Forum Discussion
Adding channels for partners to review content
So I have just set up a Teams channel for us to create content for our social media accounts. Currently, we email certain content to partners in different lines of business to review. I'm wondering what the best way would be to do away with emails and let the partners review the content directly in Teams. I thought that maybe it would be useful to create a channel for each of them, then they could review and comment all in one place. Any thoughts on this, or is there a better way?
- Hi Tombo17
Private channels would be the way to go dedicated to each partner and only accessible/visible to that partner. Standard channels - you can have a lot more but are accessible to all guests in the Teams so they don't partition content. The downside of private channels currently is a limit of 30 per team and that you can't use all apps in them yet like planner - however if you are only using it for files that will be fine. If you have more than 30 partners then you may have to use multiple teams with private channels. You could always look to have dedicated Teams per partner however if you have a lot of partners that is a large overhead of Teams and could get complex to control and manage. However, the benefits of having multiple teams is that you can have multiple channels if it is a rich engagement and the interaction with the content is spread over multiple topics/areas. With channels, you can't currently have sub channels
So it is weighing up whether standard channels, private channels or Teams is best. You could use all three depending upon your scenario and interactions with your partners.
Teams will certainly cut down on email and sending content over email.
Hope that helps to answer your question
Best, Chris
4 Replies
Hi Tombo17 ,
If you required formal approval with feedback and the chat in Teams wasn't as important then a document library or list in the underlying SharePoint site with a workflow attached could be an option. The workflow could set the permissions once you select the partner that needs to approve.
- Hi Tombo17
Private channels would be the way to go dedicated to each partner and only accessible/visible to that partner. Standard channels - you can have a lot more but are accessible to all guests in the Teams so they don't partition content. The downside of private channels currently is a limit of 30 per team and that you can't use all apps in them yet like planner - however if you are only using it for files that will be fine. If you have more than 30 partners then you may have to use multiple teams with private channels. You could always look to have dedicated Teams per partner however if you have a lot of partners that is a large overhead of Teams and could get complex to control and manage. However, the benefits of having multiple teams is that you can have multiple channels if it is a rich engagement and the interaction with the content is spread over multiple topics/areas. With channels, you can't currently have sub channels
So it is weighing up whether standard channels, private channels or Teams is best. You could use all three depending upon your scenario and interactions with your partners.
Teams will certainly cut down on email and sending content over email.
Hope that helps to answer your question
Best, ChrisThanks, ChrisHoardMVP! This is exactly what I'm trying to do and I think that private channels will work.
If you are using one Team per partner you will be able to create multiple channels in that Team, if you want to work with other topics together with that partner. You might also have a Team where you work together with the partner and in that Team you have a private channel where your organisation can discuss topics about the partner without having them involved.
You will also be able to help out with the administration from Teams Admin Center if using Teams, private channels are managed by the owner of the private channel and admins can't help out.
But as Chris said, private channels might be easiest to get an overview of if you don't have to many partner organisations.
