Adding members to a private channel

Question

Hope somebody can help.

Permissions on our SharePoint sites are done through 365 security groups, as I don’t want to add members individually. This has been working fine. However, I’ve now been told that people would like to start using private channels within Teams to collaborate on projects.

It looks like I can only add people to a private channel who have been added to the Members group in SharePoint individually. But I have no users added to Members, they gain access to that site through being part of a 365 Security group that is found under Site Members within SharePoint. It seems that this is where groups live as you cannot add security groups to Members within a site. So, it looks like I can only add individual users to a private channel that have first been added to the Members group, which then defeats the object of security groups.

Maybe I’m looking at this wrong. At the end of the day, what’s the point of steering away from adding individuals as Members on a SharePoint site as you are going to be adding them individually to channels? But security groups work well. I would just like the ability to add individuals to a channel from within my tenant without having to add them to the Members group of a SharePoint site first. They will have access to the SharePoint site already through the security group, so permissions to the documents within the site isn’t an issue. It’s just that they want to keep their projects and everything that goes with it private within a private channel.

Sorry if I’ve not explained myself very well. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Dear Jono Chad,

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, you are right! For a private channel stie: Site permissions for a private channel site can't be managed independently through SharePoint. Membership to the site owner and member groups are kept in sync with the membership of the private channel within Teams. (And like you've experienced, it's not feasible to add user to a private channel without adding him to the parent team.)

If provided information meets your requirement, we also invite you to vote my reply, it helps other users who are searching for this same information and find information to find that topic easily.

Thanks for your precious time. Have a nice day!

Answer 2

Thanks, Connery. Appreciate the reply.

The problem I have is that to add a user to a Channel site they have to be added to the Team site. It won't pull from our tenant, it will only pull from users who are added to the Team site. Which means I have to add people individually to the Team site instead of using 365 security groups, which defeats the purpose of using security groups for SharePoint permissions.

Am I right in thinking that?

Thanks

Answer 3

Dear Jono Chad,

Greetings!

Thanks for posting to this community.

Based on your description, I basically understand your query about adding members to a private channel.

According to Sharing & permissions in the SharePoint modern experience - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn, traditionally, SharePoint permissions have been managed through a set of permissions groups within a site (Owners, Members, Visitors, etc.). In SharePoint in Microsoft 365, this remains true for some types of sites (Team site, Communication sites and Hub sites), but additional options are available. For example, like you mentioned, through the associated M365 group.

And for channel sites automatically created when you create a private or shared channel in a team in Teams, they are separate SharePoint sites just for the channel and only owners and members of the private channel have access to this site. It's kind of like sub-SharePoint site for sub-team/group.

Please feel free to get back to us if I have misunderstood. Appreciate your patience and understanding and thank you for your time and cooperation!