Understanding Microsoft Teams

What Is a Team?

A Team in Microsoft Teams is a shared workspace — a container that brings together people, conversations, files, and tools around a common purpose. Think of it like a dedicated project room or department hub where everything related to a particular group or effort lives in one place.

A Team is made up of one or more Channels, which are the individual workspaces inside the Team where conversations and files are organized by topic or purpose.

Teams vs. Channels

Understanding the difference between a Team and a Channel is key to using Microsoft Teams effectively:

• Team: A Team is the outer container — it defines who the members are and sets the overall access boundaries.
• Channel: A Channel is a workspace inside a Team — it organizes conversations and files around a specific topic, workstream, or phase. Every Team has at least one channel (General) and can have many more.

For example, a Team for the 226999 – Riverfront Plaza will have channels like General, Acct-226999 (for project accounting files/contracts), and PC-226999 (for files synced from the Procore project library). All members of the Team can see and participate in all Standard Channels.

What Is a Private Channel?

A Private Channel is a special type of channel that is only visible to a selected subset of Team members. It is useful when certain conversations or files should be restricted — for example, a channel for leadership-only discussions within a larger project Team.

Key things to know about Private Channels:

• Only members who have been specifically added to the Private Channel can see it or access its files.
• A user MUST be a member of the overall Team before they can be added as a member of a Private Channel in that Team.
• Other members of the Team will not know the Private Channel exists—it will not show up in their list of Channels.
• A Private Channel has its own separate SharePoint site behind the scenes, completely isolated from the main Team's SharePoint site. This is what makes the access restriction possible.
• Because of this isolation, Private Channels will appear in your T: drive (Teams Drive) but do not appear in the X: drive (SharePoint Drive) for the main Team site — more on this below.

What Is a Team Typically Used For?

Teams are used to organize collaboration around a defined group of people with a shared goal. Common uses include:

• Project Teams: One Team per active project. Projects with subjobs will have an overall Team for the parent project number, and additional channels created within that Team for each subjob. This is the primary use case for operations.
• Department Teams: A persistent workspace for a department or business unit, such as Project Planning, IT, or HR.
• Committee or Working Group Teams: For cross-functional groups that meet regularly around a specific initiative.

In general, a Team should be created when a group of people need a shared, ongoing place to communicate and store files together — not for one-off conversations. If what is needed is primarily conversational, you can use the Chat feature in Teams to create a Group Chat. Files can still be shared within a Group Chat.

What Are Group Chats?

Group Chats in Microsoft Teams are best suited for quick, informal conversations between a small group of people that don’t warrant a full Team. They are easy to start and work well for ad hoc coordination. However, they are not a replacement for a Team when ongoing collaboration and organized file storage are needed.

You can share files inside a Group Chat, but it is important to understand how that works and where those files end up:

• Where files are stored: Files shared in a Group Chat are stored in the sender’s personal OneDrive, not in a shared SharePoint location. The file is shared with the other chat participants, but it lives in your OneDrive — not in a central project or team folder.
• Access depends on the sender: If the person who shared the file leaves the organization or revokes access, others in the chat may lose the ability to view it. There is no shared ownership the way there is with a Team channel.
• No folder structure: Files in a Group Chat are accessible through the Files tab in the chat, but they cannot be organized into folders or managed the way files in a Team channel can be.

Group Chats are fine for quick back-and-forth. For anything that needs to be stored, referenced later, or shared with a consistent group over time, a Team channel is the right place.

How a Team Relates to SharePoint

Every Microsoft Team has a SharePoint site automatically created behind the scenes. This SharePoint site is where all files in the Team's Standard Channels are actually stored. The files you see in a channel's Files tab are stored in a document library on that Team's SharePoint site.

This is also how the T: and X: drives work in Cloud Drive Mapper:

• T: Drive —The T: drive (Teams Drive) is built from your Team memberships. When you are a member of a Team, its channels appear as folders in T:. This includes Standard Channels and any Private Channels you have been added to.
• X: Drive —The X: drive (SharePoint Drive) connects directly to the SharePoint site behind the Team. It shows you the document library contents based on your SharePoint permissions.

In most cases, T: and X: will show you the same files. However, there are two important differences to be aware of:

• A Private Channel stores its files on its own separate SharePoint site — not the main Team site. This means Private Channel folders appear in T: but not in X: for that Team. If you see a folder in T: that you cannot find in X:, it is almost certainly a Private Channel.
• Files or folders created directly in SharePoint (outside of a channel) will appear in X: but not in T:, because Teams has no awareness of content that was not created through a channel.

More information (along with an example and screenshots) can be found here:

Christman Help Center - T: and X: Drive: What's the difference?

Adding External Users (Guests) to a Team

Microsoft Teams allows external users — people outside your organization — to be invited as Guests into a Team. Guests can participate in conversations and access files in the Team's Standard Channels.

However, there are important things to understand before adding an external guest:

• A Guest added to a Team gains access to all Standard Channels in that Team and their files. There is no way to limit a guest to only certain Standard Channels.
• If any Standard Channel contains content that should not be shared with that guest, you should not add them to the Team at that level. Consider whether a Private Channel or a separate, purpose-built Team would be more appropriate.
• Please put in a helpdesk ticket if you have questions.