When employees at businesses and organizations use Microsoft Teams to chat with each other, it can get very complicated very fast as more and more channels are created, and others are retired. Today, Microsoft has revealed plans to make it easier to create, organize, and shut down Teams channels.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that a new and faster way to create new Teams is now generally available:
We have reduced the number of steps needed to create a new team by defaulting to “create a team from scratch”. If you would like to create a team from a template, select more create team options” and pick from the template library.
Microsoft has also made it faster to make a new channel for a new team by simply adding that function in the same menu that people use to make a new team. In addition, Teams users can quickly discover new public teams that have been made in their company or organization. Admins can also set things up so employees can find any private teams that have been established. In late 2024, Microsoft will allow Teams users to select the channels in their team that are relevant to their work and needs.
Teams has also added a new AI-based feature called the discover feed:
The discover feed surfaces channel posts you might otherwise have missed, bringing relevant content based on people you work with or topics that might interest you. Scroll through your feed, easily catch up on news, and like, comment, or share a post from the discover feed, just like any other channel post.
Later in 2024, Microsoft will add a way for people to rename the general channel in a team. It will also add a way for Teams to automatically detect any channels people have not joined in 45 days and hide them from view.
Microsoft has also added some customization features for Teams notifications:
You can choose to see your notification in the activity feed, display a banner, or turn them off. In your activity feed, you are now able to clear notifications with a single click, marking all your notifications as read at once, helping you keep up with the quick pace of conversations and notifications.
Later in the year, Teams will add a way for users to mute all notifications for a specific channel post along with a way to customize notification sounds, including making one for more urgent messages and more.
Finally, Microsoft has added a way to retire and archive the content of a Teams channel. Once a channel has been retired, no more messages or conversations can be made inside it, but all previous channel content remains. There"s also an option to bring back a retired channel from the Manage teams menu.