Private chats in Microsoft Teams is super easy and intuitive to use but are you sure you are using it for the right purpose? When you start a Private Chat and share files in this chat, the files are saved on your OneDrive for Business folder and they are only available to the participants in the chat conversation. Are you sure it is so smart to save these files to your OneDrive?

Consider the following scenario. You have built up lots of private group chats to communicate with your colleagues. One fine day you decide to resign and change to another employer. When you terminate your employment and your account is deleted, your entire OneDrive will disappear after 30 days. This means that all your files belonging to these Private chats will also be lost. Oooups, didn’t think about it …

Do not misunderstand me. I think that Private chats are great:

• For quickly clarify things with colleagues.
• Have discussions and possibly share files that are not (or may not be) relevant to several of your colleagues.
• When it comes to information that is not important for your organization to have control over and / or access to after you quit your job.

Otherwise, you should ALWAYS have your conversations, store and share files in the right team and in the relevant channel. Then you can be sure that the information is handled correctly and not lost unnecessarily.

“The whole purpose of Microsoft Teams is to share information and to find the information You (and others) need. Do not use an extremely good and modern collaboration tool to build new silos, but use it in the way it is intended to be used.”

(Image by Steve Buissinne on Pixabay)