Microsoft Teams – Channels vs Chats

When should I use a chat (or group chat) and when should I use a channel. This is probably one of the most common questions we get from businesses just starting to deploy Microsoft Teams; and arguably one of the most common reasons we are asked to come in and evaluate an existing Microsoft Teams install that “isn’t working right.”

If you are using Microsoft Teams, you have probably noticed that the messaging experience is different depending on how you started the message. This can be confusing at first, but with a little background information these differences will not only make sense, but you will probably find yourself changing how you communicate in Teams going forward.

Intro

There are actually two totally different messaging environments in Microsoft Teams. Direct chats and Channel posts. Direct chats can be found under the “chat” icon in the left navigation pane. Direct chats allow you to message anyone (1 to 1 chat) or a group of people (group chat). Channel posts are found in the “Teams” icon in the left navigation pane and allow you to message the users who are a member of a Microsoft Team or channel within a team.

On the surface, the general functionality is similar between these two messaging types, however, there are some very important distinctions that need to be taken into consideration for the LONG TERM successful deployment of Microsoft Teams.

Chats

Direct chats and channel posts may look and even feel similar when you are first testing teams, however, the underlying approach for how they work is completely different.

You should view direct chats very much like text messages on your phone. When you send a message you decide who you are sending it to before you send the message, whether it is one person or a group of people (group texting). Direct chats are stored in your personal mailbox within Microsoft Exchange. Additionally, any files you share with the chat (regardless if it is a 1 on 1 chat or a chat with 250 people) are uploaded to your personal OneDrive and shared with the users who are currently in your direct chat. This is also true for any other tools or apps you might add to a direct chat.

Even though you are interacting within the Teams app, the data created is stored in the personal repositories for the users who are in the direct chat. So, lets say you have a team of people, like a project group or support team, that starts a group chat for the daily collaboration of the group. Now, fast forward 5 years and the person who created the group chat that this team has been working out of leaves the company. Well, the “owner” of a group is the person who created it, and only the owner can perform some of the admin functions of the chat group. Even more, remember that the data created is stored in the personal repositories for the users who are in the direct chat and any documents put in the chat are uploaded to the OneDrive of the person adding the document to the chat and then shared from that person’s individual OneDrive to the rest of the group. In case you haven’t fully connected the dots, yes, that means that any of those documents that were uploaded by this person who has left the company will get deleted when that user has their license removed. This also means that the chat will no longer have an “Owner”, so you can lose some or all admin functionality, even the ability to add users to the chat group depending on how that chat group was setup; and there is no way to regain admin control of that group.

Channels

A team is a group of people working to get something done in your organization. Sometimes it’s your whole organization, sometimes it is only two people. A team in Microsoft Teams is made to reflect that team, and has its own dedicated storage in Microsoft SharePoint where all the resources for that team are located (files, apps, wiki’s, etc…) and users are interacting with these shared resources. The teams themselves are made up of channels; which are the team-based collaboration areas that contain chats, files, apps, wiki’s and other items pertaining to a specific topic related to that team. These are intended to help users understand the type of messages and content they should expect to find within that channel. In this way, channel posts are topic-based by default. As an example, you may have a marketing “team” that has several channels within that team such as: General, Blogs, Website, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Sales & Promotions, Analytics, etc… Any discussions happening in the blogs channel should be related to blogs that the marketing team is working on.

This fundamental and very important foundational difference is the main reason that these two features work differently and should be used correctly to ensure a successful Microsoft Teams rollout for the long term success of the business. It can be a very expensive and time consuming endeavor to try and fix an incorrect rollout years down the road; so this is why it is important to lay a correct foundation out of the gate.

Now that we have a foundational understanding of the two different messaging areas, we can go through some specific feature differences.

Feature Differences

Message Threads

One of the biggest differences between a direct chat and a channel message is that in a Teams channel, you get additional context via the use of message threads. In the screenshot below, you can see the 9 replies from members of the team.

Using threads in Microsoft Teams allows you to group messages per topic. This organizes all conversation within a channel and prevents a free-for-all mass conversation that becomes hard to follow and nearly impossible to refer back to months or even years down the road, or when a new team member is added and trying to get up to speed with the current and past happenings of the team. When replies aren’t managed in this way, longer group chats become mass text and people who aren’t chatting in the moment need to read through all the messages just to see if there is anything relevant to them.

By reading the opening message of the thread, you can quickly see if the thread is something of concern for you, or or whether it only concerns certain members of the team. If someone does need input from a specific member of the team, they can simply @ mention the person in the threaded reply.

While there is a “Reply” feature in a direct chat, this is not the same as treading a conversation. Instead, the reply feature simply makes a copy of the text you want to reply to and includes that in your new message. In this way, it is more akin to quoting someone.

Files

Another major difference between Microsoft Teams group chats and channels is the files tab. Unlike group chats, which are purely for chatting, a Teams channel allows document collaboration. Every time you create a new team (and corresponding channel), a SharePoint site is created on the back end too. This means every Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, or Forms file you create in Teams (or upload to Teams) gets synced with SharePoint. As the front end (Teams) and back end (SharePoint) are synced, files get updated in tandem unless you specifically download an offline version.

Meetings

You can start audio or video meetings in both group chats and channels. Sometimes group chats are started and maintained as a result of a meeting. For example, if you start a meeting with two of your colleagues and pop a message in the chat during the meeting, this message history gets retained in the group chat message history once your meeting ends.

When you start a meeting within a channel, other members of the channel (not just those who joined) can access message history and any files uploaded. They can also listen or watch back the meeting recording once saved to the channel.

Notifications

Making sure that users are notified when new messages are sent is important. Direct chats and channel posts settings are very different in relation to notifications. By default, chat messages will notify all users in the chat. If there is a group chat going on that someone in the group does not want or need to be notified for, they can either mute the entire group chat or remove themselves from the group chat. If the user mutes the chat, if there is something relevant that comes up, they will not know until they read though the entire chat message string; and if they remove themselves from the group chat they will not know at all unless they are added back to the group chat AND includes the past chat messages.

Channel posts, however, being threaded allow a user who does not want to get notified for every message about a thread topic to simply mute just that specific threaded discussion. So if another thread is started, for example on a support issue for a customer, they will be notified.

Features Unique to Channel Posts

Organizing

Channels are managed centrally within the Team and can have specific permission. In this way, you can more tightly manage how users communicate and collaborate within a Team.

Email a Channel

It is also possible to create an email address for a channel. This allows someone (or something) to email that address and the contents of the email will be included as a channel post. For example, sales or support contact requests from a website; or alerts from a monitoring system can be sent to the channel email, which will in turn create a thread.

Analytics

Channels provide analytics that can be viewed to see activity in the channel over time.

Advanced Messaging

Channel messages can have advanced messaging features and you can do things like:

• Lockdown who can reply
• Make it an announcement instead of a conversation
• Post the same message to multiple channels
• Have a subject as well as content

Final Thoughts

When to use Microsoft Teams group chats and when to use Microsoft Teams channels depends on your business and how you are planning on using teams. If Microsoft Teams is new for your organization, it is important start straight away with a good foundation and to drive the right behavior and use for your business needs. Experienced users with habits and routines may take some persuading, especially if they have been using Microsoft Teams incorrectly before; however it is important to the success of the Microsoft Teams deployment both in the short and long term that the proper communication mechanisms are being used to ensure success.