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...

More additions to the Backup-SfB script

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The Backup-SfB script was just released, and keen eyes might have noticed the version 4.00 has been updated to 4.00 C by the time of the release.
I had several beta testers run the 4.00 release, and most of them ran it without too many comments. But I received two important requests:

  1. Please try to minimize error output from the script
  2. I don't know how to capture certain devices.
So here are the three minor, yet important changes to the script

Backup Common Area and Analog Devices
This request was simple enough: Neither the user nor the db backups hold any information on Common area phones or Analog devices. That's why the "backup-basics" function now will run get-cscommonarephone and get-csanalogphones and pipe it to a couple of csv files in the bakcup directory. 
From these files, it should be easy enough to import the information required back into SfB upon restore through a script.

CS Announcements
Although this information is present in the CMS configuration, I was asked if not this could be added as a standalone extra in the same way as the polices and voice settings are.
As it only took two lines of code, I decided it was a good idea to do so.
Included in the bakup are now two new files. A list of unassigned number ranges, and a list of cs announcements (The voice prompts should already be a part of the file backup)

Error handling
Error handling isn't my strongest powershell skill. After all, I'm only a UC techie trying to learn this stuff. But I have been requested on several occasions to quiet down the blood red text in the output of the script. In order to do so, I have now set the default error and warning handling to -silentlycontinue, unless you use the -DebugSQL switch.

I have tried to capture any missing backup files we would expect, so please read the transcript for errors. And then run the script again, with the -debugsql switch to capture the real error.