Difference between revisions of "Chat Versus Channel Posts in Teams"

Microsoft Teams has multiple ways of managing conversations and information. This article compares chat with posts in Team channels. Everyone has access to chat. When a person is added to a Team they will have access to channels within that Team.

Chats

Chat is useful for short-lived communications. Read our Group Chat article for details on group chat.

• You can chat with anyone with an Evergreen account.
• Group chats can be named and organized.
• Files uploaded to a chat are stored in the OneDrive of the member who uploaded files.
• There are limited options to add apps to a chat.

Channel Posts

When a Team is created, it corresponds to a Microsoft 365 group that includes an Outlook calendar, email address, and SharePoint site for file storage. Apps such as Planner and Forms are only available with a group and cannot be used in a private chat or private channel.

• To send a message in a channel, click the bottom 'Start a post' button, or leave a reply to an existing post.
• Each team can have multiple channels.
• Each person can belong to multiple teams.
• All members of a Team can see all channels on a Team.
• Users can hide infrequently used channels.
• Each channel has a Posts tab for conversations.
  • Only members of a team can see posts.
• Files uploaded to a channel are added to the channel SharePoint storage.
  • By default all members of a Team will have read and write access.
  • Each channel has a folder in the Documents folder of the corresponding SharePoint site.
• There are options to add additional apps to a channel (Lists, OneNote, Planner).

Private Channels

A Team can also have private channels that are limited to specific users of a team. We recommend to use chats vs. creating private channels. For more details, Microsoft has an article on Private Channels.

• Each private channel has its own child SharePoint site.
• Private channels don't support connectors and tabs in Stream, Planner, Tasks by Planner and To Do, and Forms.
• Private channels do not have a Microsoft 365 group like a Team.

Best Practices

To get someone's attention in a channel conversation or a chat, @mention them. Just type @ before their name and then select them from the menu that appears. When an @mention recipient receives a notification, selecting it takes them directly to the point in the conversation where they were mentioned. To get the attention of an entire group, type

• @<team name> to notify everyone on that team
• @<channel name> to notify everyone in that channel
• If you're in a chat rather than a channel, you can notify everyone in the chat by typing @everyone in your message.