Adding non-team members to a Team’s channel

[Christopher Slagel]

Is there a way to add people who aren’t in a Team to a teams channel?

For example, we currently use Cisco Spark (and are looking to switch over), but we have an IT “team”, and within that there are channels for chat with each other company department. ie IT + Finance, etc. would much rather keep these departmental chats as channels instead of other teams, but obviously don’t want everyone in the IT Team, just added to the specific separate channels for their departments.

[#2]

This is Shared Channel feature coming to Teams, but most likely something looking in Q2-Q3 timeframe so it's a way out, but they are working on this along with Private channels, but with Private channels you still have to be on the Team. Shared Channel is a channel shared across a team so two teams have the same channel. 

[#3]

It would be good to have the ability to add members on specific channels. A lot of discussions over email involving people from diverse groups in an organization lead to a lot of unstructured and forked content. It would be good to have a channel created on the topic/problem under discussion and invite only relevant people to participate on that discussion - gradually, be able add/remove people from the discussion on a need basis. Since, this is a team now for a channel/topic - others in the real team are not disturbed by the communication.
Since, I'm new to MST, wondering if the above usecase is already possible. If not, any plan?

[#4]

Just create separate Teams, it's really no big issue and is the current, proper way to create a separate permissions. You still get to use favourites to show and hide your preferred channels in the left rail.

[#5]

We tried that & started ending up with a lot of teams.. 

[#6]

Why is that a problem?

I'm in about 30 Teams, I favourite the 4 that I work with most and want to keep an eye on, and in them I don't keep every channel in view.

[#7]

It is not necessarily a "problem" to have alot of teams but as users are adopting Teams they are having a difficult time reasoning for when to create an entire "Team" when they are just looking a Team of Teams type of workflow. Mainly some sort of HUB for general department discussion then have Teams for specific Teams Chat. It Would be nice if there were some sort of "Internal Guest" or "Private Channel" inside of a team where a person can be brought in to communicate with the team on a temporary basis for a single project or make a request to an entire team....this would eliminate the HUB team. Departments often co work with each other and the need to allow some other members in for a temporary piece of the project then they are no longer needed.....splitting that into multiple teams for phases of a project, and breaking up or replicating files needed for the project does not provide a good workflow

HUB Format

• Engineering (1 Team)
  • General (All Engineering Announcements) 
  • R&D ( R&D to All Engineering)
  • Quality ( Quality to all Engineering)
  • Product Management ( Product Management to All Engineering)
  • Partner management
  • Etc
• R&D Team
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Quality
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Product Management
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Partner Management
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members

Private Format

• R&D Team
  • 1 Guest Announcement Channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 1+Temporary Projects or channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Quality
  • 1 Guest Announcement Channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 1+Temporary Projects or channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Product Management
  • 1 Guest Announcement Channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 1+Temporary Projects or channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members
• Partner Management
  • 1 Guest Announcement Channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 1+Temporary Projects or channels (Only a member of this channel not the Team)
  • 10+ Private channels only meant for these members

[#8]

This is where shared channels would come into play. I know Dan was talking about them looking at shared channels back at ignite last year, so I'm hoping they come with or very shortly around the same time private channels come out because I think those could be very powerful connecting these Teams together, that way you could have a hybrid approach of a hub, with shared channels into the sub teams.

[#9]

I seriously do not recommend doing it this way. especially from an administrator perspective. this will only lead to chaos and a lot of unnecarry Teams and their respective sites @Steven Collier 

[#10]

Does anyone know if there is any movement on this topic?  Users really need the ability to add non-team members to a Private Channel. I don't want to invite a group of people to the entire Team - they are not relevant - they only belong within this Private Channel that I set up under a Team.

[#11]

Actually @lionheart85 @Steven Collier it would be more organized and easier to manage if you could add non-team members to Private Channels as @Mark Paradis suggests. When managing a project, different sub-tasks require different personnel throughout the organization. We have to put everyone on every team, everyone in the organization would be on every team, and then the Admin needs to go and set the permissions for everyone.

It would be much easier just to bring in the people as you need them.

[#12]

Agreed with @chadhaering.  Has this issue been addressed in Teams?

[#13]

Agreed.  We don't want a team for every project or item for collaboration. @chadhaering 

[#14]

@chadhaering Agreed.