Microsoft revealed on Tuesday that a full rollout of its Teams Connect shared channels will be accessible to all users by the middle of August.
Arun Das, a product manager for Microsoft Teams channel experiences, writes in a blog post, “Shared channels, came out in a public trial this March 2022, and as a result, we saw a range of clients use the feature to enable seamless communication throughout their businesses.” We are pleased to inform that shared channels are now available to everyone.
Whether they are from the same organization or not, shared channels have been incredibly helpful for professionals to collaborate with one another. It is a great tool for various teams, from businesses engaging with external partners to multinational and conglomerate businesses. It enables parties to work as one extended team in a channel without transferring tenants. Additionally, it enables everyone to literally collaborate by allowing them to share files, hold meetings, securely review documents, and more. This goes beyond simply enabling communication amongst people who aren’t on the same team as you. Also included is the ability for users to collaborate with other parties in other Azure AD orgs using the entire feature set of Teams.
Shared channels are created on the Microsoft 365 hyperscale, enterprise-grade cloud, which Das continues to give the advanced security and compliance features that customers demand. Shared channels also offer a wide range of information protection technologies, such as eDiscovery, legal holds, communication compliance, information barriers, audit logs, retention, and DLP, for host administrators to control and regulate channel data.
In addition to its general availability launch, shared channels are receiving various upgrades. It includes an increase in channel capacity from 50 to 200 (200 standard, 30 private, and 200 shared channels per team), support for some messaging functionality for outside users (like GIFs and emojis), access to enhanced reporting for outside users for admins, support for mobile apps, and the ability for app developers to create apps for shared channels. Additionally, B2B direct connect users will now be supported by security defaults, meaning that when security defaults are activated, multi-factor authentication will be used for external users.
