Search/Teams question

[erinonline1]

hello! We are currently piloting Teams and I have a basic question.  We have a small organization (25 people). We have one Team set up for all users.  I'm wondering about setting up a few additional smaller teams.  If I add 5 people to a Team and make it public, will everyone in the org be able to search for and view content within the smaller team?  This is what I'm shooting for, but not sure if it will work.  Thanks!

[#2]

They will be able to search share point for content on attached team side however they will not be able to use the Teams search bar to find content on a public team. They will be able to search for and add the team if they choose by clicking on at team Wednesday at the team to their list and they can search the content

[#3]

Sorry voice to text. What I was saying is in order to search a public team from inside of Teams you must add it to your list of teams. You can search for public teams by clicking add new team.

[#4]

Thanks Chris.  Just to clarify....would they actually have to join the public group in order to get the search results?

If so....since I want all content to be public to whole company, but some discussions are going to be primarily only for smaller group participation, sounds like it wouldn't make sense to create smaller teams?

[#5]

They can search files from within sharepoint without being a member of the team! In order to see conversations they need to join the team

[#6]

Yes, they need to join it in order to search from the search bar inside of Teams for chat and files.

However, you can use the search from Portal.office.com and from the SharePoint home page search and that will search content from the sites that are attached to the Teams which are basically the files tabs in the channels of that Public Team.

[#7]

So, we have a few subgroups of our company (Sales, Delivery, Training).  Assuming I want all conversations to be public (searchable), I really should only create one Team and then use Channels for the subgroups?  Just looking for some best practices for small companies.  Thanks!

[#8]

That's how I did at previous company, we would have a top level Team, public to the org, that had channels which allowed for cross department/company communications. We would have the departments favorite / follow their own channels, that way we could make use of @channel mentions for important communications and we could @channel mention 2 departments into another channel to get their attention as well.

Worked well, the only negative is making sure people favorite the channels when they are supposed to since you cannot control that currently, the only auto favorite options are for entire teams.

[#9]

The conversations will only be searchable from within teams! If it’s your main goal to have all users in one team and be able to go to each channel to read conversations this will work! Note; you have to be a member of a team to search and read conversations!
Whether you create several teams or just channels depends!
Is it ok to have all people having read/write access to all subgroups ?
Is it enough for each department to only have one channel?
Please explain what your mail goal is and it will be easier to help you out :)

[#10]

Thanks Chris!  So, to take this further.....we'll obviously need multiple channels for each subgroup.  Any suggestions for structuring those?  For example:

Delivery-Project A

Delivery - Project B

Marketing - Social Media

Marketing - Newsletter

Marketing - Annual Plan

Sales - Opportunity A

Sales - Opportunity B

.From your above example, it seems like we'd also need a 'general' channel for each subgroup in order to accommodate @ mentioning each subgroup.....??  i.e. 'Delivery Team', 'Marketing Team', etc.....

[#11]

And if your mail goal is communicating like Chris wrote, this is a great way to go! :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:

[#12]

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@adam deltinger wrote:
The conversations will only be searchable from within teams! If it’s your main goal to have all users in one team and be able to go to each channel to read conversations this will work! Note; you have to be a member of a team to search and read conversations!
Whether you create several teams or just channels depends!
Is it ok to have all people having read/write access to all subgroups ? - YES
Is it enough for each department to only have one channel? - NO
Please explain what your mail goal is and it will be easier to help you out :) - Goals are transparency of all departments, but also efficiency in notifications/@ mentions, etc....

---

[#13]

I don’t recommend this setup! This will be a mess with all the different chAnnels!
Create a public team with all members as Chris said and create a channel for each department here which the respectively members of each follow! They will have their own teams as well for each department but can communicate two ways in a easy way through the public team

[#14]

If transparency is needed all the department teams can be public as well so if you need more than just communicating through channel mentions you can join the team in an instant and leave when necessary!
No way is wrong but you might loose some good functionality not using a team with multiple channels and separation of conversations etc within each department

[#15]

Agree with Adam here. While you have a public team look into creating it as an org wide team. This way everyone gets added to it automatically as they join the org. Add channels for departments or big groups used for communication then a team for each of those. They can be public or private depending on if there is any sensitivity needs.

[#16]

Oh yeah. And about the general channel. It can be locked down so only owners can chat in it if you need to do so.

[#17]

Basically, at 25 people things will work out quite well either way in the beginning, but more and more channels will be added/needed for sure and company may grow, so one team solution for all will be cumbersome in the end :)

[#18]

I'm really appreciating all of this great info!  THANKS!! So, if I'm reading this right, the advice is....

• 1 Team for whole company (org-wide), with some team-wide channels
• 1 Team for each department with channels under each

If so.....and we're having discussions in department Team channels, aren't we losing transparency?  I know people can choose to join other department Teams since they will be public, but that seems cumbersome?

[#19]

Conversations isn’t generally very exiting to look at :) main points can be published through the org wide team