Teams Posts & Files Tabs - making Files Tab as the default AND Renaming the General channel

[Rana_Senojak]

Hi there

Two queries.

Is there a way we can make the Files the default tab when opening Teams, currently this is Posts and most people are looking for a file, so it becomes an extra click. Alternatively can we change the order of the Post and Files tabs, so Files comes first.

Re the General folder - is there a way to rename this

Many thanks

Rana

[#2]

@Rana_Senojakthanks for (re)starting Files tab discussion!

Please oh please let people reorder the Files tab in Teams so it can be presented without an additional click.  If we look at the aggregate lost productivity, calculating 2 seconds x 50M users doing this 5x per day is 500M seconds/day or one human life wasted every three days.

[#3]

Great analogy.
I do not understand why such a simple request by many is totally ignored by the developers.

[#4]

@_TechWriter_ Yes i don't understand why this is unable to be done. These systems are supposed to make our life easier not more irritating, that extra click gets annoying after a while. If you are going to design a system at least make it functional so that users can configure it so that they can use it how they want.

[#5]

Absolutely on point. It is a necessary feature. Users already work in Teams all day, it makes sense to use a channel as a document library. Renaming the "General" channel useful too. The option to hide it also useful.

[#6]

I can't believe this feature is being ignored for YEARS. It's so simple. Just let the channel owner choose a default tab, what's the problem?
I have created a neat sharepoint landing page with useful links, the latest infos etc... But nobody sees it, because it's a tab you have to click on first. Nobody does that, and new team members don't even know this useful page exists.

The best part is: I can't even use a post in the (default) chat section for my landing page, because pinned posts go to the top, but the chat tab stacks all posts "newes on the bottom" and opens there. I'm really annoyed by now.

[#7]

@Maurits_Mes You have exposed yourself as coming up a little short. People have different requirements and use these services for different purposes. Someone with a lot more experience than you can say that making the Files tab appear as the default will make working with this product that little bit better.

[#8]

That the last few links I've found scattered around while searching for this are all 404 errors does tend to add weight to your suspicion. Doing a search on the support portal did reveal some active requests about it, but with less than 60 votes I feel it's yet another pop-up in the ongoing struggle.

As you say, it's almost like Micro$oft's "support" behemoth play whack-a-mole with requests for basic functionality that they're not going to implement to stop the vote numbers getting too high. Gives you some idea of what it's like being an opposition politician in Russia. >;-)

[#9]

@Maurits_Mes 

Sorry can't agree with your comments wanting to have files as the default doesn't go against the core value of teams

[#10]

@philmacu That's ok. What is the core value of Teams?

[#11]

@_TechWriter_ interesting question. Personally, I think one of Teams' core values is to enable efficient and easy collaboration across all types of businesses. Wether you are a law firm, a tech giant or a plumber's accounting office.
That being said, it's not understandable at all that Microsoft seems to "force" one particular way of collaboration onto people (by constantly shoving the channel chat into their faces) - thus possibly reducing efficiency. Deliberately, as it seems.

[#12]

Ridiculous and annoying. I'm not a professional programmer, but how hard can that be to update.

[#13]

How about if you are in Posts you stay in Posts when you click to the next team; if you are in Files, you stay in Files when you click to the next team

[#14]

Ok, but if Microsoft can't (won't) fix the basic request, how could they be expected to do something a little more complex 🙂

[#15]

I love this idea. I'm in the same boat, Files is the primary use for my users in Teams. Having it always open to whatever tab you are currently in (or Posts if the tab doesn't exist in the next channel) would be a perfect solution.

[#16]

@Maurits_Mes 

If something winds up dying a 'lonely death' then maybe people don't need it? We do need to take advantage of features we might not quickly adopt. I just finished migrating an organization's files to Teams. I could see that people tend to keep processes the same; they don't stretch, try out a new feature, and possibly find a more efficient way to work. But, if because a feature is moved over one tab, it is now ignored, what is the likelihood that it was being ignored already? While I was training groups, I had many, many staff ask me if Files could be the first tab. They would like one less click. Multiplied by every day accessing those files multiple times. The reality of change is that people have to lead. We have to show them why they should always start with Posts. To be honest, I don't have that great a reason to.

[#17]

@UnRayted Why should we always start with posts? What if Teams, as in my instance, is not used for posts per se, but for FILE ACCESS.

There is no problem with "leading", but why should an older generation that is less familiar with computers and does not use Teams for posting info or messages and only requires file access that the Teams environment could provide?

Using Teams could have been a simple way of providing the file access required by my team, without the need for involving the full blown SharePoint. This also avoids any subsequent unnecessary SharePoint training for less literate computer users who neither need or care about SharePoint, they just need convenient file access.

For a team that uses file explorer to access files they need, without knowing the name "file explorer" is the program providing those files, Teams provides that "file search" option to make their lives easy.

It's unfortunate that "Teams" is so rigid in its setup/user interface. The inability to rearrange tabs is ridiculous in today's computer age.

We have implemented a simple workaround that does not involve the Teams environment. 🙂

[#18]

@Maurits_Mes I don't know about nonsense; I actually agree with both you AND @YolandaZongpingLiu

–you both make sense. Like you I value the combination of "filestore" and apps and tabs - I find Teams ideal to set up a collaboration space for my teams and me. However, one thing we rarely use is Posts –it is too clumsy for two-way communication; for that, we prefer chat. However, I sometimes try to use Posts as "billboards" for information (often illustrations, diagrams, etc.) that I want my teammates to keep present, i.e. mostly one-way information. But also for that, it is rather clumsy (e.g. if the post is higher than a certain number of pixels, content will be "cut off ", so the illustration I was to display doesn't get displayed in full unless people click on it, and that is more strenuous than scrolling). For these reasons, I would –like yolanda– prefer to have the Post tab optional, or at least the ability to make the "landing tab" a different one.  Best, Diba