Introduction
Microsoft Teams is becoming the modern workspace and more companies, groups, and individuals are adopting it. It helps users collaborate from remote locations, from multiple devices, without the risk of information silos or missed communications. There are different types of channels in Teams 365—standard, private, and shared— which help bridge the gap between the conversation nature of Teams and granting access to resources.
Standard/Regular channels: Open to all team members, used for day-to-day communication within a team.
Private channels: Open to a defined subset of team members (including guests), used for private conversations and document sharing.
Shared channels: Open to specific team members who can collaborate with members of different teams.
Using the Teams license in Microsoft Office 365, every member of the company can create a channel for themselves. If many employees have unrestricted permissions for channel creation, it will cause confusion whether to create a new Teams channel or if a Teams chant will suffice. In addition, uncontrolled creation of channels will lead to the creation of duplicate channels with the same purpose, which will give no practical advantage. Therefore, it is recommended to prevent creation of unnecessary channels.
Steps to prevent users from creating Microsoft Teams channels
Below is a step-by-step guide in preventing users from creating a channel in Microsoft Teams.
Using Microsoft Teams:
- Click on the three dots next to the Team Name, then click Manage Team.
- Click on Settings > Member permissions.
- Untick the checkbox that says Allow members to create and update channels; Allow members to delete and restore channels; Allow members to add and remove apps; Allow members to create, update, and remove tabs.
- After you uncheck this option, the members of your team won’t be able to create new regular channels.
Note: You cannot hide the Join or Create a Team button inside Teams client. The option will remain visible on the app interface even if you lock it.However, when a user clicks on that button to create a new team, they will be denied.
Using PowerShell Script:
- Open PowerShell.
- Use the following commands to prevent users from creating channels
$GroupName = "<SecurityGroupName>"
$AllowGroupCreation = “False”
Connect-AzureAD
$settingsObjectID = (Get-AzureADDirectorySetting | Where-object -Property Displayname -Value “Group.Unified” -EQ).id
if(!$settingsObjectID)
{
$template = Get-AzureADDirectorySettingTemplate | Where-object {$_.displayname -eq “group.unified”}
$settingsCopy = $template.CreateDirectorySetting()
New-AzureADDirectorySetting -DirectorySetting $settingsCopy
$settingsObjectID = (Get-AzureADDirectorySetting | Where-object -Property Displayname -Value “Group.Unified” -EQ).id
}
$settingsCopy = Get-AzureADDirectorySetting -Id $settingsObjectID
$settingsCopy[“EnableGroupCreation”] = $AllowGroupCreation
if($GroupName)
{
$settingsCopy[“GroupCreationAllowedGroupId”] = (Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString $GroupName).objectid
}
else {
$settingsCopy[“GroupCreationAllowedGroupId”] = $GroupName
}
Set-AzureADDirectorySetting -Id $settingsObjectID -DirectorySetting $settingsCopy
(Get-AzureADDirectorySetting -Id $settingsObjectID).Values