July 3, 2020

MS Teams: Best Practices for Setting Up Channels

Updated June 2023

Microsoft Teams has a relatively flat structure that provides little opportunity for the organization beyond the naming of the team. However, one of the ways you can help your workplace structure Teams is through the organization of channels.

What are MS Teams Channels?

Within Teams, channels are a way to separate and organize conversation and content into logical areas. We frequently put a lot of emphasis on information architecture in Office 365 using taxonomy, site structure and metadata but we should also be doing this for how we organize our channels within MS Teams. In this article, we are going to talk through MS Teams best practices for organizing channels, why it’s important and how you can organize tabs within Microsoft Teams channels to provide a consistent experience for users.

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Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices - Channel breakdown — *Image: Naming teams and ordering channels.*

Why is it Important to Follow MS Teams Best Practices for Channels?

Channels are important for structuring content in MS Teams. Since Teams themselves are flat in structure with no ability to add additional metadata or nest teams, channels can provide structure in three main ways:

Separating Conversations

MS Teams Channels allow you to separate conversations around topic, process, or any way that you like. Since MS Teams doesn’t have the concept of hashtags yet, splitting conversations via channels provides a much-needed structure to the various conversations that you have within a Team.

Different types of teams will naturally have different ways of structuring channels as well. If you have a Team created around a well-defined process you might have your channels split up based on pre-defined stage gates or project process areas:

Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices for Splitting Channels — *Image : MS Teams - Project Channels*

If you have a Team that discusses different topic areas, then it might make sense to have your channels based on different topic areas such as:

Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices - Splitting Channels by topic area in MS Teams — *Image: MS Teams - Separating Channels by Topics*

If you have a collaboration area within a department, you might split up your channels based on various works streams as seen below:

Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices - Splitting Channels By Work Streams — *Image: MS Teams - Channels by Work Streams*

Separation of Content

When creating a new channel, a new folder is created in the Shared Document library of the SharePoint site for that Team. This means that you have the ability to organize your content via channels if you want to. It also means that having a channel called Documents or Document Conversations is a bad idea. The launch of Private Channels will further impact this structure as it is likely that permissions will be applied to the folder that is part of that private channel.

Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices - Channel mirrored in document library — *Image: MS Teams - Teams channels mirrored in the Shared Document library.*

Configuration of Tabs

With MS Teams, you can also show other content using Tabs. This content isn’t limited to Office 365 and can show external applications. Since this is available on a per-channel basis, you can customize the experience across your channels.

Screenshot - Microsoft Teams Best Practices - Tabs in Channels — *Image: MS Teams - Tabs in MS Teams Channels.*

MS Teams Best Practices: Naming Channels in Teams

The naming of your channels is extremely important because at a glance this is what your users will see when they join a Team. To follow MS Teams best practices for naming channels, the first thing to do is to establish a naming convention. It can be frustrating for users if they are swapping between Teams and channels that are conceptually the same but are all named differently.

For example, having a channel that refers to Quality Assurance discussions can be represented as ‘Quality Assurance’, ‘QA’, ‘Testing’, ‘QA – Discussions’, and other ways. Having a convention reduces the cognitive load when users switch between Teams and it allows them to find the correct channel quickly and easily.

Channel Naming Tips

Don’t use ‘conversations’ or ‘discussions’ in your channel names: It’s better to call a channel ‘Marketing’ rather than ‘Marketing Discussions’ since it is implied by being in Teams. This will make it more logical when you have corresponding files in Shared Document libraries.
Use numbers only to control the order that Channels appear to users: Unfortunately there is no way to control the order that channels are shown in a Team. By default, the general channel appears first with all the other channels appearing alphabetically below. To get around this you can number your channels. This will only work up to 10 channels, or you will run into ordering issues.
Acronyms: Be careful using acronyms in your channel names unless it is widely understood and standardized in your organization. You might know that ‘BPC’ stands for 'Business Planning Cycle' and use that as a channel name but it doesn’t mean that everyone else does (particularly new employees).
Think about the search experience: MS Teams provides a great way to be able to filter Teams and Channels through the filter button on top of the list of teams. Having consistent naming and not using acronyms will increase the discovery of both the channels and the teams that a user could be a member of.

MS Teams Best Practices: Channel Tab Configuration

In MS Teams, you can configure tabs for each channel. Just like with your channels, you should think about how you name and position your tabs within each channel and across channels.

Tab Configuration Tips

Keep your Tab order consistent across Channels: Although you cannot change the order or the name of the ‘Conversations’ and ‘Files’ tab, you can add whatever tabs you like specific for each channel. Try to keep it consistent so if you have an OneNote notebook in different channels it should be in the same position.
Use short and intuitive names for tabs with files: If you want to show a single document in a tab, the name of the tab will default to the application of the document (e.g. Word). You can easily change the name of the tab so that it shows the title of the document.
Change the name for OneNote Notebooks: For Notebooks, you don’t need to have the full name of ‘Groupname Notebook’ as the tab name. Just name it ‘Notes’ or ‘OneNote’.

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