Set flexible communication policies, block interaction between restricted users with total granularity for communication types. (chat, file sharing, screen sharing etc.)
Choose your service:
Real Time DLP
Real-Time inspection of content. Block sensitive data before it reaches the cloud and destination user. Review conversation context with eDiscovery.
Choose your service:
Archive & eDiscovery
Archive your data safely in the cloud or on site and search for any communication by several parameters such as user, date, channel or text.
Choose your service:
Recording AI Compliance Analysis
Record meetings, search them and analyze them using video and audio transcript. Apply DLP policies.
Set flexible communication policies, block interaction between restricted users with total granularity for communication types. (chat, file sharing, screen sharing etc.)
Choose your service:
Real Time DLP
Real-Time inspection of content. Block sensitive data before it reaches the cloud and destination user. Review conversation context with eDiscovery.
Choose your service:
Archive & eDiscovery
Archive your data safely in the cloud or on site and search for any communication by several parameters such as user, date, channel or text.
Choose your service:
Recording AI Compliance Analysis
Record meetings, search them and analyze them using video and audio transcript. Apply DLP policies.
Choose your service:
Recording AI Compliance Analysis
Record meetings, search them and analyze them using video and audio transcript. Apply DLP policies.
Choose your service:
Recording AI Compliance Analysis
Record meetings, search them and analyze them using video and audio transcript. Apply DLP policies.
Set flexible communication policies, block interaction between restricted users with total granularity for communication types. (chat, file sharing, screen sharing etc.)
Set flexible communication policies, block interaction between restricted users with total granularity for communication types. (chat, file sharing, screen sharing etc.)
AGI helps improve collaboration by detecting meeting and chat insights to automatically generate items such as tasks, meeting notes, summaries, and minutes.
As you can probably predict from the title of this article, we’ll be covering the weird predicament you’ve gotten yourself into when renaming a channel in teams and what you may be seeing (or possibly not seeing) after making this change. Let’s start things off by taking a look at a team and channel in Microsoft Teams. In the example below, we have a team named “Project Perficient” and a channel named “Chicago Cubs”.
The Basics of Renaming Channels in Teams
If we check things on the SharePoint site, you’ll notice that as we create channels, folders will also be created within SharePoint (one folder for each channel).
Now if we take a look in the “Files” tab within the channel you’ll see we have a few documents that we’re working on.
However, let’s say we aren’t happy with the channel name of “Chicago Cubs” and instead we want to change the name to “Chicago Bears”? To do this I’ll go into my Teams client click on the three dots (ellipses) for my Project Perficient team and select “Edit channel” from there I would update the naming to Chicago Bears as mentioned. Great our channel name is updated in Teams but what’s this…. we’ll see that the channel name reflects the name change but we also see the SharePoint folder still named as Chicago Cubs.
Matching the Name in Sharepoint to the Name in Teams
At this point, you may be thinking, “well then I’ll just go update the name change in SharePoint to match the new name of my channel in Teams!” Sure, let’s give that a shot and see what happens! Let’s go ahead and hop back into SharePoint and we’ll see, sure enough… the SharePoint folder is still showing “Chicago Cubs” and if you select the folder you’ll see that all of our files are still in this folder.
We take you through 10 best practices, considerations, and suggestions that can enrich your Microsoft Teams deployment and ensure both end-user adoption and engagement.
That’s great that we can still access the files but we still want the SharePoint folder to match the channel name so people don’t get confused. So let’s just select the folder and rename the folder in SharePoint to match our new channel name of “Chicago Bears”.
Great! We’ve made the change and now we see that the SharePoint folder name matches the new channel name of “Chicago Bears”. Let’s hop back into Teams now so we can continue working on those files.
Uhh Ohh… where did my files go!? All those long hours and hard work squandered! Or maybe not? After you’ve given yourself a little time to calm down after panic mode strikes, let’s go back into SharePoint and see where the heck our files went! Feeling calm and collected we jump back into SharePoint and what do we see?
We see two different folders now. One folder that we recently updated to “Chicago Bears” and another one that was created with the original channel name “Chicago Cubs”. Let’s take a look at our Chicago Bears folder to see if the files are in there.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
You can breathe a sigh of relief, there your files are nice and unscathed. So how do I get this to reflect back in Teams again within my newly renamed channel? Well first off, let me tell you what not to do unless you feel like working in circles. If you were thinking of copying over the files from your Chicago Bears folder into the Chicago Cubs folder, then deleting the Chicago Bears folder and renaming the Chicago Cubs folder to match your new channel name then think again. This will not work and instead will just result in a new SharePoint folder entitled…. you guessed it, “Chicago Cubs”.
Essentially you cannot break the tie of the original name that you associated with that channel. You can even try deleting that Chicago Cubs folder but I wouldn’t waste your time since a new one will just be created in its place. As of right now, you’re going to be stuck doing the following steps as a workaround.
Create a new channel with a similar name. In this case, I created a “Chicago_Bears” channel.
Hop back into SharePoint and copy over those files from the Chicago Bears folder into the newly created folder for Chicago_Bears.
Delete your “Chicago Bears” folder from SharePoint (so this won’t cause confusion)
Delete the Chicago Bears channel from Teams
If you ever need to reference that deleted channel at a later date, you can go to Manage team > channels > Deleted channels to restore the channel. I hope you’ve all learned an important lesson today. Either leave your SharePoint folder name as the original name or create a new channel and copy over your files to the new channel. If Microsoft changes this capability in the future where a change to the channel name in Teams syncs with the associated SharePoint folder then I’ll be sure to update this blog, but I wouldn’t hold your breath, they’ve been “working on it” for three years now ;).
In September of this year, a very requested feature was added to Microsoft Teams: Shared Channels. In this blog, we’ll explain everything you need to know about them, their advantages, and their limitations. We will also deal with the question of how to merge them with regular channels.
Microsoft Teams recently launched Shared Channels. Shared channels in Microsoft Teams create collaboration spaces where you can invite people who are not in the team.
2- When is it best to use shared channels, group chats, and regular channels?
Creating a shared channel is useful if you don’t want to give people outside of your team access to certain information. In the same way, the sensitivity labels of the host team will apply to the channel even if another team is invited to collaborate.
It may be difficult to convince seasoned users with established routines and habits.
It’s crucial to emphasize when group chats and channels should be used before we get to this point.
Use group chats when
You require a single conversation with several parties.
With the people you need to talk to, there is no team (unless creating a new team is the appropriate action)
Not the complete team, but a handful of people you need to share information with
You must immediately share links or information while in a meeting.
You bring up the same subject as the prior message once more.
Use Regular Teams channels when
You convey information to a larger team (physical team as well as Microsoft team)
Longer-form collaboration with multiple responses is necessary.
You need to upload and update files while working on projects or presentations with others.
You begin a new project that is only accessible to certain team members.
Members outside of a group chat can require access to history and files (in this case, any member of the team can access the channel activity and files)
Group chats and channels in all of the aforementioned instances support both external and guest users. As a result, a Teams admin must give permission for a member of another organization who uses Teams to join a group chat or channel.
For discussions where everyone on the team can participate, use conventional channels. When you require a focused area for work with a small set of team members, use private channels. When you need to work with others outside the team, use shared channels.
3- What is the difference between a shared channel and a private channel?
Microsoft made a public announcement about the availability of private channels for Teams at the Ignite conference in November 2019. Some people are unsure of when they should use shared, private, or regular channels for cooperation. Channels are used to create teams. There’s nothing stopping you from keeping everything in the General channel, and this can work for low-traffic teams.
You can choose channel moderators rather than merely owners, and only moderators will be able to contribute new content. The team will be in shambles if members and owners do not maintain strict discipline. A restricted area of a team that is only accessible to a portion of the team is known as a private channel. A team can have up to 30 private channels, each of which can accommodate up to 250 tenant and visitor accounts.
Managing channel membership resembles managing a team’s membership, with the exception that a person must first join the team in order to join a private channel within the team. Team owners cannot read content that is part of a private channel without joining one in order to safeguard their privacy.
4- Create a shared channel in Microsoft Teams
If you wish to collaborate with people inside and outside of your team or organization, create a shared channel. When using Microsoft Teams, businesses frequently experience stress due to the proliferation of useless teams and the inability to accurately identify their constituents.
Another common issue is that businesses would like to limit file uploads to services like Team Drives, SharePoint, and OneDrive for fear that sensitive data could fall into the wrong hands.
The best way to avoid these and other problems is to restrict access to team/channel creation, member/guest addition, and file uploading.
Companies who wish to be cautious when adding Guests to their tenant, as well as those that have stringent rules about which employees can exchange files in Microsoft Teams, are two examples of the types of enterprises that often make use of governance controls.
Create a shared channel
Select the More options button > Add channel option while you are in the team you want to establish the shared channel for.
Give your channel a name and a description.
Select the right-hand down arrow next to Privacy, then select Shared – People you select from your org or other orgs have access. Select Create next.
Enter the names of the organization members you wish to add to the channel in the text box and choose from the list. Enter their email addresses and choose from the list to add individuals from outside your organization. Next, choose Share.
By clicking the down arrow to the right of Member and selecting Owner, you can convert a Member into an Owner. Next, click Done.
5- Advantages and limitations of Microsoft Teams shared channels
Microsoft Teams is a collaboration and cooperation platform used by too many enterprises globally, and each one of them needs its Teams environment to reflect the dynamic nature of business operations.
Finding a single organization that maintains a static structure from the start, without the need for optimizations, mergers, or any other changes arising as they operate and their projects develop would be quite challenging.
Microsoft does not provide the option to rebuild Teams in order to take account of this reality, despite the fact that consumers continue to ask for a solution. When organizations add too many Teams and channels that they no longer use, their platforms can soon become bloated and need to be changed to reflect their current organizational structure.
Users can move items around quickly and according to their organization’s schedule using AGAT’s SphereShield.
Take for example a company that is engaged in the creation of a new software product. These projects are frequently completed quickly, and depending on where a feature is in its lifetime, different teams are assigned to handle different aspects of it.
How could they benefit from SphereShield’s Channel Management and Teams Governance on their journey?
6- AGAT solution: How to merge and copy shared channels?
Merge Channels using Channel Management
It might be challenging to manage channels in Microsoft Teams at times. That’s why it’s so important for us to discuss the security and compliance add-ons, such as DLP and making e-discovery user-friendly, as well as how we can utilize SphereShield to copy, and merge a Microsoft Teams channel.
For example the Team discovers as they continue to work that they have divided the creation of some new features into various channels. They then come to the realization that they wish to handle them as parts of a single, larger feature. As a result, they could combine those channels and preserve all the information in one location.
Copy Team Channels
Why would your company replicate a Team Channel? In essence, this would be a template channel with everything set up the way our business needs to work—with default files, folders, and a planner—plus whatever else you might want to include.
Files can be copied by selecting them, clicking on “move” or “copy,” and then choosing a different team as the destination by clicking up twice until the list of teams appears. To move files, go to the Files tab under the relevant channel.
After choosing the team and channel, click move or copy to transfer the files.
With AGAT’s Channel Management and Governance you can control Team and Channel creation. Configure who can be a Team owner, add users or guests as well as who can be a guest in external tenants. Control file upload to Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. IT administrators may find it challenging to manage Microsoft Teams as it expands. While constraining end-user capabilities can make them turn to shadow IT, the ease with which users can create new teams can generate sprawl.
Implementing a lifecycle management strategy that enables you to keep a well-organized tenant and enables users to work effectively is the best course of action.
Here are the main features of our Teams Governance for MT so you can start creating shared channels with the necessary compliance your business needs.
Main Capabilities
✔ Specify who can create Teams and channels
✔ Give permissions as to who can add users – Internal or Guests
✔ Manage File upload permissions for both Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint
✔ Get access control by blocking users from joining other tenants
Feature List
Creation and Ownership
Users|AD Groups allowed to create Teams
Users|AD Groups allowed to create Channels
Users|AD Groups allowed to be Team owners
Adding users
Users|AD Groups allowed to add users to Teams
Users|AD Groups allowed to add Guests to Team
File Uploading
Allow files to be uploaded to MS Teams | One Drive | SharePoint*
Users|AD Groups allowed to upload files to MS Teams | One Drive | SharePoint*
*Each option is independent, meaning files can be uploaded to Teams and OneDrive but not SharePoint. Also, Independent groups can be allowed to upload Files to MS Teams | OneDrive | Sharepoint
Access control
Permit Guest Access to Other Tenants**
Block joining anonymously to meetings**
Companies that wish to be cautious when adding guests to their tenant, as well as those that have stringent rules about which employees can exchange files in Microsoft Teams, are two examples of the types of enterprises that often make use of governance controls.
Access control is one of AGAT’s supplementary features that helps ensure no employee accidentally gains Guest access to other tenants or secretly attends an external meeting. And these are great features that Microsoft Teams have not implemented yet.
To get a free trial of AGAT channel management contact us today. Our sales team will contact you with all the information you need.
Have you ever experienced the frustration of dealing with the mess that Microsoft Teams can become? Too many Teams, duplicate channels, an abundance of clutter, wrong permissions… and the list goes on.
In this article, we explore how AGAT’s Channel Management tool for MS Teams puts you back in the driving seat. Companies all over the world are using the Channel Management tool to keep their work environment organized and aligned to their needs.
As of 2020, more than 1,000,000 organizations worldwide use Microsoft Teams as their collaboration and teamwork tool, and every organization needs its Teams environment to reflect the dynamic nature of business processes.
It would be very difficult to find a single company that maintains a static structure from the beginning, without the need for optimizations, merges, or any changes arising as they work and their projects evolve.
Despite that, and the fact that users keep asking for a solution, Microsoft does not offer the ability to restructure Teams to accommodate this reality. Companies can quickly find themselves with a cluttered platform, having added too many Teams and channels they no longer use and should be modified to reflect their current structure.
AGAT’s Solution
AGAT’s SphereShield allows users to keep up with the rhythm of their organization and move things around in just a few clicks.
Let’s take for example an organization that’s working on the development of a new software product. These projects are often fast-paced, and the handling of each one of their features is switched between teams depending on the stage of its lifecycle.
How could SphereShield’s Channel Management help them along the way?
1- Move Channels
By moving channels between teams, users can avoid having to make new ones and keep old ones for their content. They can move all sections, pages, text, and images.
In our example, this could mean that if the design team has matured one feature and is ready to send it to the Dev Team, they can move the Channel with all the info they’ll need.
2- Merge Channels
As they keep working, the Team finds that they split the development of some new features into multiple channels. Then, they realize they want to manage them as pieces of one, bigger feature. Given this, they could merge those channels and keep all the info in the same place.
3- Change the Private or Public status of Channels
Let’s say the Design Team started a public channel and realized later that they were accumulating lots of sensitive information.
Changing a Channel from Public to private is not a native option in MS Teams. SphereShield users can achieve this easily. First, create a new empty channel that is private. Then, merge the old public channel into the new private one. That’s it, a status change in two simple steps.
4- Archive Channels
SphereShield can help you keep Microsoft Teams uncluttered, without inactive channels hanging around, and without losing data. Keeping channels from accumulating is also crucial because there is a 200 channel limit for every Team. Private channels are limited to 30 per Team.
When the Team finishes their project, they will be able to archive all the channels related to it. This way, users will be able to keep the content and also retrieve it for future projects.
To do this, SphereShield creates a special Team named “Archive” to which the old inactive channels get sent.
5- Export Channels
Microsoft doesn’t offer a simple way to copy and paste all the content from a channel.
If the workgroup needs to share information through other channels or store it outside the Teams environment, SphereShield allows them to export all the data from a channel to an unchangeable PDF format.
To get a free trial of SphereShield’s channel contact us today. Our sales team will contact you with all the information you need.
