Pat Petersen

Using Sections to enhance your experience.

As part of the new experience, Microsoft Teams allows users to organize their chat and channel lists for better productivity. This feature is part of the public preview program and may undergo changes before its official release.

Creating Custom Sections

Using custom sections is one of the many ways you can organize your Teams experience. As you work with custom sections, they allow users to group related chats and channels together. This makes it easier to navigate and find specific conversations quickly. Additionally, users can prioritize important conversations by placing them in dedicated sections. By organizing into sections I have noticed it reduce the clutter in my Teams interface. This is then allowing myself to focus on the most relevant conversations.

Overall, custom sections provide a flexible and powerful way to manage and organize conversations. By using sections in Microsoft Teams, I believe it will enhance your productivity and experience.

How to create a new Section

1. Select Chat or Teams on the left side of the app. Click on New items and then New section.

2. Enter a name for the new section and select Create.

Limitations: Users can create up to 50 sections, each containing up to 50 conversations.

Adding Conversations to Sections

1. Go to the chat or channel name and select More options.
2. Choose Move to and then select the section name.

OR

3. Drag and drop the conversation into the section.

Once you start to use sections you will see that this replaces reordering Teams. Additionally, chats and channels cannot be reordered if sorted by criteria other than “custom.” One of the items that was difficult to figure out was the movement of sections. You are able to move the sections by dragging them within the channel list.

I manage over 15 people and here are some of the reasons I like to use custom sections.

1. Project Management: I use this to organize chats and channels related to specific projects. This makes it easier to track progress and collaborate with team members.
2. Team Organization: My team works on different technology. By grouping conversations, it allows that all relevant communications are easily accessible.
3. Priority Management: There are more people that are more important than others.
4. Task Segmentation: If you are on committees or groups, you know the feeling. I use this to separate different types of tasks or initiatives, helping to keep organized and focused.
5. Meeting Preparation: We all have a lot of meetings. I use it to assist with gathering all relevant chats and channels for upcoming meetings

Related Topics

Reorder the chat and channels list in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

Explore Microsoft Teams’ New Calendar Features – Pat Petersen