How to Migrate Teams Channel to Another Teams? Know the Right Way

Microsoft Teams has been one of the most prominent software for collaboration in organizations for the past seven years. It offers several modern features that make it the most popular of all. It offers different types of Teams and Channels, such as Private, Public, and organizational. The private channels in the Teams are used for communication between the permitted users only. Whereas the public as the name says it all, anyone can join it from the tenant.

All of the features in Microsoft Teams are important and can be leveraged at different times such as – As per the Organization’s requirements, there are certain people in the project and to maintain their work integrity they all put into a private channel. However, as the project changes, the private channels must migrate to extract the relevant information from them. Private channels are not only used because of data privacy but for other reasons as well. Let’s find these reasons.

Due to these situations users of Microsoft Teams often ask such queries –  How to Migrate Teams Channel to Another Teams? Hence, in this article, we are going to discuss some of the possible ways to perform this task without hampering business communications. 

Benefits of Creating Private Channels in Teams

There are multiple benefits of having a private channel in Teams. Let’s explore some major reasons.

1. The private channels in Teams provide focused collaboration to the project members. You can make a private channel and add the specified members to that channel only for project-related queries and discussions.
2. The security of the data sharing is increased. Because no one can access the information from the private channels until it becomes part of the channel. It can be important for financial-related discussions also.
3. Because of the part of the private channel, the members-only receive the notification from that group. It reduced the noise and distraction for the members of the channel.
4. By using private channels, it is also helpful for the project managers to keep track of the status of the project from a single place which reduces the workload.

After discussing the benefits of the private channels in Teams. Different situations occur to transfer channels between teams. Let’s explore it in detail.

Why Migrate Teams Channel to Another Teams?

There may be several reasons why users need to migrate channels to another Teams. Here are some of the reasons:

1. The requirements of projects need different departments to be involved in different capacities. So, by moving the Teams channel to another Teams, can help users improve coordination and produce better results.
2. To maintain the history of the project and submit complete details to all the team members, moving channels is the best option.
3. Whenever teams get reconstructed for a new project, all the details are sent to the newly constructed team. This can be done by shifting the channel.
4. When several members of a team share a channel to manage a project, then there will come a time when they will need to migrate Teams channel to another Team that has to carry on the work.

Preparing to Successfully Migrate Teams Channel to Another Teams

Here is a list to follow to make sure that you complete the migration process:

1. Being aware of your environment—By being aware of the environment where you work, you can easily size the channel and any unique characteristics that will need extra planning.
2. Create a migration plan – You should plan your migration process in detail so that everything goes according to plan and all your channel files, attachments, and other data are successfully migrated to another Teams.
3. Preparing the other Teams—After thoroughly planning the process, you need to prepare the other Teams.
4. Identify the items that cannot be migrated—You should prepare all the data and identify the items that cannot be migrated. Certain attachments and some other data in the channel cannot easily be migrated manually.
5. Choose the migration order – You should now choose which channels need to be migrated first. this can be based on several factors such as the channel that has important work to be done on can be migrated first.

Steps to Migrate Teams Channel to Another Teams

There is no such inbuilt feature in Microsoft Teams that can allow you to transfer channels to another team. Before you move ahead with the indirect process, you need to make sure that you are the owner of both Teams. Now, follow the steps given below:

Step 1. Since, it is a manual method, hence, in the very beginning, you must back up all the important data in the Teams. Just to avoid any mishappening.

Step 2. Now from the source Teams download all the files locally and upload them to the destination Teams manually.

Step 3. For chat messages and channel posts, you need to maintain the logs manually, you can either copy and paste or take screenshots.

You must be wondering, why moving data in Teams is so difficult. Let’s discuss them in detail.

Challenges in Migrating Teams Channel to Another in Microsoft 365

This process is not as straightforward as it seems, there are several challenges associated with it. Here are some of the challenges that you have to face:

• The distributed storage location in Microsoft Teams makes it nearly impossible for users to migrate the Teams data comprehensively. The data is being distributed in the following locations:
  • Files (in SharePoint)
  • Private chat files (in OneDrive)
  • Calendar data (Exchange Online)
  • Meeting recordings (Azure Blob Storage)
• Another thing that makes moving data in Teams challenging is the usage of heterogeneous file formats. Microsoft Teams stores chats (in JSON or HTML exports), files (in PDF, DOCX, XLSX, MP4, etc.), and metadata (in CSV, XML). Due to this, it becomes a daunting task to manually copy each file format from the source and paste it to the destination.
• Since you have to manually migrate each data hence, it is unable to maintains the data file and folder structure at the destination Teams.
• If the channels in the Teams have data such as attachments, posts, and much more, It takes more time than usual to migrate the Teams channel to another Teams.
• There is always a risk of human errors associated with manual methods. Due to this, the results can be inconsistent or data can be lost.
• When a user migrates multiple channels, it can create some confusion. This can lead to a channel migrating to the wrong Teams.
• Microsoft Teams chats can sometimes disappear which is a common issue, with the manual methods.

These are some of the reasons that make it nearly impossible to perform this task using a manual walkaround. Now you must be overwhelmed due to this. Don’t worry we are going to cover a better alternative, which will not only overcome all the challenges but also offer modern features, that will make your entire operation breeze.

Conclusion

The most asked query How to migrate Teams channel to another Teams is solved. There is a need to move channels between Teams when a new project is assigned to a member that requires data from the previous channel. At that time you start searching, for how to migrate Teams private channels. However, there is no manual method to perform the migration of channels. So, through this article, we have explained the complete step-by-step solution which is experts recommended to move private channel between Teams.