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)

23,085 votes

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

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

Show previous admin responses (17)

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

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Anonymous commented · August 08, 2019 12:06 · Flag as inappropriate

Is access to the preview available by completing a form/process of some kind?

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Charlie commented · August 08, 2019 07:00 · Flag as inappropriate

Please add channels without having to create a Team. It's completely unnecessary and makes it impossible to tell who is actually in and also active in a channel.

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Anonymous commented · August 07, 2019 20:12 · Flag as inappropriate

I only wish that instead of being "exclusive" (which can make people paranoid), that it were inclusive. In other words, I wish I could add Person A to Channel 1 in my Team (inclusive!), instead of excluding people.

For one of my Teams, I have a core set of members who need to be able to see everything. But Channel 1 needs input from Person A and Person B, Channel 5 needs input from Person C. Etc.

So this exclusive way, Persons A - C will see several private channels...

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Anonymous commented · August 07, 2019 13:13 · Flag as inappropriate

Can we test Private Channel in our work group? Have created our Microsoft Store Holiday Site in TEAMS and not being able to have separate Channels for our supplier/outsource vendors is minimizing our ability to use Teams with them :). Can you help?

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Mike commented · August 07, 2019 07:33 · Flag as inappropriate

Saw this in the upcoming changes email...

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- private channels.jpg 76 KB
Brendan Murphy commented · August 05, 2019 07:20 · Flag as inappropriate

The road map has been updated showing the feature will be rolled out globally by the end of September. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=50588

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Peter Haigh [MSFT] commented · August 04, 2019 14:59 · Flag as inappropriate

Please make sure we have the ability to include guest users in private channels.

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Jen Gabor commented · August 02, 2019 04:40 · Flag as inappropriate

Alex, we cannot wait! Glad to hear you are piloting this, and sure you will have all the kinks worked out before you roll it out to 'the teeming masses' that are here. Thank you for your work on it. Jen

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Paul Jefferson commented · August 02, 2019 04:35 · Flag as inappropriate

Is the private channel feature strictly to hide channels from members? We would love to be able to not only hide channels but also make members read-only on certain channels. Is that part of this update or is that a separate feature?

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Marcus commented · August 02, 2019 03:42 · Flag as inappropriate

Its here. Well almost.

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- Teams Private.PNG 24 KB
Sam Bosell commented · August 01, 2019 06:50 · Flag as inappropriate

The release date on the roadmap that @HOFF Steven posted went from Aug 2019 to Q4 recently.

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Leonardo Cohen commented · July 31, 2019 10:08 · Flag as inappropriate

Can we apply and test this pre-release and provide usage / bugs to Microsoft in exchange? Thanks!

Leonardo

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Anonymous commented · July 30, 2019 11:52 · Flag as inappropriate

It has taken 3 years to get this feature?

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NerdFace commented · July 29, 2019 05:50 · Flag as inappropriate

@HOFF Steven

Great find - this is good news and probably the most tangible piece of information on this subject since..well.. ever!

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HOFF Steven commented · July 24, 2019 02:11 · Flag as inappropriate

Hey everyone, looks like this feature is finaly coming soon to everyone !
See roadmap ID n°50588

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=50588

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AJ commented · July 21, 2019 19:03 · Flag as inappropriate

Alex, once this is available can we expect to have API calls in the MS Teams API that will allow us to programmatically create private channels?

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Anonymous commented · July 20, 2019 06:50 · Flag as inappropriate

Thanks Alex, will hear from you in another 3 years!!!!! ;)

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Derek commented · July 19, 2019 07:22 · Flag as inappropriate

Thanks Alex, that only took 3 years.

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Vernon Jones commented · July 19, 2019 06:49 · Flag as inappropriate

I'm guessing this will also make Plans created under a Channel, private.

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brian commented · July 18, 2019 13:06 · Flag as inappropriate

awesome! Glad to hear that this is a feature that will be implemented soon. I'd be willing to add our enterprise environment in for testing as well!

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