M365 Changelog: (Updated) OneDrive and SharePoint: Access your Teams standard and private channel files

MC336858 – Updated August 5, 2022: Microsoft is not rolling this out to organizations in GCC, GCC-High or DoD at this time. The company will communicate via Message center when we have a new timeline. We apologize for any inconvenience.

With this new feature, users that navigate to a site in SharePoint or OneDrive will be able to access the files stored in the Teams standard and private channels associated with that site. Users will see an “In channels” section when you navigate to the default document library of a Teams-connected site. This functionality will be available in OneDrive & SharePoint web, including experiences like the Move/Copy Picker.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88911.

When this will happen:

Targeted release (select users and entire org): will begin rolling out in mid-April (previously late March) and expect to complete rollout late April (previously early April). – Complete

Standard: will begin rolling out in late April (previously early April) and expect to complete rollout late July (previously late May).

How this will affect your organization:

When a user navigates to the document library of a SharePoint site associated with a team, the “In channels” section will be visible and collapsed by default. The “In channels” section will include all standard and private channels within the Team, and private channels will be distinguished with a specific icon. When shared channels become available, they will also appear in this section. The “In channels” section will only appear when a user navigates to the default document library of a SharePoint site that’s connected to a Team. The “In channels” section will not be visible if the SharePoint site is not connected to Teams.

• The impact of this work is that all Teams channels will be discoverable within a single SharePoint site, as opposed to navigating to the separate SharePoint site associated with each private or shared channel. This aligns with how end users currently work with channels in Teams.
• There will be no change to private channel disclosure as part of this change. For example, a user will only see the private channels that they explicitly have access to—regardless of whether they access them from OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams.

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What you need to do to prepare:

This change will only impact SharePoint sites that are connected with a Team, and the “In channels” section will only be visible in the document library where Teams channels content is stored.

Standard channels will appear in both the “In channels” and “In site library” sections, while private channels will only appear in the “In channels” list..

• This was based on customer feedback that duplication of entries between the list was confusing and made the “In site library” list unnecessarily long. The impact of this decision is that, if an end user expects to find a folder within the document library, they will now need to look under the “In channels” section.

You might want to notify your end users, update your user training and prepare your help desk as part of this change.