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

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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...

Backup Skype for Business script is coming soon

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The release of Skype for Business Server for On-Premise is just around the corner, and as a preparation for the release, I am going through my Lync 2013 backup script and verifying the commands and version checking for SfB.

As I am upgrading the script for SfB, I am also introducing a couple of new features. Here is a sneak peak of what to expect in the new version.

Select you own password for Private Key protection
When the script is run, the previous version set the password of all certs to "secret". This is now a parameter which you may (and should) change. Simply run the script with the -CertPass option


Send an Email report after the script has been run
Although the script can be run manually, I usually configure a scheduled task to do it for me every (day, week, month or what you prefer). I have now added a function which will send you an email with a brief transcript of the backup. This requires an available SMTP server, and valid to/from addresses.

Running the script with the -SendEmailOnComplete switch trigges the required mandatory parameters: EmailFrom, EmailTo and SMTPServer


This will send an email looking like this to the desired mailbox


The attached log file should look like something like this. And I would like to highlight:
1) A notification regarding Log backup
2) A notification if there are Cs-Certificates in the store where priv-key is not exportable



A shortcut to more information
I have included a switch which should launch your preferred browser and take you to my blog, and display the posts with the Backup-SfB tag. Use the -OnlineInfo to invoke

I have a working beta version of the Backup-SfB.ps1 in our own deployment, and awaiting some feedback from other beta testers. So please let me know what you think of these new features, and if there are others you would like to see in an upcoming release. The release will be announced at Ignite ;)