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...

Teams meeting enhancements rolling out, or already in your tenant

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There are a lot of features and enhancements being rolled out at the moment. And here are a few highlights I have collected to stay on top of things.

Meeting end notifications:
Soon everyone will get a notice in private scheduled and channel meetings when the meeting is about to end. This feature was scheduled for a September roll out, but an updated roadmap item is now indicating an arrival in December. Hopefully this will make it easier to keep track of time, and wrap up meetings in time for the next meeting. The notification will appear when there is five minutes left of the meeting, and last for a couple of seconds. It will disappear after a few seconds, and no user action is required.

Teams meeting recording to be stored in OneDrive and SharePoint:
Rolling out now, is the capability to change the recording storage from Stream to OneDrive and SharePoint. This is a much awaited feature, and will make it easier for guest users to access recordings. And this will also make sure recordings come under the same policies as the rest of the Team has set. There will be an opt-in or opt-out possibility for a period of time, and if you need to read up on these features to prepare your organization, you can find the article here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/tmr-meeting-recording-change

Forced mute on all participants:
As an organizer of a meeting, users will now no longer just have the capability to control who can present or not. But the will also have the capability to force-mute all attendees in a meeting. This can be done from the participants pane in a meeting once the meeting has started. This is an effective way to prevent unnecessary noise in meetings. Just remember to unforce this once you want the the conversation to get started. This feature is associated with the roadmap item: 66575

Edit your meeting options from within the meeting itself:
The meeting options should now be available from with the meeting experience itself, and it will take you directly to the webpage where these settings are set. According to the roadmap item 67121 This should already be available in tenants.