It seems quite some time ago since this query was raised - when will it be possible to merge teams channels/chats (and maintain chat history)? Thanks.

I have 6 pinned chats and 6 pinned teams. Having to constantly switch tabs to use one or the other is infuriating. Having recently migrated from Slack, its leading to my team using the "teams" (aka groups in Slack) less and multiperson chats more. That's hurting content visibility since the "teams" based content is visible to the whole team, but the chats are not. I suspect its because my other team members are not switching tabs to over to the teams tab and are just staying on the chats tab.

I cant agree with juliusindi more. For context, our primary use case is using Microsoft Teams with software engineers and developers. What we've seen happen in our org, is a development team will cling to the "Teams" or "Chat" persona of Microsoft Teams, but not both. The Teams persona and the individual channels offers certain features we wish Chat had; like inbound notifications, better bot integration, calendars, tab features, @'ing a Tag, etc... But, for our engineers, they don't collaborate well through the primary "Post" functionality of a Team. A post is the mainstay of collaboration in a Team, and it is very clunky for this kind of communication. A post has mandatory threading as everything is grouped into a "conversation". It is greedy with vertical space. Its more akin to a Twitter / X feed for a Team. The Chat persona, specifically Group Chat offers features that we wish the Teams had; like not requiring everything to be in a Conversation, with mandatory threads. Easy to compose chat UI (easier than a Team channel), with fewer clicks and mouse interaction. Its more natural to collaborate in a Chat, than a Team Channel Post. Back and forth about getting work done is easier to process in Chat, than a Post format. Why can't you create a Tab in a Teams Channel, which is formatted like a Chat, but inherit the features of that Team Channel? Then the busy, back and forth, collaboration can happen in the Chat tab. And the long standing Posts, announcements, general discussion can happen in the Posts tab? To recycle this idea, you could create multiple Chat tabs in a Team Channel, and key them to conversations, then archive them for reference later. Or, we could assign a Chat to a Team, without a Channel as a parent. As a kind of "Random" or "Misc" Chat to be used for sharing the best meme's of the week 😏 To quote Microsoft support documentation:"When you go to any channel in Teams the very first tab is Posts. Think of this as one big group chat. Everyone who has access to the channel can see messages in Posts."Source I would argue, that the majority of collaboration between users of Microsoft Teams, who come from an engineering background, do not view the Posts tab as an avenue for group chat. The user experience drives these individuals away from Posts, and into Chat. So, bring the two together so we avoid context switching, and mainstream our collaboration.

juliusindiwrote: I have 6 pinned chats and 6 pinned teams. Having to constantly switch tabs to use one or the other is infuriating.YES! This is the reality of working with MS Teams, especially in a professional setting. I am constantly having to switch back and forth between the Teams and Chats tabs. Constantly having to remember whether the conversation I want is a team channel or a chat, then move through several steps of navigating and visually reorienting to get to the conversation I want. The "Activity" tab seems like it should help with this, but it doesn't.Why can't we have one collection of pinned conversations that is always visible, combining team channels, individual and group chats?And why can't we have one collection of recent conversations that is also always visible, again combining channels and chats?The MS Teams UI is designed with an emphatic separation of these two categories of things, teams vs. chats, and forces an extremely cumbersome navigation path between the two worlds. Like someone on the product team thinks it's really important for me to constantly be aware of the difference between these two things. Long after I've mastered this very simple distinction, I have to keep "proving" that I understand it. Why? Who am I doing this for? Micorosoft product team, please have mercy on us and fix this.

100% agree with all of this. We struggle with users having missed communications because they don't toggle back and forth between tabs. Also, have lots of duplicate meetings where one series started and another began but someone else started the second meeting series so now there are 2 meeting chats - need to be able to merge.

revamping a team and would like the new team to be able to see the discussions of the previous team. How is this acomplished?

Merging Teams chats and channels | Microsoft Community Hub

ted_epstein
Copper Contributor
Feb 21, 2024
juliusindiwrote:

I have 6 pinned chats and 6 pinned teams. Having to constantly switch tabs to use one or the other is infuriating.
YES! This is the reality of working with MS Teams, especially in a professional setting. I am constantly having to switch back and forth between the Teams and Chats tabs. Constantly having to remember whether the conversation I want is a team channel or a chat, then move through several steps of navigating and visually reorienting to get to the conversation I want. The "Activity" tab seems like it should help with this, but it doesn't.

Why can't we have one collection of pinned conversations that is always visible, combining team channels, individual and group chats?

And why can't we have one collection of recent conversations that is also always visible, again combining channels and chats?

The MS Teams UI is designed with an emphatic separation of these two categories of things, teams vs. chats, and forces an extremely cumbersome navigation path between the two worlds. Like someone on the product team thinks it's really important for me to constantly be aware of the difference between these two things. Long after I've mastered this very simple distinction, I have to keep "proving" that I understand it. Why? Who am I doing this for?

Micorosoft product team, please have mercy on us and fix this.
- elizabethdahl1987
  Copper Contributor
  Apr 05, 2024
  100% agree with all of this. We struggle with users having missed communications because they don't toggle back and forth between tabs. Also, have lots of duplicate meetings where one series started and another began but someone else started the second meeting series so now there are 2 meeting chats - need to be able to merge.
  - HerberCR1
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 09, 2024
    This is exactly the reason I am here too.
- DataSciGuy
  Copper Contributor
  May 22, 2024
  Yes, wanted to reply just to reiterate this is my own experience and difficulty as well.
  
  I've also tried to advocate for usage of Posts in Teams Channels as a way to create a throughline for certain lines of communication, but to no avail. It's just not intuitive and people really don't enjoy using it. Worse, they will create separate posts to reply to an existing thread which clogs the entire Channel up and makes the experience very disjointed.
  
  My other pain point is creating small group chats of 2-4 people and then having to add or make a new chat when we move onto a similar but related issue. Slack solves this by using tags, but we need a way to merge chats in a similar manner to how we can add and remove people from group chats, for a smoother experience. At the very least, making a group of group chats might be helpful if we have to keep the underlying structure due to Team's architecture.
StevenC365
MVP
Jun 06, 2022
sianowen currently there is nothing on the roadmap for this, but it is on the backlog. Add your thoughts perhaps to this item in the feedback portal.

Enable transfer of project (channel) from one team to another · Community (microsoft.com)
- juliusindi
  Copper Contributor
  Apr 21, 2023
  I have 6 pinned chats and 6 pinned teams. Having to constantly switch tabs to use one or the other is infuriating. Having recently migrated from Slack, its leading to my team using the "teams" (aka groups in Slack) less and multiperson chats more. That's hurting content visibility since the "teams" based content is visible to the whole team, but the chats are not. I suspect its because my other team members are not switching tabs to over to the teams tab and are just staying on the chats tab.
  - Drew_Hartley_AIS
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 15, 2023
    This is spot on! Not a good UX to go back and forth all day long.
- soniad8
  Copper Contributor
  Aug 25, 2022
  sianowen
  If you're after merging channels use this link to vote: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/6c16f408-272e-ec11-b6e6-00224827bbc2#comments
  - mrpommer
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 14, 2023
    Every feedback link I have found on this issue results in a 404. Is nobody at Microsoft interested in addressing this request? It would seem to be a pretty basic feature for a platform like Teams, but they seem incapable of making it happen.
MyUsernameIsNotAvailable
Copper Contributor
Aug 22, 2024
sianowen Appears this long awaited feature is finally being tested...

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-is-reportedly-working-to-merge-teams-text-chat-and-channels-with-a-new-ui/

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-fixes-biggest-teams-complaint/?amp
- jelliott8163
  Copper Contributor
  Aug 22, 2024
  MyUsernameIsNotAvailable
  
  This is great news. Thank you for the update.
jberlin1355
Copper Contributor
Jun 25, 2024
see also https://ideas.powerautomate.com/d365community/idea/c8c7d652-a082-47fe-9742-69378c5d9825 - may it helps if we all spread this wish more and more...
Thumper300zx
Copper Contributor
Aug 03, 2024
sianowen

I have never liked them being separated ... But after custom emojis, which is the MOST important update they've done 😂 -- what I really want is subthreads.

We have way too many chats that get buried by water cooler talk or other subjects so anytime you have more than one important topic it encourages creation of new chats which is clutter. Please please please establish subthread like Slack has.

Pinning is also horrible in Teams.

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Merging Teams chats and channels

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