How to create a Private Team and change Privacy in Microsoft Teams

If you have sensitive information that you cannot share with all the people in your organization, you can create a Private Team in Microsoft Teams. It will help you to share all the confidential data with the people you want to share. You do not need to install any app or opt for third-party service, and you can do it in the free version of Microsoft Teams as well.

Different types of Teams in Microsoft Teams

There are three privacy types in Microsoft Teams, and they are as follows-

• Private: Only team owners can add a new member. If you are the only owner of your team, you can add new members to the team. Other people won’t get the option to send an invitation to anybody. Also, people in your organization won’t get added automatically.
• Public: All your members can add new members, and anyone in your organization can join your team. There are almost no restrictions for the members of a “Public” team. However, you need to add all the new members manually.
• Org-wide: This team is for those who want to add all the people in an organization to be added automatically. For example, you need to create five teams for different purposes, and you want to add all the people in your organization to all those teams. At such a moment, you can create an “Org-wide” team to add all the people at once.

By default, Microsoft Teams creates an Org-wide team unless you change the privacy settings manually. However, let’s assume you have some data that you should not share with everyone in your organization, but you need to send that to all the admins. Also, you do not want to let others know about your team. At such a moment, you may need to follow these steps to get your job done.

How to create a Private Team in Microsoft Teams

To create a private team in Microsoft Teams, follow these steps-

• Open the Microsoft Teams site or app and ensure you are signed in to your account.
• Afterward, you should find an option called Join or create a team on your bottom-left corner.
• Click on it to start the process.

• Click the Create team button that you should see on your screen.
• After that, it shows two options and they are-
  • Build a team from scratch
  • Create from an existing Office 365 group or team
• Regarding confidentiality, in this case, it would be best to choose the first option: Build a team from scratch.
• Then, you should see your team’s privacy type. You need to choose Private from the list.

• Give your team a name and write down a small description so that you and your team members can know the motto behind the team.
• At last, click the Create button.

As your team has already been created, you can send invitations to your members.

Read: How Microsoft Teams tracks your activity.

How to change Team Privacy in Microsoft Teams

Let’s assume that you already have a team, do not want to create another team for the same purpose, and only need to change the privacy settings. In that case, you need to follow these steps:

• Click the three-dotted button associated with the tea.
• Select the Edit team option.

• On the popup window, you need to expand the Privacy drop-down menu
• Select a different privacy type.

• At last, don’t forget to save your change.

I hope the post was easy to follow and that you could change the privacy settings of Microsoft Teams and create a private team.

Are private Teams searchable?

Private teams in Teams are not searchable by default. However, Team owners or admins can enable users to discover private teams by enabling the “Private team discovery” feature in a Teams policy. With this feature turned on, anyone can search, locate, and send a request to join the team.

What is the difference between shared and private Teams?

If you want to target a smaller audience with a specific topic, you can use a private channel. Shared channels are designed for collaborating with both internal and external members of your team or organization.