Forum Discussion
Teams to Begin Automatically Hiding Inactive Channels
From mid-July 2024, Teams will begin hiding inactive channels for users. The inactive channels can be unhidden, and users can opt out of the automatic process. The new clean up routine can be invoked whenever users want and if a mistake is made, it’s easy to unhide a channel. Given the number of channels in use, it’s likely that a few in everyone’s channel list are inactive and deserve to be hidden.
https://office365itpros.com/2024/07/03/teams-inactive-channels/
29 Replies
After customer pushback, Microsoft will make hiding inactive #MicrosoftTeams channels an opt-in experience rather than a base feature. GA is now “sometime later in 2025.” More details in https://office365itpros.com/2024/07/03/teams-inactive-channels/ & some issues discussed in https://office365itpros.com/2024/09/11/hide-inactive-channels-teams/
Is there any other way to disable this option, as it causes issues for us there are also channels that is gone, cant find them no option to change from hidden to view
Microsoft Teams: Automatic Hiding of Inactive Channels – A Frustrating and Counterproductive Change
Since mid-July 2024, Microsoft Teams has quietly rolled out a feature that automatically hides inactive channels for users. While this may have been intended as a way to declutter the Teams interface, the reality is that this change has been implemented without prior notice and without considering the severe negative impact it has on businesses and users.
This feature has resulted in:
- Missed critical messages: Many users are unaware that their channels have been hidden, causing them to miss out on important discussions, updates, and project communications.
- Loss of easy access to files and folders: Any shortcuts or shared documents within a hidden channel become inaccessible unless the channel is manually unhidden, causing disruptions in workflows.
- Confusion and chaos in the workplace: Employees have suddenly found key collaboration spaces missing from their interface, leading to unnecessary delays, frustration, and increased IT support requests.
- An unnecessary additional burden on users: While channels can be unhidden and users can opt out of this feature, this requires manual action and awareness—something that was never communicated effectively by Microsoft.
A Lack of Transparency and Customer CareWhat is most disappointing is the way this feature was introduced. Instead of giving users and organizations the choice to enable or disable this setting, Microsoft turned it on by default without warning. This kind of forced change contradicts the very principles of user-centric design and enterprise software reliability.
Even more concerning is the lack of response from Microsoft.
For over five months, complaints and concerns have been raised across forums, support tickets, and feedback channels, yet Microsoft has remained silent. In an era where customer experience is supposed to be a priority, this lack of communication is unacceptable.What Microsoft Needs to Do
- Provide an official response regarding this issue and acknowledge the concerns of its user base.
- Allow companies to disable this feature by default at the tenant level through an admin setting, rather than forcing individual users to manually adjust their preferences.
- Improve communication around major updates by properly informing organizations before rolling out disruptive changes.
Microsoft Teams is a critical business tool relied upon by millions of users worldwide. Changes that disrupt workflows should never be forced upon customers without notice or an easy opt-out mechanism at the organizational level.
Microsoft, it’s time to listen to your users and address this issue.
#MicrosoftTeams #CustomerExperience #UserFeedback #HiddenChannels #CommunicationMatters
TonyRedmond I also have found this auto-hide feature very frustrating as it continually hides entire Teams / Channels I use weekly. I have noticed a common thread - the Teams it keeps auto-hiding are Teams where I use the Files tab all the time, but we don't often use the Posts/chat tab. Could that be missing from the criteria used to determine if a Team/channel is still being actively used? (I hope turning off the auto-hide system setting suggested by other people on this thread works for me, because it's really annoying to constantly have to keep unhiding Teams/channels I use all the time!!)
- I don't work for Microsoft, so I can't change the way Teams works. To express your views in a place where the engineering team sees your opinion, use the feedback forum: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/ad198462-1c1c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8472
- Understood - thank you for bringing attention to this issue, though!
- What possible benefit is this feature? I have had it "turned off" since it first appeared, but that toggle does not seem to do anything. I have had multiple embarassing experiences with missing notifications and not being able to find files. There also seems to be no consistency or reasoning for what gets hidden. I have teams I have not accessed in over a year that shopw, and teams I use daily that randomly disappear. This is a dangerous "feature" that has no apparent upside, and no apparent way to disable.
- This is pretty bad news for us and it looks like there is no easy way out of it. We use large, dynamically populated Teams for communication purposes. They are only used sparingly when we need to send a message to everyone that meets the dynamic population criteria. We have used these for years as a critical communicate-to-everyone method. Now, that's gone and it's very painful for us.
We are thinking the only way to address this is to do the programming work to ALSO populate a TAG containing those same people (using the same criteria that auto-populates the Channel. Mentioning the TAG re-displays the hidden Channel. But that means we have to do the programming gymnastics for every one of these "communication" Channels to make those tags also dynamic - else not everyone will be notified as new people join them. Ugh! This is painful. - We are looking for a way to switch this off globally.
At present, once these channels have been hidden, users won't get notifications again even if team mentions are used.
It's causing a lot of problems with users missing messages on channels that aren't used very often, but contain very important messages when they are.
We have Teams channels setup for things such as Cyber Incidents that are only used in emergencies, so having these channels removed from all users by default is not something we want to happen.- Simon-Ludlow. Have you found a solution to this? - I have same issue and it's a big issue as important communication is not reaching the audience it is intented to!
Hi Maria,
No, we haven't found a solution for this issue yet. It is causing us a significant number of problems, with many users now reverting to email to send out updates and messages because they can't rely on those important messages reaching the intended recipients.
Implementing an update like this, which automatically removes notifications and alerts to any channels that a user hasn't posted in recently, really should not be pushed out by Microsoft without providing IT with any control over it.
Microsoft should have explained the system in detail, given us ample warning, and provided us with the ability to opt out of such a disruptive change to one of their most critical applications.
I would also like this setting to be part of a policy that you can manage, so the users are opt-in or opt-out defaulted regarding what the company wants.
The feature per se is not bad, many users are complaining about getting overwhelmed with Teams and Channels, so it can help. But that it is not manageable is really not good.What would also help is to understand the criteria and thresholds that Microsoft uses to indicate a Team or channel is active/inactive. No documentation on that.
I also tried to find something in the registry or the Teams app_settings.json, but it seems at the moment there is nothing you can do to set it for the users.
It has come back from the dead!
With Microsoft Teams-Version 24243.1307.3125.3317 the toggle is available again:I have Microsoft Teams version 25017.203.3370.1174. in America and I DO NOT have the toggle available in the Settings --> General yet. I also wish to have it as a global policy as our organisation is suffering by missing critical notifications for Teams and Channels hidden with no warning. Well intended, poorly executed enhancement, it would seem.
- At last, it was driving me [more] nuts!!
I find this 'feature' incredibly annoying, I have a lot of Channels, which I dip in and out of, I am more than capable of hiding Channels I am not using any more.
Hence why not put back in the option that allows a user to choose how they want Teams to behave for them?
- What happens if one of these automatically hidden channels becomes active again? Will users receive a notification in their Activity feed? Does the channel become active and shown again automatically?
Nope, it does not appear so.
- Give MS some feedback: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/2766f66e-4054-ef11-b4ad-000d3a0e6a3a
😉
