Chat Versus Channel Posts in Teams

Microsoft Teams has multiple ways of managing conversations and information. This article compares chat, and 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.

• 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 app tabs to a channel.

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.