Support for Private Channels
Looking for the ability to create a channel that only channel members can see. Private channels are available in slack. There is an admin for private channels who is the creator, and they are the ones who add/remove users.
Five types of public/privacy that is being asked for by users:
- Public-Open (visible anywhere including outside the org and anyone can join)
- Public-Invitation (visible anywhere including outside the org, must be invited)
- Company-Open (only visible inside the org and anyone in the org can join; outside the org must be invited)
- Company-Invitation (only visible inside the org, must be invited)
- Secret (invisible to everyone except existing members, must be invited)

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
1484 comments
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Anonymous commented
I think this is getting very crucial , I understand the quality of release matters - however this has taken a longer time to be implemented! Please expedite this
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Natasha Arksey commented
Looking forward to this permission per channel - not all members should be privy to all information not should they have to see every channel not relevant to them...
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Anonymous commented
It's 2019 guys. You said it'll be ready early 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"
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Anonymous commented
Any ETA at all at this point? A year ago the ETA was "Early 2018" which obviously didn't happen. Should we hope for sometime in 2019? First half? Q2? Anything?
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Mike commented
Any ETA at all at this point? A year ago the ETA was "Early 2018" which obviously didn't happen. Should we hope for sometime in 2019? First half? Q2? Anything?
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Rafał commented
Without that feature we are thinking about moving to Slack. Private chans are a must have.
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Ronald Welz commented
Go Alex Go ! Teams is a great product and we expect this feature as soon as possible. Of course we understand that quality is first priority.
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Priyanka commented
Almost thinking to ditch the teams for my team. We needed this functionality, without this work will be impossible.
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Jason Lacovara commented
November 01, 2016 .... wow, Microsoft this is beyond disrespectful to your customer base.
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Terry Walters commented
This is becoming even more crucial as our staff are actively using Teams and the various features that come with it. Even having an update from MS would be beneficial rather than the silence we have at the moment.
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Anonymous commented
Hello there, I would like to add my view on this as well please - that we really need channels to have permissions on them as within teams there are levels of confidentiality and levels of access that need managing. Please can you give us an ETA so we can begin designing with this in mind ? Thank you very much.
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Anonymous commented
Hi Alex, is MICROSOFT doing some actual developments, or just managing this thread?
Any ETA for this feature? -
Seb Ferraro commented
Even for only a 150 person organisation, being able to have permission based channels is ideal.
I don't want to create 6+ teams for the different areas (finance/sales/accounts/development/ops), it's a nightmare. Is there any ETA on when this might be done, or even what state it's at now (planning/dev/test).
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Jeremie commented
Please please please, this should be number one priority. I can't deal with being included in private group chats that mess up private one to one conversations because of the inability to create a private channel in a team.
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Pierre commented
MS: Please provide an update for the ETA. Thanks.
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Anonymous commented
When we need a date, I have seen it in an MS test environment so it must be close to release...
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Alex commented
@Alex (MS): The opposite is actually true. Rest assured that the community is - NOT.
Considering this has been almost ready/worked on for 2 years, we are on the hook with yearly enterprise license fees, the impression this creates is very clear:
Actually we (MS) don't really care.
As Teams is part of all the Office license models and people pay anyhow to use the other products thus there is zero motivation to put focus on improving Teams. Since probably no one signed-up for Office for Teams alone...
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Jon commented
Zsornbor Fritz has hit the nail on the head with the comment today. Having a lot of different Teams is heavyweight and not a productive solution from a user experience.
This thread has been open for over 2 years! A company with the might of Microsoft should not be taking this long to implement a change with this much demand. Granted there may be a hundred reasons as to why it's difficult but to average Joe customer, we don't need to care! Not having this feature is creating a whole host of problems and workarounds for us!
There are (at current count) 16,844 customers asking for this. 16,844 customers that have spent 2+ years O365 subscription. Of those 16,844 customers I'm certain that we represent A LOT more users. My single vote up is on behalf of an organisation of nearly 3,000 users.
Frankly I'm sometimes surprised that we all hang around when there are alternatives out there.
@Alex, we are not resting assured...
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Anonymous commented
is there an ETA for delivery? Thks
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Anonymous commented
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your note above. Per the other comments in the thread, is there an ETA for delivery?