Channel management for Microsoft Teams

Archive, export and move channels in Microsoft Teams to enable more efficient management of your projects in a dynamic and evolving environment.

Background

One of the main problems that Teams’ users face is adapting their channels to the evolving environment. As companies change and projects are finished or sidelined, users face a cluttered Teams structure with excess inactive channels affecting productivity.

SphereShield addresses the top two user needs marked as backlog, as communicated by current Teams users, on the Microsoft UserVoice forum.

The need for Archiving Channels: Read more on the UserVoice forum

The need for Moving Channels: Read more on the UserVoice forum

Archiving Channels

Companies adopting agile practices, working with short iterations expect to create dozens of channels per month in a Team. Projects are often short term and dynamic. When these projects have been completed the result is an overabundance of inactive channels. With a limit of two hundred channels, the channel maximum can easily be reached in a short time. Deleting channels is not always an option since organizations may need to keep records for legal reasons or as reference for future projects.

SphereShield allows users of Microsoft Teams to archive channels that are no longer active which will allow organizations to retain valuable information for reference, evidence, or later use. Once the channel has been archived it can be deleted from its original team thus maintaining an uncluttered platform that allows managers and team members to focus on active priorities.

Moving Channels

SphereShield users have the ability to manage their channels by moving channels between teams to improve the flow of information and productivity. Users can now confidently start collaborating using channels, knowing that these can be moved as needed to address any change requirement.

There are multiple reasons why organizations need to be able to move channels. Nothing is static including the organizations themselves. With organizational change, the need may arise to limit access to specific channels or to move channels to different Teams.

With any given project, one cannot always anticipate how it will evolve. Channels may become relevant to different teams or require different access. Occasionally a channel may be set up and as the project develops it becomes clear that the channel structure is not suitable to the end goal. Many users have expressed hesitation creating channels due to the worry of causing an unused channel.

Exporting Channels

SphereShield provides an option to export a channel to a PDF document that can then be stored or shared, according to the needs of the organization.

This feature addresses organizational needs to move the data from within channels to an unchangeable format such as a PDF document. Up until now that has not been possible while working within Teams channels. There is also no simple way to copy and paste all of the channel content.

AGAT Software is keeping pace with the evolution of Teams and the needs of the end-user. The new features of SphereShield will further enhance functionality, increase usability, productivity, and adoption of Microsoft Teams.

Move or copy Wiki

Moving or copying Wiki is a big challenge with Microsoft Teams. The content that you can see in the SharePoint site content folder is only sync from Teams to SharePoint. Any change done in the mht file of the SharePoint is overwritten by Teams
SphereShield Channel Management helps companies to easily move a wiki tab including all sections pages text and images to any channel you choose. SphereShield can also merge Wiki content into the Wiki tab of the destination channel

Converting Public channels into Private channels (coming soon)

After a long wait for Microsoft to release the support of private channels, companies are now facing the channel of converting the existing channels into private channels. 

With SphereShield channel management you can simply convert any existing public channel into a private channel.