Introduction should you have a private team or a private
Channel this is a question I get asked a lot so I want to share the answers with you now my example
here shows a private team that's called health and safety that has a number of channels included and
I also have an option of well maybe I should have a private Channel that's called health and safety
that's part of the main team let's look into this further so when you create a team you are asked
what kind of team will this be and so you have the Type of Teams available to you options of private public or or wide so we're just
talking about the private team in this example here now when you create a channel you're asked
the same kind of question the details about the Type of Channels available to you channel That We're looking for is whether you want
to make a private channel so I have a big list of Comparison of Team vs Channel comparisons to cover with you and I'm going to
demo this to you in teams as you'll notice from my chart here you'll see that teams does have
a lot more flexibility for you so if there's a need for that flexibility then the team is the
best answer if you're just like ah just need a little bit of stuff in that channel then maybe the
channel is a way to go but you are restricted on what you can do in a channel so let's show you
this so I'm in teams now and I'm in the health Demo of Teams Channel that is private and safety channel of the mission Office Team now
making a channel tends to be easier than making a team sometimes and I only say easier because
sometimes restrictions are on an organization at the top level more so than this level so meaning
that some times your it Department may not allow you to make teams but they allow you to make
channels so just because that's happening you might still want to consider well should I ask
the IT department to make the team for me since I can't make it they have that permission locked
up so um but we'll we'll look at the differences just so you're well aware of what they are because
they might say to you just make the channel and and that'll be private enough the trouble is that
a private channel has a lot less options for you now before I go into the differences one other
thing I should mention is that if you choose to make a private Channel you cannot undo that like
you can't change it later on to make it public so everybody else can see it uh you have to make
a new channel in that case uh similarly if you make a team and you decide okay I made it private
but now I want it to be org wide you can't change that permission level in a team either so let's go
into the the differences that were on my chart So within the health and safety Channel I have the
ability to to add a new post I can add have a conversation with somebody uh within this channel
I can of course restrict the membership to this channel so it's not everybody in the office team
and I can certainly put files in this channel as well so I do have room for information don't I
now let's look at the difference with regards to the actual team though if I go to the health and
safety team I have many channels that I can have Demo of what a private Team has available conversations in so I have posts in the general
area I have post posts that are possible for me in the compliance area and I have posts within the
training area so the nice thing here is I've got three different places to have three different
kinds of conversations so that gives me a bit more flexibility and similarly I've also got the
ability to file in three different places so if it's about training I can file in the training
Channel if it's about compliance I can file in the compliance Channel and if it's just general
information I can file in the general Channel What a Private Channel does not give you within the health and safety Channel I only
have one place to file stuff you could bring in files from a document Library if you want to
and if you want to know more about how to do that check out my other video on document libraries
I I'll provide the link in the description below by default you're only allowed one filing area
now another major restriction uh about a private channel that that I'm not a fan of is the fact
that if I want to schedule a meeting with people from this channel I don't have the option of
scheduling I only had the option of meeting now so that's that's not so great is it if I want to
have the meetings with my health and safety group but only them I can't schedule anything ahead of
time at least not having it appear in the channel obviously I can schedule it in my Outlook and then
have a teams meeting but that won't save it in the channel so that's a big limitation as far as I'm
concerned if I go to my health and safety team and I go to my general Channel and actually go to any
channel there is the meeting but but at the top and I can schedule a meeting in any one of these
channels so if I want to look for a past meeting that I've had I can just easily go to the Post
area of that channel and find the meeting find the notes and find the recording if we recorded
stuff now another difference that is a limitation with the private channels is the fact that you
can only add certain apps and what that means is we're limited to what applications we can add
so I'm going to hit the plus sign here just so you can see it for yourself popular application
to add into a team so you can keep track of your tasks and keep track of what everybody's doing is
tasks by planner so if I type in planner there it doesn't find planner it will never find well
I shouldn't say never it won't find planner because planner is not something you can add
into a private Channel at least at the moment that's the way Microsoft's got it set up so I'm
going to close out of here and just show you the exact same example with the team so if I go to
the general channel of my health and safety team I hit the plus sign and I type in planner you
see how task by planner comes up there so I can definitely add it to this team in fact there's
another app that is popular within teams or at least I recommend uh a lot of my clients to use
within their teams that's forms so if I want my staff to fill in particular forms then why not put
the form right in the team itself so if I type in forms here at the top it'll come up with forms
which is the Microsoft form forms application so that's the first app I can I can choose from
and that's the one I want so in a team and in a channel that's not private no problem I can add in
the form and have people fill in the form easily so I'm going to close out it there and let's go
back to the private Channel and if I hit the plus sign again and I type in forms you'll see that
that Microsoft forms does not come up at the top there's all kinds of third party forms that I'm
seeing here but the Microsoft forms is not an option here here so again I don't get to have a
form that people within this channel can fill in easily and then the last example of a difference
that I found that isn't serving my clients well in some cases is that if I'm in a channel and I
start a post I have the standard ability to you know type in the posts as I need to and I got
a few little extra buttons at the bottom but I don't have any plus sign that lets me get to more
applications so kind of like the plus sign up up here is restricting us there is a restriction
down here because I can't even there isn't even a plus sign and so the application I'm looking
for in particular is the approvals application so if I want to get approvals on something with the
members of this channel I don't have the approvals app available to me here so let me just show you
what that means I'm going to go to the health and safety team and the general Channel and I'm going
to start a new post and hit the plus sign and see how well first of all there is a plus sign uh
and there's a few more little buttons as well or icons as well and then uh I have a choice of
applications now how many applications you have a choice of all depends on the permissions that
you have and the IT department or company that you work with and what they're allowing you to
see but let's just say you have the option for approvals so we search for that and this is the
app that I'm talking about so if I click on this approvals app then I can do a basic request uh
within this particular team within this channel Channel but I can't do this in a private channel
so if you want more information about approvals please check out my video on this topic as
well I'll put that link in the description below as well so these are the differences that
I wanted to make you aware of so making a private Differences between Private Channel and Team listed Channel might seem like it's an easy task to do
because you have the option to do that but please consider whether that is really what you want
long term because you will not be able to add a lot of extra depth to that Channel or a lot
of extra organization to that channel whereas a team when you make a team and you make that team
private you're handpicking the members of that team just like you would handpick the members of
a private channel so you've got that restriction in place and now you have the ability to use
whatever apps you want in that team and really use a collaboration effectively all right so just
wanted you to know hope this helps let me know what your thoughts are on private channels and
teams love to hear your comments below thanks bye