🛑 How to prevent users from deleting channels, tabs & apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams is a platform with an enormous amount of capabilities. The more possibilities, the more mistakes we make in the tuning and rules we make in the platform.

In the ideal world, we make two owners for each team.

These two individuals manage their specific team. Or multiple teams, depends on their role.

Users or guests are participants, colleagues who have no authority to simply delete new applications, channels, tabs and chat messages.

See also a short video demo at the bottom.

Setting up Microsoft Teams Member permissions through settings

Select the desired Team and then choose, "Manage Team"

Select settings at the top.

Member permissions default capabilities

• Allowing members to create and update channels
• Allow members to create private channels
• Allowing members to delete and restore channels
• Allowing members to add and remove apps
• Allow members to upload custom apps
• Allowing members to create, update and delete tabs
• Allowing members to create, update and remove connectors
• Give members the ability to delete their posts
• Allow members to edit their posts

Example scenario that does not allow users to delete channels, tabs and apps in Teams

In this Team, members are not allowed to: create new channels, delete channels, create or delete Apps, upload custom apps and modify, delete or add tabs.

Teams Guest permissions for channel creation

If members are allowed to create and update channels you can also give guests this ability. (red)

If members are not allowed to delete channels then guests cannot either. (blue)

Teams Protect channels so that not everyone can post messages, documents and photos

You may not wish for everyone to be allowed to post in every channel.

Open the channel and select -> Manage Channel -> Then choose: Channel Settings

Activate the desired option; Either allow everyone to post, or choose that everyone except guests may post.

As you can see, the possibilities of a channel are rather limited! Think carefully before creating a Team.

Don't let users modify folders or files in Microsoft Teams with read-only folders

Guests can by-default use your general channel with almost as many rights and capabilities as an teams-owner. To shield this, you can disable document posting so that it can only be done by the team owner.

In general, select channel -> files - Open in SharePoint

Through "Site permissions," set the site members to read only.

These members cannot post documents to the general team. The owners for Project Y can post documents in the general channel. You can also give specific permissions so that some can do so without being owners of the team.

Alternative instructions: Create a read-only folder in Microsoft Teams ( 365tips.be) (EN)

Creating a read-only folder in teams for education

Within education teams you have a "read only for students" in the general channel. You can still use these instructions above for other channels. There are deviations in default settings for education and for regular Office 365 tenants.

Renaming a channel in Microsoft Teams

Renaming a Microsoft Teams Channel can be done by right-clicking on the channel - "edit this channel"

Then update the channel name. *The created SharePoint library retains the original name unless you already have these new features -> Microsoft is working on a solution.

Duplicate or copy a Microsoft team?

If you have built one template that you wish to use multiple times, you can also use Microsoft Teams to create a copy of the entire team.

Select: Create a Team -> From a Group or Team -> Team -> Select the team you wish to copy -> Select create.

You can see in the newly created Team that all channels, tabs, apps and permissions have been copied from the original Team.

Automatically delete old Microsoft Teams ?

With Microsoft Azure, Identity Governance, Access Review allows automatic removal of unused Teams . Tip: How to automatically clean up Microsoft Teams via Access Review!

Put standard applications in each Teams from a standard template

Using Microsoft Teams templates I have already elaborated here -> Create and manage Microsoft Team templates via Teams Admin Center

If you want to lock an application into a template, it is best to modify the "base" template.

Navigate to: https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/teams /templates/manage

Select -> edit

Navigate to Apps in the desired Teams template and add the necessary apps in your base template.

If you have a list of apps offered by default in each newly created Team then you can ask whether guests or members of a Team should be able to add apps themselves.

Add an application to a Microsoft Teams channel (in the template)

In the desired template, select the channel behind which you want to link an application.

Then choose the desired application and select the Tab name.

Demo from a template with fixed settings

In 2 steps you could create (provisioning) Teams without tooling that have specific settings. And copyable or usable at scale.

Step 1: We first create a team from the template. In the ideal world, you create several templates here that can be made for the needs of the organization. For example: Collaboration team without guests, external collaborations, confidential team for internal departments.

Step 2: (Optional) After granting the permissions and minor changes needed, the team can be copied.

Build your own test environment with a demo account

As you can see, these are tests that are better not done on your production environment. If you want to test properly you should make your own tenant. Creating a testtenant is free. Microsoft 365 licenses must be purchased by yourself.

I recommend building tenant with a 30-day trial license.

You can start with an E1 and later activate E3, Business essentials but also E5 in trial.

Later you can buy a license for 4-5 euros per month, configure your own personal domain and also use Office 365 in your private to be aware of every news.

Tutorial: How to create your own Microsoft Office 365 tenant ?
Own Office 365 environment for 4,20€ per month + own tenant & domain

Add guests to a Microsoft Teams channel

Guests always need access to the global team first. Only once they have access can you add them to the guest team.

Add guests or groups to the teams-channel.

Other Microsoft Teams tips -> Microsoft Teams

When is it best to create a public, private or organization-wide team?
How to add or invite guests in Microsoft Teams? (Guest Access)
Enable new Teams meeting experience for together mode
These are the 10 success factors when setting up Microsoft Teams