Forum Discussion
Is it possible to disable the Files tab from the Chat Window in Teams
kensleylewis I don't think this is a good idea, people will just email files to each other and you'll lose the benefit. You are unlikely to have a team or channel for every interaction that happens in your business, there's always adhoc things that sit outside this structure.
Chats, even group chats are clearly perceived by users as fairly temporary structures, teams are longer lived, I've never seen it come up that information is lost in group chats. To be honest I don't really see very many real group chats at all, that happens in the teams.
In simple terms I think the answer would be to prevent them sharing files in OneDrive, then the feature in Teams will not work. There is no specific control to disable sharing in chat, you can turn it off entirely in a Messaging Policy.
StevenC365thanks for the quick feedback. I clearly see your recommendations based on what you have research, but we don't want to disable sharing in the Chat. Sharing has its benefits for us. I was simply inquiring on a way to disable or hide the Files tab itself within the Chat window.
I respect your analysis, but just speaking as one business professional to another, you haven't worked or collected UI testing data from my national staff headquarters. I'm speaking on behalf of how my staff operates, and how they can mature in a UI experience in managing files through Teams.
Again thanks for the feedback!
- I can vouch that the simplicity of posting files in teams chat by dozens or hundreds of users that have little experience building collaboration environments and those same users building up file volumes in Teams channel file tabs is a growing monster. Users are abandoning the use of sharepoint pages altogether and we admins sit and watch the garbage pile grow…burying documents and files that are important with it. Now we are stuck fixing a problem created by the tool that doesn’t provide the features to keep it organized, clean, or connected to SP in a usable way. It kind of amazes me anyone could design a structure that is so prone to build up of dozens of old chats and files and duplicates the content hosting features of the foundation back end up, in the new front end. Like a peanut butter and jelly and peanut butter sandwich. Yes the goo starts oozing all over the place. It’s crazy! I don’t know how that design could have launched and no one saw those file tabs would collect immense stale and ill-placed data. And give us no way to manage it or steer users from Teams back into the Sharepoint proper libraries. It’s doesn’t do it. It recreates an imposter again on top. Teams need admin controls and proper hooks to established SP pages in the channel and chat areas instead of these junk file folders.
PEGGYATA Hi there, well I tend to disagree. You're not sharing multiple copies of files in all these places, you're using links to those files which live in SharePoint Online libraries and OneDrive. There's been plenty progress when it comes to file sharing in Teams and SharePoint/OneDrive for the file sharing and collaboration experience to be consistent.
These are the prompts.
From chats
From channel conversations
This is now the default file sharing prompt introduced all over in M365 where you're sharing links.
And when working on these files coming from a link you have the co-authoring feature instead of previous "check out" behavior which locked the file for others.
You should also make sure not all users can create groups, i.e. Teams using the AAD Directory settings. And when it comes to channel creation at least limit that to the team owner/owners.
And I haven't even mentioned the compliance features in Teams here as those are for controlling access and data loss etc.
- Thank you, yes I am aware of the co-authoring and the files not being duplicated. I am observing users however, commenting on the confusion arising from Teams files. They don't think about the back end or who can see it. They just post. It is sort of going against the grain of Teams to restrict how people use it. I am hoping MSFT starts fixing some of the missing features that would help shape it better.
PEGGYATA I hear you, anyone with a background in Knowledge Management and Information Architecture would see the issues with allowing unmanaged content to accumulate. However we lost already, users want immediate self-service teams, just to drop a file in chat, random sharing from OneDrives etc. In the past I surveyed users, they are clearly more satisfied with an open, uncontrolled service. My role was always to improve user satisfaction, to allow them to be happy like a pig in document mud.
Only in very specific industries documents have sufficient value that organisation beats immediacy, so unless you are engineering a plane, nuclear reactor, law firm etc. then it's simply not worth resisting unstructured collaboration.
- Immediacy is a great quality...but mud is not something I would want for my shared files.
StevenC365 The best workaround I found is to put the library in read-only.
When developing a record management system, that File Tab is a nightmare.
Anyone with some experience with DMS and RMS will tell you it should be disabled.
