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
Angela Sze
shared this idea
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
2112 comments
Comments are closed-
Zach Reliford
commented
Oh and in response to your Try This Instead: We are setup for a singular team, rather than people being members of multiple teams, as different Analysts have different accounts they work.
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Zach Reliford
commented
We support multiple different accounts, many with "trade secrets" discussed within chat as we are diagnosing/troubleshooting issues, as well as relaying high/critical priority tickets/issues.
I can view information for any account that is in our Team, despite not having clearance to see these items. This could be considered an issue from a customer perspective.
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Sheldon Kelly
commented
I agree, definitely worth the effort!
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Anonymous
commented
Echoing that 'try this instead' is not a viable solution.
Please enable private channels in teams... I suspect this has been put in the 'too hard basket' because of the granular permissions required for the embedded OneNote sections, document libraries etc. It'll be worth the effort.
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Jarek
commented
We have asked for Private Channels not Private Teams.
It is big difference.
Many of us waiting for the Private Channels and the brakes many of us to start using Team fully. -
Anonymous
commented
Try this instead is not an option. Absence of private channels is a huge barrier for using Teams in our unit. Project teams would be quite unhappy that anyone in the organisation can have access to their chat at any time. Creating a team for each project is not an option either, as with short-term projects our SharePoint space will turn into complete mess quite quickly.
Beside, all alternatives products allow private channels. -
Sheldon Kelly
commented
Is it that you have shelved the plan for private channels? If so then it would be valuable to explicitly say this and not the vague "try this instead" tag. Fundamentally, though, this option would not work in our context. The option of having a global team that allows for some level of segmentation is extremely valuable and provides great utility. Your continued work on this would be appreciated.
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Jason Mayde
commented
Creating a separate Team is does not really work. The idea is that you want ALL relevant content/convos rolled-up under a master Team. Think about it in the sense of an office and you have all the different business units in that office, but you need a couple restricted channels for managers.
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Will Morgenweck
commented
Agreed, try this instead isn't helpful. The idea of having permissions for a channel is so that you we don't end up with a ton of smaller teams. For example, I might have a Product team and then channels within there. I would prefer to have a product leadership channel within the Product team, which was secured to only the product leaders.
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El3Max
commented
Try this instead is not a option. Need Private channels within a team. Doing it a a team level leads to countless duplication for sites, folder, files, etc.
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Dana Pennella
commented
This went from "working on it" to "try this instead" I can guarentee that having private channels in teams would be better for the workflows of many companies than having public and private teams. We need PRIVATE CHANNELS, I get asked about the status of this on a daily basis and I am extremely disappointed it went from "working on it" to "try this instead". what you're suggesting is not a solution and based on the popularity and voter demand, I suggest you move back to "working on it" or else I'm going to lose a lot of people interested in using Teams.
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Anonymous
commented
Thanks for public and private teams but we need a public and private CHANNEL within a team to allow for centralized collaboration but with a specific set of folks or a broad range of folks within that centralized area.
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Tim Goalen
commented
I agree with other views here that this doesnt help. Working with a team spun up for a project i would want a channel for working with the Dev team, one that worked with externals, one that worked with stakeholders and then one that everyone could access for general updates. Having 4 teams for 1 project would be a nightmare, especially considering the teams sites and other stuff that get spun up when you create a team. Total overkill to do that
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Sarah
commented
This does not solve out issue at all: the fact that we can now create 'public teams' has put into sharp focus that we need private channels within the public teams. Otherwise we will have an immense proliferation of Teams.
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Seth Tanner
commented
Public and Private Teams does not solve this issue at all. Giving team owners the ability to create a restricted channel inside of an existing team, makes a lot more sense than creating a new team to serve the purpose of a specific channel. For a real world use case we have a few teams, Product, Engineering, Operations. Each team will have their own channels, but it would be great to have a "Team Leads" channel that is restricted to just the team leads for each team. Currently there are two possible work-a-rounds 1 have a persistent group chat, which misses out on many of the channel features, or create 3 more teams Product-Leads, Engineering-Leads, Operation-Leads. The current approach leads to what I refer to as "Team Sprawl". Basically extra teams are created to circumvent feature deficiencies. This feature will also be important when the external access and federation is completed. a new team should not have to be created to provide access to an external contractor, but having a specific channel within a team, where appropriate personnel can communicate with them would be ideal.
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Philip Erb
commented
Echoing that other concerns that the "try this instead" is not what we're looking for.
For instance, within our IT "team" we have a need to have one or two channels that are restricted to select users. We do not want to have to create whole separate teams just for these cases.
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Ladislav Šesták Jr. commented
For me it's the same as for Emin Yalcindag.
"TRY THIS INSTEAD" is not acceptable. I want to make a group with many people and then I want to make private channels in this group!
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Emin Yalcindag
commented
"TRY THIS INSTEAD" is not acceptable. I want to make a group with many people and then I want to make private channels in this group!
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Roger Wessel
commented
"Try this instead" does not solve the problem here, because: 1) We really need the possibility to invite external users to a single channel within the Team, and 2) We also need the possibility to restrict access to a single channel within the Team (so that just some of the Team members can access the channel).
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Anonymous
commented
Your "Try this instead" doesn't work for what we need. We want the ability to add users outside the team to a channel that is still within the team. For example. We have a Technology Team and an Integration Team. They sometimes work together on projects. Right now the Tech team can't see anything in the Integration Team's group, and vice versa. However they're working on a new Tech Project together, and members from both groups need to collaborate in a single channel. I don't want the teams to have unfettered access to every discussion they've both had, but I do want them to work on one channel together without having to create a separate "Tech AND Integration" team.