First thing first, I love Private Channels, 😉

Microsoft finally #shippedit and it is great, works really smooth and below are my summaries:

What is privat channel?

Privat channel is a feature that allow members and owners of Teams to create channel privately to the owner/creator and invited members.

Who can access a private channel?

Only the creator of the channel and invited members can see the channel in Teams. Everyone else including the “Teams owner” won’t see the channel in Teams. The invited member need to be a member of the Team first, this goes for both internal users and guest users.

What but I’m the owner of the Team:

Jups, Team owners don’t have access to private channels if not invited, firstly this seems weird to me. But I did found use cases where the team owner didn’t have the need to see the private channel.

1. For a regular business unit, managing tabs ect, creating channels is not a job business managers have time to do. This often creates the need for multiple owners in a team.
2. Creating a second team just for the manager is to much trouble and not user friendly.
3. Why don’t managers use OneDrive instead, in very many cases OneDrive content is not easily transfered to the next manager in case of change.

Of course as owner of the team you can see the channel name if you go to the Teams channels settings. but you don’t have access to it conversations or files.

What to do if the owner of the private channels left the company:

Lucky we got admins, contact your Teams administrator or tenant Global Adminstrator and he/she can give you access to the Team/channel if needed.

 

Read more about it here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels