Generally speaking: a key change in Microsoft Teams
Aug 21, 2024
Matthew shares a change to the process to create new teams
Reading time: 6 minutes
As someone once said, change is the only constant in life. Recently there's been a subtle, yet quite fundamental change to Microsoft Teams.
An age-old surety (well seven or so years 😆), the General channel seems to be no more, as now when you create a new team, you’re prompted to name your first channel.
I liked the General channel!
Maybe it says something about me and my rules-based nature. But actually, I was a real fan of the General channel. Although, I recognise that you seemed fall into one of two camps on the subject. Where I thought the General channel was valuable, was the consistency, that every team in an organisation had one channel that could be described and purposed for the same use.
However, what I believed was the strength I've heard some compelling arguments that it was indeed a weakness. Most often, the fact that the name ‘General’ was just far too.. well, general!
The people who develop Teams seem to be listening and recently we've seen some features like the ability to hide the General channel and now to rename it completely.
Naming your first channel
We now have a new experience when you create a new team.
A General channel isn’t even on the cards, as you’re prompted to name your first channel. You’ll need to be prepared because you can't even finish creating the team if you haven't thought about what your first channel is going to be called.
And here's a spoiler: you're not allowed to call it General either!
In my example, I've created a new team to coordinate a project. I've decided to call my first channel Project-wide announcements. Because in reality that's what I would have been recommending that the General channel is used for.
Here’s my new team, with an added channel for Finance, with a little investigation, it's worth noting that you can't delete your first channel, pretty much in the same way as you couldn't delete the General channel. You can however rename it, if you were really caught off your guard during the creation process.
😈But, if you were looking for a devious loophole here to return to the ‘good old days’, then sadly you've been thwarted as Teams won't let you rename it back to General.
Even Teams is nostalgic
Curiously, and I believe positively, there is still a nod to this channel’s importance and heritage as an always enduring feature in all teams. Because when you look at the Files tab, where I'd be expecting a breadcrumb that leads to a folder sharing the name of my first channel. You can spot that the folder associated still retains the name General. This is replicated of course in the behind-the-scenes SharePoint.
While it is perhaps slightly confusing, I think it could be helpful. Particularly if you're planning to use some form of automation and need to guarantee a library and folder address that will exist every time. An example might be a migration activity into Teams.
What does this change mean?
Well, it certainly means that Teams can now be really tailored to your organisation. Although, if you're looking for a consistent and structured approach to using Teams, that can easily be described and trained to new coworkers, you should probably be giving some consideration to a standard or a naming convention for your first channels.
Embracing the positive element, at least the first channel name can differ between teams used for business as usual processes, or projects or committees and so on, to appear more useful and for the team members to better understand what the channel is for.
Accompanying good channel naming are the recommendations and channels descriptions, I wrote about those features in another blog recently, why not give it a read.
Matthew
Matthew Burrell is a consultant at Your 365 Coach
Published 21 August 2024
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