Slides of my session at Microsoft Teams Event where I talked about Private Channels in Microsoft Teams. The session happened on the 1st of April 2020.

2. Juan Carlos Gonzalez
Office Apps & Services MVP |
Microsoft 365 SME
@jcgm1978
jcgonzalezmartin1978@hotmail.com
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/juagon
https://jcgonzalezmartin.wordpress.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTTOig92qM
_d0kLbSODCATw

3. Private Channels: Fundamentals
Focused private collaboration within a Team
Teams
Standard
Channel
Open
collaboration
within the team
Inherits full
membership list
from the team
Private
Channel
Focused private
collaboration
within the team
Managed subset of
members from team
A lock next to channel
name identifies
private channels

4. Private Channels: Fundamentals
Usage Scenarios
• A group of people in a team want a focused space to collaborate without having to create a separate
Team
• A subset of people in a team want a private channel (PC) to discuss sensitive information (Budgets,
resourcing, strategic positioning, etc)

5. Private Channels: Fundamentals
When I should create a PC?
Is there already a team that has
these people as team members?
Does this work need to be kept
private from others?
Are there multiple distinct
topics to discuss?
Recommendation
Yes Yes Yes Create a PC in the existing team or consider creating
dedicated private channels for each topic.
Yes Yes No Create a PC in the existing team.
Yes No No Create a channel in the existing team.
No No No Consider creating a new team.
No No Yes Consider creating a new team and then, depending on
the confidentiality of each topic, consider creating
separate standard or PC for each topic.
No Yes No Create a new team or create a new PC in an existing
team.

6. Private Channels: Fundamentals
Creation
• Admins can control via policies who can create PC in the tenant:
• Via the Teams Admin Center (Default is on)
• Or via PowerShell to manage who can create PC using New-CsTeamsChannelsPolicy cmdlet and
the AllowPrivateChannelCreation attribute
• By default, Team owners can create PC:
• Team owners can control via setting if members can create PC
• Limited to 30 PC per team (in addition to 200 standard channels)

7. Private Channels: Fundamentals

8. Private Channels: Fundamentals
Membership
• PC owners can add members and guests to a PC
• Only existing members and guests in the team can be added to a PC
• Only members of the PC can view PC content
• Limited to 250 members per PC

9. Private Channels: Fundamentals
Settings
• Each PC has its own settings including the ability to add and remove members, add tabs, and
@mentioning for the entire channel
• Channel settings are independent of the parent team settings:
• When a PC is created, it inherits settings from the parent team, after which its settings can be
changed independently of the parent team settings

10. Demo: Creating a First PC

11. Private Channels: Administration
• All teams and channels, including PC, can be managed from the Teams admin portal:
• Create or delete PC
• Edit channel name & description
• Add or remove members
• Promote or demote members and owners
• PowerShell & Graph API support

12. Private Channels: Administration

13. Private Channels: Channel Owners and settings
• PC owners manage the membership and life cycle of PC:
• Last owner of a PC cannot be removed from the team
• If a PC becomes ownerless (user leaves company), an existing non-guest member is auto-
promoted to owner
• PC inherit settings from the team on create:
• Settings can be changed at channel level

14. Private Channels: Channel Owners and settings

15. Demo: PC Administration

16. Private Channels: Teams Owners and Private Channels
• Team owners can control if members can create PC
• Team owners can see names, last activity time and owners of all PC in a team
• Team owners can delete the Team or individual PC without being a member:
• A deleted PC can be restored within 30 days after it’s permanently deleted
• Removing members from the Team removes them from all PC:
• Blocked from removing anyone who is the last owner of a PC

17. Private Channels: Teams Owners, Team Members and
Private Channels
Private channel
information
Team owner can see Team members can see
Name and description All private channels in the
team
Only when added to the
private channel
Conversations and tabs Only when added to the
private channel
Only when added to the
private channel
Files and content Only when added to the
private channel
Only when added to the
private channel
Private channel owner All private channels in the
team
Only when added to the
private channel
Last activity time stamp All private channels in the
team
Only when added to the
private channel

18. Private Channels: Who can do what
Action Team
owner
Team
member
Team
guest
Private
channel
owner
Private
channel
member
Private
channel
guest
Create private channel Yes
1
Yes
1,2
No N/A N/A N/A
Delete private channel Yes No No Yes No No
Leave private channel N/A N/A N/A Yes
3
Yes Yes
Edit private channel No N/A N/A Yes No No
Restore deleted private channel Yes No No Yes No No
Add members No N/A N/A Yes No No
Edit settings No N/A N/A Yes No No
Manage tabs and apps No N/A N/A Yes
4
Yes
5
No
1 Assuming the policy that you, the admin,
configured allows the user to create private
channels.
2 Each team has a setting that team owners can
turn on or off to allow team members to create
private channels. Team owners can always create
private channels.
3 Assuming the private channel owner isn't the last
owner of the channel.
4 Requires the team to have an app installed for a
private channel to use it.
5 Private channel owners can configure this.

19. Demo: PC Membership

20. Private Channels: Apps in Private Channels

21. Private Channels: Apps in Private Channels
• What’s supported now:
• Tabs and connectors supported
• Apps must be installed first in the team before they can be used in a PC
• What’s going to be supported:
• Bots and message extensions support coming later
• Support for certain Office 365 group connected apps like Planner or Stream coming later

22. Demo: Apps in PC

23. Private Channels: Files in Private Channels
• PC files are stored on its own Site collection:
• Ensures access to PC documents is restricted to PC members
• Site is named as <team name>-<channel name>
• Comes with a document library, lists can be added, pages not supported
• Lifecycle of the Site collection is tied to PC:
• Site collection created in the same geo as the team, inherits guest permission on create
• Membership and data classification of the Site collection is kept in sync with team
• # of Site collections per tenant limit has been increased from 500K to 2M

24. Private Channels: Files in Private Channels

25. Private Channels: Site Management
• Management via PowerShell:
• Filter by template “TeamChannel#0”
• PC Sites are hidden in the Modern SPO Admin Center (For now)
• Owner and member groups managed by Teams:
• Any direct changes to these groups in SP will be automatically synchronized with the PC
membership within four hours
• Use visitor or a new group if you need to grant users access to documents and not the PC
conversations

26. Private Channels: Site Management
• Management via PowerShell:t all sites backing PC a tenant:
Get-SPOSite -Limit ALL -Template "TEAMCHANNEL#0“
• Default site membership groups and permissions:

27. Private Channels: Site Management
• What happens if the PC site collection is deleted?
• If the site collection is deleted outside of Teams, a background job restores the site within four
hours as long as the PC is still active
• If the site collection is deleted and hard-deleted, a new site collection is provisioned for the PC
• If a PC or Team containing a PC is restored, the site collections are restored with it
• If a PC site collection is restored and it’s beyond the 30-day soft delete window for the PC, the site
collection operates as a standalone site collection

28. Demo: Files in PC

29. Private Channels: PowerShell and Graph support
• Create, list, update and delete PC in a Team:
• Add, list, update, or delete members in a PC:
Graph API PowerShell Commands
POST /teams/{id}
GET /teams/{id}/channels
PATCH /teams/{id}/channels/{id}
DELETE /teams/{id}/channels/{id}
New-TeamChannel
Get-TeamChannel
Set-TeamChannel
Remove-TeamChannel
Graph API PowerShell Commands
POST /teams/{id}/channels/{id}/members
GET /teams/{id}/channels/{id}/members
PATCH /teams/{id}/channels/{id}/members
DELETE /teams/{id}/channels/{id}/members
Add-TeamChannelUser
Get-TeamChannelUser
Remove-TeamChannelUser
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels-life-cycle-management

30. Private Channels: Information protection
• eDiscovery support for channel messages and documents:
• Include PC member mailboxes and PC site collections in a discovery query
• Records for messages sent in a PC are delivered to the mailbox of all PC members
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/ediscovery-investigation#ediscovery-of-
private-channels
• Retention support for PC documents:
• Default retention policy for sites apply, manage via PowerShell
• Retention support for PC messages coming later
• Legal Hold support for messages in PC is currently rolling out:
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=60434

31. Private Channels: Information protection
Group Mailbox
(message
compliance copy)
PC message
compliance
copy
PC message
compliance
copy
…
Team
Private
Channel
Channel site
(documents)
Team Site
(documents)
User mailbox User mailbox User mailbox
Standard
Channel

32. Private Channels: Some FAQs
• A standard channel cannot be converted into PC
• A PC cannot be converted into a standard channel
• Only existing members of the team a PC belongs to can be added to the PC
• A PC is tied to a parent Team and it cannot be moved to a different Team

33. Private Channels: Summary
• PC enable focused and secure collaboration within a Team
• Only owners and members of a PC can see messages, documents and other content in the PC
• Up to 30 PC can be created in a Team and there can be up 250 members in a PC
• PC can be extended with Apps, but they must be installed first in the Team
• Each time a PC is created, a brand new Site Collection linked to the PC is created

34. Bonus: PC quick references
• PC in Microsoft Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels
• PC lifecycle management: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels-life-
cycle-management
• eDiscovery of PC: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/ediscovery-
investigation#ediscovery-of-private-channels

35. Office 365 for IT Pro
• 20 % discount:
• https://gumroad.com/l/O365IT/Spoisgreat

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