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Can we get a better timeframe for public preview rollout? I have access and have enabled public preview, but would like to understand how long the rollout to all m365 tenants truly is?
- Shikha_Varshney
Microsoft
We started the gradual rollout yesterday. It should become available for your tenant/users over the next few days. Thanks for your patience and looking forward to your feedback!
Calling it Channels probably would have been better than Chat...sorry to whoever lost that battle.
- Shikha_Varshney
Thanks for your feedback. We evaluated and researched multiple options for the name, finally decided on Chat as the option that is most familiar to users.
Is there no cc available?
- Roshin Ramesan
Can you share more, Beth?
A couple of questions:
- How long do you anticipate users will be able to opt-out of this change? Will it eventually be enforced?
- If a user opts-out will the view look exactly as it did before, or will there still be some changes to the user experience?
- Roshin Ramesan
Once user becomes eligible for the change, they will be promoted to upgrade and can defer this up to 3 times over a course of few days. After a certain period, they will be moved to the new experience.
The in-product onboarding experience will help them get to their preferred state, Chat and Teams together or separate.
If they choose to keep it separate, their experience will be similar to what they have today, with additional functionality like user organization with sections, new at-mentions experience and more.
Are you able to link users to your sections, such as if I create a section with chats/channels am i able to share that with other users?
- NogaRonen
No, this will not be possible when the experience is rolling out. Sections are for you, to help you organize your personal work environment. Like before, you will be able to add/invite users to specific chat and channels conversations.
- NogaRonen
Sections are just for you, to help you organize your personal work environment. Like before, you are able to add users to specific chat and channels conversations.
Can we disable this by default for our tenant before GA so we can educate users and they get control over whether this applies or not? Having it enabled by default will definitely impact productivity.
We also have a 30-day retention applied to chats but 4 years to channel posts so this will be VERY confusing for users if we can't disable by default.
- Roshin Ramesan
The new experience has user level configuration to get to a preferred state, and not admin controls.
There is no change to how retention policies apply to chats and channels.
Can you share more Lindsay on why this will be confusing? The experience is designed to help users stay on top more effectively, and leverage chats and channels appropriately - put durable collab in channels and use chats for transient discussions. Consistent with how your organization is using retention policy.
Are the sections added to the Graph API for Chats?
Possible to set the section during create via API?- Roshin Ramesan
Not currently. Thanks for the feedback, will take this into consideration for future.
If you can share the use case, it would be helpful.If you use Chat via API as part of structured CRM/Service question to the specialist, you would like to move it to a business section like "Support" to not clutter the private UI settings
Does Microsoft plan to introduce 'Administrator Controls' allowing Teams admins to enable/disable this feature before its rolled out?
- Shikha_Varshney
Thank you for your question. There is no admin control planned to enable/disable new chats and channels experience. Users can customize the experience to align with their workflows from More list options (…) at the top of the chat and channels list choose Customize view. User can choose to view chat and channels separately in the Chat and Teams apps like before or to turn on message previews if that works better.
When is this being released to GA and GCH?
Or can you share the overall release strategy?
- Roshin Ramesan
GA is targeted for 2nd half of January, and GCC and other gov clouds will follow after rollout to commercial.
Please follow roadmap and message center for more updates.
Are you worried that the majority of users will now create Group chats instead of Teams? And how this might have an affect on how files are uploaded and managed? More group chats with files being uploaded to them, means more files stored in disparate OneDrives instead of having files stored in centralized Teams/SharePoint sites.
- Roshin Ramesan
Thanks for the question, Kevin.
Chats are best for lightweight, back and forth between smaller groups. And channels for durable collaboration with small to large groups. The lifecycle and governance is different as you call out, including for document collab.
Bringing them together in one place will help users stay on top and collaborate effectively. This will help with team and channel adoption as it makes it easier for users to bring all project related communications into one place and organize them into Favorites or custom sections.
All experiences like new message, unread filter, at-mentions and more have been enhanced to show both chats and channels, ensuring that channels are in the flow of work for all users.
