How do I manage teams policies in Microsoft Teams?

How do I manage teams private channel policies in Microsoft Teams?

This article specifically guides you on managing Teams private channel policy.

Note: currently private is not available.

You as an admin can use teams policies in Microsoft Teams to control what users in your organization can do in teams and channels. For example, you can set whether users are allowed to discover private teams in search results and in the team gallery and whether users are allowed to create private channels.

You manage teams policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center. You can use the global (Org-wide default) policy or create custom policies and assign them to users. Users in your organization will automatically get the global policy unless you create and assign a custom policy.

You can edit the global policy or create and assign a custom policy. If a user is assigned a custom policy, that policy applies to the user. If a user isn’t assigned a custom policy, the global policy applies to the user. After you edit the global policy or assign a policy, it can take up to 24 hours for changes to take effect.

You can create a custom teams policy by following below steps:

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams > Teams policies.
2. Click Add.
3. Enter a name and description for the policy. Refer below image.

• 4. Choose the settings that you want:
  • Discover private teams: Turn on this setting to allow users to discover private teams in search results and in the team gallery.
  • Create private channels: Turn on this setting to allow users to create private channels. You can refer below image which shows “IT Private channel policy”.

5. Click Apply.

You as an admin can edit existing policies: You can edit the global policy or any custom policies that you create.

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams > Teams policies.
2. Select the policy by clicking to the left of the policy name, and then policy will open, and you can modify the settings.
3. Turn on or turn off the settings that you want, and then click Apply.
4. For example below image shows “discover private channel” is OFF

How do I assign a custom teams policy to users?

You can use the Microsoft Teams admin center to assign a custom policy to one or more users or the Skype for Business PowerShell module to assign a custom policy to groups of users, such as a security group or distribution group.

To assign a custom teams policy to a user.

1. In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Users, and then click the user.
2. Click Policies, and then next to Assigned policies, click Edit.
3. Under Teams policies, select the policy you want to assign, and then click Apply. Refer below image shows policy assignment.

To assign a custom teams policy to multiple users at a time, by Editing Teams user settings in bulk.

Assign a custom teams policy to users in a group using PowerShell:

You as an admin can assign a custom teams policy to multiple users that you’ve already identified. For example, you may want to assign a policy to all users in a security group. You can do this by connecting to the Azure Active Directory PowerShell for Graph module and the Skype for Business PowerShell module.

Note: You must connect remote PowerShell to Skype for Business Online using your admin permission.

Get the GroupObjectId of the particular group.

$group = Get-AzureADGroup -SearchString “Bloguc IT”

Get the members of the specified group.

$members = Get-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId $group.ObjectId -All $true | Where-Object {$_.ObjectType -eq “User”}

Assign all users in the group to a particular teams policy. In this example, it’s IT Teams Policy.

$members | ForEach-Object { Grant-CsTeamsChannelsPolicy -PolicyName “IT Private channel Policy” -Identity $_.EmailAddress}

Depending on the number of members in the group, this command may take several minutes to execute.

Thank you.