Nested Teams and subchannels
Could it be possible to create teams within teams. For example, we have a Development Team at our company which consists of two sub-teams, tech support team and project team.
I’d love to be able to have a “home” top-level channel for my project team, and then have sub-channels for each project that we are working on.
Rhys
shared this idea
This request has been reviewed and declined by the feature team.
You can continue to up vote this topic as well as leave comments. Depending on the ongoing feedback, there is always a chance a topic will be revisited based on user demand.
-Warren
233 comments
Comments are closed-
Anthony
commented
This really needs to be a feature. we have a large project running using teams. Its impractical to have to @ the entire team site for updates that only impact a certain user group i.e. @developers, or @testers. Discord has a really good way to do this, which ideally could be replicated in teams.
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Jakob Nøtseth
commented
Isn't this how you solved private channels?
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Rajiv Sashidharan
commented
This would be such a use full feature I have many needs for the same in my projects, such a shame Teamsis not allowing the same.
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Mathew Ferry
commented
Our use case is that we have a team for our group and then a channel for each project and would love to have sub channels for different section of work in that project... Deployments, Production Support, General, etc...
I know we can have separate teams, but that doesn't organize quite how we would like it. Sub channels would be exactly what we are looking for
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Kol Tregaskes
commented
I can definitely see a use for this. I have a Team for our PMO, then a channel for our Tools and Systems and under that I'd like a sub-channel for each tool and system we use. I don't feel the tabs are the right place for this.
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Jean Pierre wijkmans
commented
having th possibility to address to sub team where necessary or required and to whole team for team communication would reduce duplication or triplication of teams and having the same information floating over multiple teams
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Josh Malouf
commented
I want to use Teams as my file sharing platform for our customers, because Dropbox isn't the best and doesn't work in China but I can't fully switch over until I have a way of creating subcategories so I can share files as such;
- Customer A
-Customer A sales files
-Customer A marketing files
-Customer A etc. -
Holger
commented
I am looking into this since two years now. It will become slightly better with the introduction of Private Channels, however, it simply ignores the way, how communities evolve through their lifecycle. I think, it is an essential feature, to keep a critical mass within a community and constantly reorganize the structure, once too many get involved in a certain topic and reduce productivity.
I don't take the trouble, that comes with all the connected objects of nested channels lightly, but when you realize, how many Zombie-Teams are left unattended in very short timeframe, I would hope for your creativity to solve the problem... :-)
I believe, that organizations of the future will be more a federation of different initiatives in their respective lifecycle. Looking into the work of Christopher Alexander (The nature of order), or Dee Hock (Birth of the chaordic age), the idea of fractal systems might be an inspiration.
I will be watching the space, many thanks for all the great work, that already went into teams.
Holger (cloudsters)
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Anton Gubarkov
commented
Was astonished to see it is declined. My team became a big mess once everyone on the project was onboarded and the channels became really chatty. We keep @ addressing people individually in posts to draw attention. And I can't make a group to @ address quickly. Inefficient.
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Jennifer
commented
In order to keep users engaged, we need to create channels within a channel. If there is too much noise in the channel, everyone ignores the messaging/activity since there would be activity unrelated to users in the channel.
Please reevaluate this as a future feature.
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FA
commented
Would like to add my interest in having sub-channels within teams. We use for projects and it would be good to separate 'stages' within 'phases. Thanks
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Giles
commented
Just adding my voice - I'm really surprised this isn't possible. It's literally one of the first things we needed to do when setting up a workflow using Teams.
The alternative of having multiple un-nested channels that focus on the same project is pretty awful.
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zach
commented
This would be a great feature
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Jort Jacobs
commented
Please revise this one.
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Rajesh
commented
+1.
I would like to +10 actually. -
Rachit
commented
This feature being missing shows how disconnected the Microsoft project managers are from the actual user experience.
Think of a team, a few people who come together to work on many different projects. If it is like most companies, here is partially what a group would want to accomplish in a single "Team":
-A channel for sales or business development with a sub channel for each market
-A channel for shared resources and links to common material with a sub channel for each business line or discipline
-A channel for active projects with a sub-channel for each project
-A channel for inactive projects with a sub-channel for each project
-A channel for software and tools with a sub-channel for each software or tool
-A channel for finances with sub-channels for group finance and project finance.
etc..The overall channel would carry links, general information, and direction as a whole while the sub channels would help someone work on that specific sectors, disciplines or projects.
The real problem is there are multiple aspects to any department or group (finances, marketing, projects, group management, software coordination, standards, etc.) and all of these aspects have sub-categories. Without this feature, you have to make a team for each category, and suddenly your entire Teams screen is filled with different teams, because you are not only part of your team, but other people's teams, and everyone made a separate team for each category.
Now you have to find the team that you are looking for, when you have the realization, "Why did I do this to myself?". I should have just used the good old file folder structure, and just used Skype till Microsoft kills it, and make my life way easier, because I can actually find things and don't have to read through a significant number of different team names every time to find the right team. So you search online for a better solution, or even an example of someone who was able to do this better, and this is the thread you come upon. I have now wasted a lot of time thinking I was getting better organized, but what I have really done is become way less productive, and more annoyed.
Good job Microsoft, you deserve a trophy for declining this request!
This is based off a true story.
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Bryan
commented
You need to add this, no way to get a large complex organization onboard with Teams if we can not do this!
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Richard
commented
Really surprised to discover this. Sub channels would be really useful. Please can you review the decision
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Anonymous
commented
The requirement to have a Team hierarchy within a tenant or a channel hierarchy within a team is going to be a standard requirement among almost all adopters. This decision needs to be reversed.
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Anonymous
commented
This. This is by biggest issue with teams. The lack of ability to properly organise files is pretty poor on MS part. As a team, we have multiple sites with no easy way of organising efficiently. Sub-channels within channels would be an easy fix for this.