Learn about teams and channels

A team is a group of people gathered to get something big done in your organization. Sometimes it’s your whole organization.

Teams are made up of channels, which are the conversations you have with your teammates. Each channel is dedicated to a specific topic, department, or project.

For example, the Northwind Traders team has General, Marketing, Overview, and 35 more channels. All the conversations, meetings, files, and apps in the Marketing channel have to do with marketing, and everything in this channel is visible to everyone on the Northwind Traders team.

Channels are where the work actually gets done—where text, audio, and video conversations open to the whole team happen, where files are shared, and where apps are added.

While channel conversations are public, chats are just between you and someone else (or a group of people). Think of them like instant messages in Skype for Business or other messaging apps.

FYI—If you're working in Teams offline, or on a low-bandwidth network, you'll be able to switch between chats and channels and keep working. You'll see everything from the last time we were able to sync to your network, and we'll trickle messages in as bandwidth allows. 

Note: If you're a global administrator, consider creating an org-wide team that automatically adds everyone in your organization.