Forum Discussion
Microsoft Teams Connect aka Shared Channels Coming Later in 2021
Microsoft Teams Connect, a new way of collaboration based on federated shared channels, is now in private preview and should be available later in 2021. The best thing about shared channels is that you don’t need to switch tenants to access a channel in another tenant. Azure B2B collaboration (guest accounts) is still important, but this is a brand new way of working that should be very popular.
https://practical365.com/blog/microsoft-teams-connect-shared-channels/
68 Replies
- How will this affect naming policies of teams and channels? Will I be able to see which tenant a team/channel is part of, or should we provide the company name in the name of the team or channel. It needs to suit both internal and external needs.
- It shouldn't affect any naming policy unless you want to name shared channels in a particular way. It's up to you.
- Sorry for not being clear. As an external user, I would like to know how I see which tenant the team and shared channel is part of. If the team name for example is Event planning and the channel name Social media campaign, then it makes sense for employees of that company but could be confusing for external users, especially in the case there are several teams named the same. I am requesting a way that you can see or set the tenant name.
TonyRedmond any further news on the release date. I've just watched Jared Spataro's video - The Hybrid Workplace from https://news.microsoft.com/march-2021-ignite/ and he lists shared channels as one of a 100 new features in Teams in 2020!
- When is the Ignite conference? Think about it...
- Hi Tony. Do you know when Shared Channels will be accessible by enabling preview features in update policies within the Teams Admin Center? Thanks
taliesin I don't. Sorry.
TonyRedmondis my understanding correct, that this feature will only work with users outside my own tenant? I am really looking forward for this feature, but I have concerns that it would not suit our needs. Our scenario is as follows:
We have "external" colleagues (near-shore developers) which have their own account in our tenant, but no access to our "Main Team". This main team has several channels (also for internals only, thats why externals have no access to the team at all). But for one single channel, we would like to invite the external colleagues as well. Would that be possible with this upcoming feature?
Best, Florian
- Shared channels support both internal and external participants. The only caveat is that the domain the external participants come from must be allowed to use federated collaboration. We're getting close to public preview and details are changing, but I anticipate you'll be able to do what you want to.
- Any chance Microsoft was INSPIREd to push this into public preview this week?
- Is there a plan to enable adding Dynamic groups for shared teams channel permissions
- should it be possible to move existing channel to this state? Would be nice to keep context
- I'm now seeing this option on Teams at my institution. I now have a third option when adding a channel to a Team: "Shared - People you choose from your org or other orgs have access". Seems to be working well within the organization, but I'm unable to add external users using their e-mail ("We didn't find any matches"). Is this something that needs to be activated by my admin people or has Microsoft not rolled that aspect out yet? Note - I can add external people to a Team as Guests, so we have enabled that feature, but that gives them access to the full Team and requires changing tenants. Any word on this?
- Are you in the Microsoft TAP program for Teams? If not, it's probably a mistake that you see the option to add a shared channel. In any case, when the feature is available, you'll need to configure a policy to enable connections with other organizations. The policy is bi-directional, meaning that you can't connect to another tenant without their OK. I'll flag the issue to Microsoft.
- Yes, I believe so. There is a TAP symbol above my picture on Teams.
- This is interesting, thanks for posting. Do we know if this will create a separate SharePoint site collection, like private channels do?
- From the text of the article:
"Like private channels, a shared channel gets a SharePoint Online team site to share documents between members of the shared channel."- The "problem" is that these private SHPT team sites are not visible in the SHPT Admin Center. Will this be addressed in the near future? How do we as admins manage and support these sites? I know via the Teams Admin Center you can see if there are any but accessing them in case of support can only be done if admins are added by the Teams owner to the private channel itself. Not ideal.
Really excited about these new sharing possibilities!
One thing I don't understand though, is since the external users you share a channel with, don't need to be guests on your platform, how would the invitation process look and how would they access the Team if they don't use M365 on their end?
- We don't have full details yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if the external access mechanism is used, just like federated chat.
