Teams

 

Teams are a group of people gathered to get something big done in your organization. Teams are made up of channels, which are the conversations you have with your teammates.

 

 

 

Channels

 

Channels are what separates and categorizes communications within Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams provides a channel for each team, and through this channel, the team can quickly communicate with each other, upload data, review data, share screens, and more. Channels provided a way of segmenting the overall collaboration happening within the Team into “attention” boundaries that users could dial into with the appropriate amount of urgency.

 

 

For example, by segmenting “Marketing Chatter,” “Urgent Meeting Requests,” and “Fun Photos” into different Channels for my “Ignite Conference Attendees Team,” I could subscribe to immediate notifications for channels that were focused on areas that were essential to me (like urgent meeting requests). And, I can specifically not get immediately interrupted by more noisy but less relevant (to me) communications about photos and social media posts.

 

Unlike my email inbox, which alerts me on every new message, this Teams model means I’m only getting notifications (both on my phone and on my desktop) on communication streams that I have specifically noted as important.

Yet, because the security boundary of Teams has been the top-level Teams object itself, I’m free to review those funny photos or threads about on-site marketing any time I want—at my leisure and availability.

 

Additionally, channels also serve the organizational purpose of creating a space for conversations and files related to a specific subject. This allows users to find what they need quickly. For example, all of those photos uploaded to the “Fun Photos” channel will be organized nicely by Teams into a Channel-specific folder in the SharePoint Document Library that backs the Team.

 

Video Tutorials

1. Teams - Team and Channel - Introduction

2. Teams - Team and Channel - Structure Design

3. Teams - Team and Channel - Organizational Approach

4. Teams - Team and Channel - Private Channels

5. Teams - Team and Channel - Lifecycle and Workflow