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

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Angela Sze shared this idea · November 01, 2016 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

completed ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · November 06, 2019

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

Show previous admin responses (19)

great news! ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · November 04, 2019

As we announced today at Microsoft Ignite 2019, we are thrilled to announce that Private channels is coming to Microsoft Teams. Private channels enable focused private collaboration among a subset of your team.

Private channels will be rolling out over the coming week, so if you don’t see it yet, hang tight!

Thanks,
Alex & the Teams team

working on it ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · July 03, 2019

We acknowledge the customer demand for Private Channels and have been hard at work on it. Private Channels is currently in preview with a select group of customers. We expect to release the feature to the public later this Fall, and will update here when we are starting to roll out to all customers. We appreciate all the feedback you have provided to us on this forum and thank you for your patience.

~Alex

working on it ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · February 04, 2019

Hi Everyone – thank you for your patience. As was commented by someone below, Suphatra is no longer at Microsoft, but rest assured we are working on this feature.

~ Alex

needs your feedback ·

Suphatra responded · October 17, 2018

Hey Microsoft Teams users — I want you to weigh in on new features around channels and group chats. The engineering team and I have put together this survey to find out how you want to see channels improve. You can fill it out here: https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_esTxHdABLQxKLvn

And I’m still waiting on approval to get you a good update about Private Channels. I can say that we ARE working on it, fervently.

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · September 27, 2018

Hey guys, guess who’s back from maternity leave? Your favorite Teams PM, Suphatra! I’ve been back for a few weeks and catching up on where we’re at in Engineering.

Private channels is still actively in development, and I am hoping I’ll be given clearance to share with you some more details. What would be great is if you can post in this thread any specific questions you have about the feature, besides just an inquiry on the release date.

You can also email them to me at sparavi@microsoft.com, as well as any other concerns you might have.

It’s good to be back, and good to be posting on here again. I hope you are all doing well!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Warren responded · August 06, 2018

This feature is still actively being worked upon. I’ll let you know as we get closer to release.
-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · June 01, 2018

This feature request is still in the works. No additional details to share at this time.
But the team is hard at work to ensure it is implemented in a fashion that will meet your expectations.

-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · March 20, 2018

This feature request is still in the works.

No big updates to share, but the feedback has been a huge help. So thank you all once again. As more details emerge from the feature team on the work being done, I will be sure to share it with you here.

We understand how important this ask is to you all and we are working to ensure it is implemented in a fashion that will meet your expectations.

-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · February 06, 2018

The survey is now closed. We had an amazing response, so thank you all very much!

Please know our surveys are used to help gauge multiple things. Don’t read into it as a roadmap of what is to come.

We will review all the feedback and are reading the comments you post as well. All your feedback is appreciated and goes through consideration.

As we progress on the feature request I will provide more updates.

Thank you!
-Warren

needs your feedback ·

Warren responded · February 05, 2018

We are still working on this item but would like some feedback from you!

This survey would provide us with valuable insight and help drive several requests. It should only take a couple minutes to quickly fill out.
https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cGv5UzDjoR5idfL

We’re still aiming for early this calendar year (2018) if development and testing go well.

Thank you!
-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · January 23, 2018

This is still actively being worked upon. We’re still aiming for early this calendar year (2018) if development and testing go well.

I hope to have more details to share soon.

-Warren

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · November 29, 2017

Its been a while since my last update, so wanted to check in and let you know that this is well under way. We’re aiming for early next calendar year (2018) if development and testing go well. I’ll ping you again with a more exact ETA after the new year.

Meanwhile, feel free to ping me on Twitter at @skprufo if you have any questions!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · October 18, 2017

Hi everyone, quick update for you on this feature.

We’ve got lots of resources on this and we’re actively working on it. This is a top priority feature.

I haven’t gotten a firm ETA from the team but I can say this won’t hit in the next month or so. Its a complicated feature, so it will take longer than that. I’ll let you know once I get a general date from them.

Thanks for your feedback, patience, and as always, thank you for your support of Teams.

Sincerely,
Suphatra

Questions? Tweet me at @skprufo.

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · September 07, 2017

Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a great September.

I’m really excited to share with you the progress on this feature. To recap, we originally tried to resolve for this request by giving you Private Teams, but your feedback showed us that this was not the right solution. So we’ve gone back to the drawing board and we are in active development of private channels.

This is how we view a private channel: it will be a new channel type that allows users to create a channel with a different user roster than the parent team, that is only visible to those members. As the name implies, it is meant for sensitive discussions or for working with sub-teams.

As it turns out, private channels is a very complicated feature to deploy, because there are several dependencies external to Teams. I will keep you updated as we progress, and if you have any questions, please always feel welcome to email me directly at sparavi @ Microsoft (dot) com.

Thanks for your support of teams, and this great idea!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

under review ·

Suphatra responded · June 15, 2017

Hiya again folks.

I just wanted to write and let you know that I updated the idea to better reflect the vibrant discussion in the community about exactly what a private channel means. It looks like there are five definitions — shout out to user John Black who wrote it out so elegantly. I’ve included that description in the original idea.

We still have this item under review, and I’m personally interested in seeing if this request is further changed when we release guest access (coming super soon!) this summer. Stay tuned, stay cool, and as always, thanks for your support of Teams.

Sincerely,
Suphatra

under review ·

Suphatra responded · April 25, 2017

Hi everyone,

So a little bit of context for everyone who newly voted for this feature.

When you first asked for “Private Channels” we believed this could be solved by the new feature that we recently rolled out — the ability to create either Public or Private teams. Hence, the status on this item was “Working on it!”

However, the strong feedback from the community has been that this does not solve your original problem. So, we’re pulling this into review and evaluating ways we can implement this. It’s not an easy fix, so we’ll need some time. I’ll make sure to update you along the way.

Thanks and please continue to give us your great feedback. Your voice helps guide this product in the right direction!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

try this instead ·

Suphatra responded · March 23, 2017

We have enabled a new feature — Private and Public Teams. This allows you to make a team either public (anyone can join) or private (people can only be invited into the team).

This new feature should help many of you requesting private channels.

To make an existing team private or public, just click on the ellipses next to the team name and choose “Edit team”.

Thanks,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · February 08, 2017

This is on its way.
Stay tuned for more updates as this moves along!
And if you need anything else, just ping me on Twitter or email.

Suphatra
Microsoft Teams

planned ·

Angela Sze responded · November 01, 2016

2112 comments

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Anonymous commented · March 30, 2020 16:19 · Flag as inappropriate

A sub-channel would be very helpful for me to better organize the project portfolio documentation. e.g. under one channel (program) I would have several other sub-channels (projects). Each sub-channel (project) would contain several tabs, to host project documentation, one pager timelines (powerpoint), smartsheet dashboards and plans, etc...

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Anonymous commented · March 22, 2020 19:28 · Flag as inappropriate

I have used channels but can't see how to make them private. Anyone in a channel can see the other channels which I want to avoid?

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Tomasz Bielenin commented · March 10, 2020 02:17 · Flag as inappropriate

I think custom tags should help you group your team members as required:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/using-tags-in-teams-667bd56f-32b8-4118-9a0b-56807c96d91e?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

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Per Sivertsen commented · February 07, 2020 13:24 · Flag as inappropriate

Issue with a private channel where the only member was the owner. The owner was removed from the team and lost the ownership to the private channel and now we are not able to add a new owner to the private channel.

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C. Hughes commented · January 07, 2020 07:45 · Flag as inappropriate

Agree with others that this is not a request for private channel. My use cases are very similar to those noted by Anonymous, Rene, Santiago below.

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Juan Leon commented · November 27, 2019 08:55 · Flag as inappropriate

Hi!! In my organization, we have the same idea. Please consider this into your roadmap.

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Carlos Zamudio commented · November 27, 2019 08:55 · Flag as inappropriate

This is a good idea, we have the same problem in our organization, sometimes a Team is huge and everyone is asking if what we published is related with them or not. Could be good to have the option to select who in the team can participate when you're creating a new channel, per default everybody can see and write in the new channel but who's creating the channel can select a group of people if necessary.

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Marlo commented · November 06, 2019 18:39 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 06, 2019 13:08 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 06, 2019 12:50 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 06, 2019 11:08 · Flag as inappropriate

HALLELUJAH!! I'm so excited for this!!

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Prateek commented · November 06, 2019 09:15 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 06, 2019 08:21 · Flag as inappropriate

Alex, what is the plan for rolling out Private Channels for GCC clients?

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Anonymous commented · November 06, 2019 04:45 · Flag as inappropriate

@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 · November 06, 2019 04:24 · Flag as inappropriate

Thank you! We've been waiting for this at BDO!

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Velu commented · November 05, 2019 20:25 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 05, 2019 16:35 · Flag as inappropriate

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 · November 05, 2019 08:49 · Flag as inappropriate

Is it available for GCC? Not seeing it yet, as you say.

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Robert commented · November 05, 2019 06:45 · Flag as inappropriate

Wow!. The most requested feature of Microsoft Teams is out with many new exciting features.

https://blog.admindroid.com/ignite-update-whats-new-in-microsoft-teams-for-the-end-users-and-administrators/

Thank you Ignite-19

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Dean P commented · November 05, 2019 05:19 · Flag as inappropriate

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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