Limiting channels to specific team members

[Graeme Baker]

Is there any way to control which channels within a team each team member has access to? Or is it a free for all if you're a member of that team?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

All members of the team have access to all channels within that team at this time.

[#3]

I've already up-voted allowing private channels. There are some conversations you dont want a whole team to see, but are relevant to that team!

[#4]

I can see why you would have channels open to all in a team - but it would be good to have non team members allowed access to a specific channel say as a mini project that is being worked on, without having access to the rest of the teams channels (especially if that team is a closed group)

[#5]

I agree! Otherwise, it will be necessary to create diferent groups to manage the acces.

[#6]

I dont see it as much important for limiting access, but being able to have members for a channel, so that you can have topic relevent discussion, and call people to a meeting without everyone in the entire team being notified. We have a project with 250 people in it, and dont want to have to have a separate team for every "sub-team".

[#7]

Totally agree!

Also it would be great if the permission is valid for files and the onenote-section of the channel. Also it would be great to configure that permission channel by channel. Meaning in one channel I might want to share parts/all of documents/folders with those who can access the channel. And in another channel I only want to share the channel and ONE OneNote-page.

[#8]

You can sort of do that now. Many people don't realize that the favoriting mechanism for channels controls more than just their display underneath your Team. It also controls whether you get notifications when someone @ mentions the channel itself. If you have it favorited, you get a stronger form of notification (a toast and the red badges/icons I believe) where if you don't have it favorited the channel name just goes bold to show that activity has occurred.

[#9]

I agree this would be quite useful!

[#10]

This one sounds familiar. Having the same dilemma at the moment also... Creating so many "Teams" just to have contextual coversations and events. Team of 25 working on same product/cliente that work in sub-teams (e.g. 5 scrum teams), should I create 1 MS team or 5 MS teams. If I could use 5 channels, 1 for each sub-team and then have common/other channels for full 25 members would this be better/easier to manage/maintain/use?

[#11]

I too have been looking at limiting membership to specific channels, one of the reasons I feel this is importnt is we have set up overarching directorate teams, and each team that falls under the directorate has its own channel for their daily chat, wips and team admin.

The intention was to also hold team meetings with a single click within teams however when we do this it dials the entire directorate, over 100 people instead of the 10 in our team :( 

Yes I know we can set this up in chat, but for some teams its important to have voice and text done in an open and transparent way, with an audit log to see when the calls were made.

[#12]

We would really need that feature too. Would make it possible to structure a Team with Sub-Teams. 

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[#13]

Will it be possible to limit access to specific channels through SharePoint? I'am aware as soon as they a member of the team then they receive full access. So just wondering if there has been any updates to this.

[#14]

So far that I know, you can achieve that for the documents stored under that channel by opening the documents channel in SharePoint, then going to [Site contents]. Once there, click on ... next to Documents and then [Settings]. On that Settings page, select the [Permissions for this document library] link. Be sure here to click on [Stop inheriting permissions].

Once that done, go back to [Documents] on the left menu. You will get one folder by channel. Select the one you want to change permissions en click on the outer right icon next to the filter. It will open the details panel. Here, you are able to [Manage access]. You are able here to stop sharing for Team visitors and Team members.

You are now able to share ad hoc any of your AD's member.

[#15]

@René Cuchetwhile your approach will work, it has many limitations and I would be very reluctant to recommend this to any of my clients because it will end up causing a great deal of confusion. The team members will still be able to access any of the other resources associate with that channel. The wiki, other tabs, connectors, conversations, notebooks etc will all still work and the team could be confused that they can't use the files. 

[#16]

@Dean Gross True. My meaning was only Documents wise and is only helpful in case of Team members synchronizing files on their computer. For sure that it can be confusing for Team members but is a good way to take care that some confidential documents are only shared with the right persons without making a apart Team for that.

I gave the example on a Channel level but in our case, I have implemented it on folders under a channel

[#17]

Hi Memebers!

Are there any updates on this?

[#18]

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@Graeme Baker wrote:

Is there any way to control which channels within a team each team member has access to? Or is it a free for all if you're a member of that team?

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Hi Memebers!

Are there any updates on this?

[#19]

You can use PowerShell to have a look, which user are in which team. In combination with Azure AD/hybrid and some Workflows you can control it. 

An option to connect Azure AD users to Groups/Teams: no
You have only: in or out / not a function like: this members can be a part, but are not members yet.

If you want this -> teams.uservoice

[#20]

Hi Balazs,

Microsoft mentioned in a couple of sessions at Ignite that they are currently working on permissioning of channels to make them "Private" from the rest of the group, and this would come "some time in 2018". It would have been low on the priority list last year behind voice, but now they have made progress on a lot of that backlog I would hope to hear more on the wider Teams roadmap early this year.

Cheers,
Mike