Teams: Should I create a new Team or a Channel?

Are you overwhelmed by the number of Teams you are part of? It’s ok, a lot of us are but they very helpful in staying organized and collaborating with others. To cut down on the Teams, try adding a Channel to an existing Team instead!

What’s the difference?

If you already have a Team established and need to create a smaller group, creating a new Channel that is specific to a topic, such as “events” is the perfect solution! If you need to collaborate with more people outside of typical group, then creating a new Team makes sense. Bonus: You can add individuals that are NOT part of the original Team to a Channel, too.

Let’s use Admissions as an example:

Team: Undergraduate Admissions

Channel #1: General. A General Channel is automatically added to every Team and cannot be removed or deleted. This would be used for general chat, shared documents and general collaboration across the department.

Channel #2: Communications. This would be a smaller working group of individuals from the Admissions Team that work on Communications. Posts/chats, files, documents, etc. created can be private or available to all in the Team.

Channel #3: Events. This would be another group of individuals from the Admissions Team that on Events. Again, anything in this Channel could be private or available to all in the Team.

See the difference?

Now if select members from the Admissions Office are collaborating with members from Academic Affairs, Registrar’s Office and Advancement on a specific project, a new Team makes sense.

For a quick video and more tips, visit the Microsoft Teams support center.