Your team comes with a General channel. We recommend you set up more channels based on the topics your team will collaborate on. 

• This makes conversations easy to find by topic in future
• You can organise shared files around a topic by using the file storage area in its associated channel
  

Team owners can allocate permissions for who can create private and public channels. If you can't set up channels and you think you should, contact the team owner. To see who the team owner is, click on the ... next to the team name, then on Manage team.

 Add a channel

• Click the … button next to your Team name 
• Click Add channel and give it a name:
  - don't use any of the following special characters in its name: 
  ~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ' "
  Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.) 
• Choose between Standard (open to anyone with access to your team) or Private (open by invitation only)
• Tick Automatically show this channel in everyone’s channel list to show the channel to everyone in your team. If you don't tick this, team members will see a hidden channel heading: when they click on it, it opens to reveal the channels below it

These naming rules matter because they affect teams functionality if not adhered to.

Do not use ‘special characters’ - your channel name can't include any of the following characters:

~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ' "

Names cannot start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Don't rename your channel once it's been named. If there are any issues, contact us for advice.  

• Teams webinar for staff (YouTube)
• Teams FAQs on SharePoint
• Instructor-led training on Teams from Microsoft 
• Microsoft Teams video training
• Teams guide (PDF)

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