As a Microsoft Team owner, have you ever wanted to share a channel with a user but not have to give them access to the standard channels within the same Team such as the default General channel?
Have your clients or partners outside your organisation wanted to be able to participate in your channel, without the need for guest accounts or having to switch organisation in Microsoft Teams?
Well look no further, below is an overview of the exciting new feature that’s on its way called Shared Channels!
Now before I go on, I’m hoping you have become accustomed to the nuisances caused by the product name ‘Teams’. It sometimes feels like Microsoft have played a cruel joke to call the product Teams, in which each collaborative area is called a Team, which in most cases is used by a Team. Now trying to discuss Teams and creating a Team for a team can get really confusing, but hey, here goes…
Teams come true
So, going back a number of years, Teams was created to empower teamwork in organisations and become a primary workspace for collaboration, communication, meetings, file sharing and app sharing. Teams brought people together for work, projects or common interests and rapidly became popular during the Covid-19 lockdown where teams (of people) relied on digital online solutions to try and apply some level of business as usual. What organisations actually found was that while Teams became a crucial solution to working remotely, it actually also improved communication and productivity. Microsoft have since release many features and continually looked for opportunities to improve the collaborative experience.
Channel your inner Team
Channels are areas within a Team which allow for more focused content and conversations. Initially within Teams there was only one type of channel to create, now known as Standard Channels. These are accessible by everyone in the Team and access cannot be customised. By default, every Team has a standard channel named General which cannot be deleted.
Microsoft then found that people needed to customise permissions to allow specific people to access some of the channels to discuss and collaborate on private content. So Private Channels were born. These were great, however members had to have permissions to the Team before they could be added to the private channel, which meant they could access the other standard channels such as the default General Channel.
Two scenarios where the requirements couldn’t quite be met through Standard or Private channels were:
• For a user to have access to a channel, but not the rest of the Team standard channels.
• Be able to collaborate with people outside the organisation, without the need for guest accounts or have to switch organisations in the Teams client.
This leads nicely on to Shared Channels…
So what are Shared Channels
Shared channels allow you to create a collaboration area within a Team where you can invite people inside and outside your organisation. Only members of the Shared Channel can participate in the channel, and they do not have to be members of the Team, unlike Private channels where only people in the Team can be added. Other members of the Team where the Shared Channel is connected won’t see the channel.
An example scenario is if you want to collaborate with a group of people who are members of different Teams, for example you could be working with a group of people and contributing to a particular part of a project. You only want to give this group of people access to this one channel and nowhere else in your Team, not even the default general channel. You may also have a client who is involved if this project so you would like to add them into this one channel only. You can now do this using Shared Channels.
Here’s what you need to do to use Shared Channels
Well, the first thing to mention is that Shared Channels are not currently General Availability (GA), but you shouldn’t need to wait much longer. The GA release is currently planned for end of July 2022, and the latest information can be found on the Microsoft 365 roadmap under feature Id 94820.
Shared Channels is currently in Public Preview which allows early access to explore and test this new upcoming feature. Public Preview can be enabled per Team user, so you can test without impacting your entire organisation. Head on over to the Microsoft Docs site to see documentation and guidance on enabling Microsoft Teams Public Preview.
In the Teams admin centre, ensure the Teams policy is configured to allow creation of Shared Channels, either for the organisation using the default global policy, or creating a new policy and assigning to individuals.
From within a Team, via the browser web client or desktop client, you should now have the option to create a Shared Channel (if you are in Public Preview mode as this feature is not General Availability yet).
Take notice of the checkbox that appears when you select Shared, if ticked, this will add in the all the Team members in to the access. If you don’t want to share with the Team then remember to un-tick this box.
To share Shared Channels externally, the cross-tenant settings for B2B direct connect must be configured also. By default, these settings are set to block all organisations. You have the option to enable all organisations, or you can enable for specific organisations only. More information can be found on the Microsoft Docs article Collaborate with external participants in a Shared Channel.
To conclude
Shared Channels are a great new addition to Teams and will provide a lot of business value once the feature becomes General Availability. There are some aspects to be aware about, for example, like Private Channels, Shared Channels also create their own SharePoint site to store the content. Shared channels also do not support Guest account access. This is all the more reason to trial and test out the feature in Public Preview mode now so you can familiarise with the Shared Channels and create effective communication plans to increase user adoption and make your users aware of the benefits and scenarios where each type of channel should be used.
Channel type summary (for a more in-depth comparison see the Microsoft Docs chart):
• Standard – Accessible to everyone on the Team
• Private – Accessible only to a specific group of people within the Team
• Shared – Accessible to a specific group of people in your organisation and outside your organisation. Guest accounts don’t have access to Shared channels.
Good luck implementing and promoting the ability to add Shared Channels in a Team, within Teams for your teams! ?
If you would like to discuss how risual can help support you with Microsoft Teams or any other area of Microsoft 365, please feel free to get in touch with us.
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