Microsoft is unlocking the "Full Potential" of Private Channels in Microsoft Teams: What You Need to Know

It has been a while since I posted something just about a Microsoft Teams update, as a lot have been Copilot in Teams to be honest. But here is a real Microsoft Teams update I think is worth knowing about, and it involves Security and Compliance as well. Microsoft is rolling out a "major" update to private channels in Teams, starting in late September 2025 and continuing through mid-December. This biggest change in this update is a shift in how private channel data is stored from individual user mailboxes to a dedicated channel mailbox. Not only will this simplifie compliance management, it will also and align private channels with shared channels, making governance and experience more consistent across Teams. This update promises to increase the support up to 1000 channels per team and 5000 members per channel, removing previous limitations. Teams will also allow meetings to be scheduled directly within private channels, enhancing collaboration.  For organizations using Micr...

Synchronization from h***

I recently acquired a HTC Touch phone, with windows mobile. Lucky me, I thought. Now I can sync users and more across pc’s, Windows Live and my account on the exchange server. If only I can find the “avoid duplicates” setting on the sync -tool. I did, and initiated sync with Exchange.

So far, so good. Then I initiated sync with Windows Live… WooooHaa?!? What happened? Almost every contact got duplicated, and I could not tell which contact was from which source. Trying to delete one contact in one system sometimes removed a duplicate, and sometimes didn’t. I also ended up with some contacts in Exchange, not present in WL and vice versa. What a mess!

I ended up with deleting every contact, everywhere. Then fetching my Google contacts and importing them to exchange (It turned out WL contacts are not synchronized to exchange through the HTC, and they use different fields to identify weather a user is a duplicate or not).
Lesson learned:

1. Always have a good backup (I am glad I had mine in place. Recreating 200+ contacts is no small deal)
2. Be careful to initiate replication across platforms. Make sure you understand the limitations and restrictions of the software you use.