Have you been asking the question lately, “Should this been a team channel or a chat?” We know many of you have so we wanted to provide some helpful guidance to help you make your decision!

In Microsoft Teams, the two primary areas of collaboration are Chats and Team Channels. Overall, they are similar in how they function with the exception of message flow. 

• Chats: A work version of GroupMe or iMessage.
  • Add and remove individuals at any time.
  • Chats can be renamed to match the group of people or topic of discussion. 
  • Anyone can create a Chat group with one or more people. You do not need IT to create chats.
  • Chats notify each person of any message posted in the chat. This is good for when you want immediate awareness.

• Team Channels: A new way to collaborate with your team. Think of Channels like real time email collaboration.  
  • Channels are made up of the members of the team or a subset of the team if a Private Channel is created. 
  • Channels do not notify users of posts unless the user or whole channel is tagged.
  • Posts are ordered by last response, not original posting date.
  • Adding someone to the team will give them access to all public Channels within that Team, while private channels remain visible only to its members. 
  • A team is limited to 20 Private Channels.

When you need to work across Central or Campus teams,  you will either need to request a new Team to be created or you can create a chat with the appropriate people.

To help answer that question of team versus chat, think about how you would like individuals to engage with each other and the content.

• Do you want everyone to receive instant notification for all messages? Chat is your best option
• Do you need few people engaged, but several people aware (e.g. leadership, PMs) with different areas of focus? Teams Channel is your best option

To request to have a team created, you need to have CTL or CML approval then submit the request to [email protected].