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A channel is a virtual space in Microsoft Teams that you can use to collaborate in.
Channels are where you hold meetings, have conversations
and work on files with your team.
You can create lots of channels for different types of work like projects or events.
There are three types of channel.
Standard, private and shared,
and I'm going to show you how to create each one
and explain what you'd use them for.
To create a new channel,
find the team you want to create it in.
Mine is 'coaching',
right-click it
and then choose 'add channel'.
A standard channel is one that everyone in the team will be able to see
and I need to give my standard channel a name
and this one is going to be called 'Project X'
and it's something my whole team will work on.
So I'll add a description
and I'll leave the privacy setting to 'standard'.
That means everyone's going to see it in the coaching team.
I'm going to check 'automatically show this channel'
and that will make sure everyone sees it in their list.
They can always hide it later if they want to.
Now, once the channel's been created
it has a 'post' and a 'files' tab and it's ready to use.
Now let's create a private channel.
Now, this is the type of channel that you use when you want to have some privacy
inside an existing team.
You may want to work on sensitive files
or have private conversations
but you don't want to have to create a whole new team to be able to do that.
Now I need to create a private channel for a project I'm working on
with members of my coaching team.
So to create the new private channel, I find the Coaching team,
right click it and choose 'add channel'.
I add the channel name 'Project Y', and a description
and i change the privacy setting to 'Private',
and then choose 'create'.
The next step is to choose the people that I want to have access to the private channel.
I can only choose people who are already a member of my coaching team
and I'll add Polly and Sarah.
I type the names and Teams will make suggestions and I can just pick them.
Now I can choose roles.
I'll make Sarah an owner of the channel so she can help me manage it
and i'll leave Polly as a member.
Then I choose 'done'
and the Project Y channel is created
and is listed in the Coaching team.
And you can see it has a lock icon next to it so you know it's private.
Only Polly, Sarah and I can see that channel.
It has a 'post' and a 'files' tab and it's ready to use.
If I want to add more people to the private channel later,
I can just select it, right click it,
choose 'Manage channel',
and then 'Add member'.
The last type is the shared channel.
Now, this channel is used to share with people outside of your team
and it can only be used if you are an owner of the team.
Now, I need to create a shared channel for a project I'm working on
in my Coaching team
and I need Mark ,who's not in Coaching, to work on it with me.
To create the new shared channel, I find Coaching,
I right-click it,
and choose 'Add channel'.
I add the channel name 'Project Z'
and a description,
then i change the privacy setting to 'Shared'.
I can see that the 'Share this channel with everyone on the team' box is already ticked
and that means, when I create this channel,
all of my team will be able to use it.
I'm going to untick it though, because I just want to share it with Mark for now.
Then i choose 'create',
and the next step is to share the channel with Mark,
so I do that
and then I can choose the role,
and I'm going to make Mark an owner of the channel so he can help me manage it.
Then I choose 'Done'.
Now, only Mark and I can see the new Project Z channel.
It has a 'posts' and a 'files' tab and it's ready to use.
I can also see that it has the shared channel icon next to it
so I can see what type it is at a glance.
If I want to share this channel with other people or teams later on,
I can select the Project Z channel,
right-click it,
choose manage channel
and then 'share with people'.
Then I can add more people or teams as needed.