There are 3 types of Channels in Teams: Standard, Private, and Shared.
Standard Channels
Each Team comes with a default Channel named 'General', this is a Standard Channel which all Team Owners, Members and Guests can view. It is important not to rename the General Channel as this can cause sync issues with SharePoint.
Team Owners can create additional Standard Channels and can amend the Team settings to allow Members to do so:
- Select the Teams tab in the Teams app and select the 3 dots to the right of Team name
- Select 'Manage Team'
- Select 'Settings'
- Select 'Member permissions' to expand the section and tick either or both, 'Allow members to create and update channels' and 'Allow members to create private channels' as desired
Each Channel has a Files tab. These files are visible in Teams and are stored in the Documents library of the underlying SharePoint site. To access the Team SharePoint site in the browser the URL format is
https://universityofcambridgecloud.sharepoint.com/sites/UoC_TeamName where UoC_TeamName needs to be replaced with the name of your Team.
You can also use select the 3 dots in the menu on the Files tab to select 'Open in SharePoint' which will take you directly to that Channel folder in SharePoint.
Private Channels
A private Channel has its own set of Owners, Members and Guests, who must be drawn from the Team's existing membership. Only they can see the contents of the Channel. By default, only a Team's Owner can create a Private Channel in a Team but they can amend the Team settings to allow Members to do so.
We discourage the use of Private Channels where possible as the way they are implemented by Microsoft creates issues. Private Channels have a separate SharePoint site to the Team site and membership auditing is limited which makes them harder to manage
Shared Channels
Shared Channels are not currently enabled in the University of Cambridge tenancy.
Get help
If you're having problems setting up your Channels, please contact the Service Desk.