everyone in their tenant, without needing to join. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/34154851

Private channels enable focused private collaboration among a subset of your team. We are super excited to share that this feature is fully rolled out to the public ring. You can find detailed information on the capabilities and management of the private channels feature here – https://docs.microsoft.com/MicrosoftTeams/private-channels.
There are four other types of channel functionality on our backlog – feel free to upvote and/or comment on the UV items listed next to each:
- Channel only members: to enable collaboration with people outside the team in a specific channel, without granting them access to the team itself. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/31374577
- Shared channels within an organization: allow people in different teams to collaborate on a shared project or v-team in the context of their own teams. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/18615565
- Shared channels across organizations: allow people in an organization other than yours to collaborate on a shared project or v-team. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/32987917
- Public channels: to provide an outbound communication window for a team to engage with everyone in an organization. These channels are accessible to everyone in their tenant, without needing to join. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/34154851
Thanks – and we hope you love your Private channels experience!
~ Alex & the Teams team
2090 comments
Comments are closed-
Marlo commented
I also got this today. Once thing though that I couldn't add to a private channel is the Planner. Is this expected?
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Preston Parker commented
Got it today -- liking it so far, but looks like it's going to be pretty manual.
1. You get a Site Collection with each Private Channel
- I see where you're going here, makes it quick to lift/shift, but it doesn't appear it surfaces in the SharePoint Admin Portal?
2. Looks like the Group that's created doesn't surface in Azure. Are these hidden for a reason? It would be beneficial to surface so we can add dynamic membership to private channels
3. Careful naming (i.e. the url for the site is /sites/MyTeam-MyPrivateChannel) and without it being surfaced in the SharePoint Admin portal, we can't rename it using the new URL renaming feature.Overall, nice to have, but still raises a LOT of manageability questions for an admin standpoint.
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Peter Ch'en commented
Just got it in our tenant, finally!! Thanks Microsoft Teams team for all your hard work on this.
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Luz Fajardo commented
HALLELUJAH!! I'm so excited for this!!
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Prateek commented
Hi Alex, are you saying that next week of November 2019 we will have this feature rolled out?
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Brandon Howell commented
Alex, what is the plan for rolling out Private Channels for GCC clients?
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Anonymous commented
@Joseph Larkin I suspect this limit is due to two factors: 1) to keep the use to it's intended scope (i.e. to prevent the creation of a single team for an entire company and then breaking it down into hundreds of private channels) and 2) to keep the creation of additional team sites in Sharepoint to a minimum
Neither of these are actually technical limitations, but more arbitrary controls to keep things on point
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Nawfaal Mangou commented
Thank you! We've been waiting for this at BDO!
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Velu commented
Great news after a long wait..Looking forward to have it available.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/private-channels
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Joseph Larkin commented
The limitation of 30 private channels per team is really disappointing. I don't understand it. And yes I know it is in addition to the 200 regular channel limit per team.
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Shawn Fielding commented
Is it available for GCC? Not seeing it yet, as you say.
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Robert commented
Wow!. The most requested feature of Microsoft Teams is out with many new exciting features.
Thank you Ignite-19
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Dean P commented
Great news. I take back my previous post, can't wait to finally try this new feature and complete our Office 365 migration
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Anonymous commented
Hi All,
to understand this feature a bit more. Does the fact that we will be able to create private channel means that we will be able to invite "external guests" to a specific channel within a team? These "external guests" that are invited will only be able to access one channel of a Team whereas the internal team members will see all other channels?Thanks a lot for the feedback.
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Mr Nigel commented
Many thanks to Angela Sze for suggesting Private Channels exactly 3 years ago. However it seems we will still have to wait a few more days for the private documentation to be released.....
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Paulo Rosario commented
The Verge right now:
Microsoft Teams is getting Outlook integration, tasks support, new files, pinned and PRIVATE CHANNELS, Yammer integration and more.
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Dean P commented
The most requested feature for MS' flagship business messaging platform now appears to have been pushed back once again, this time to 'Q4 2019' without even so much as an acknowledgement or apology to the customers who have been waiting on this critical feature for so long and who will now have to go back to their bosses once again to explain why it won't be possible to complete the roll out of the Teams within their organisation until next year. Very poor.
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Georgina commented
Had this for one day, then disappeared again!
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Troy Johnson commented
Does this new Private Channels feature allow me as a Teams Site coordinator for my project to LIMIT visibility of a folder that only a FEW within the team members should be allowed to see/open (e.g. a Financials folder that only 3 out of 30 should be able to see).
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Bill R commented
LJ
Roadmap for this feature has been updated as of this week. It's now been pushed back to Q4 2019. So anytime between now and Dec 31 would be my guess.