Video Below:
UPDATE: 6/4/2020 Hey so I might have spoken too soon! It does work, but what ends up happening is all the files will be edited in real time, so if you just did this for like 5 new channels and you edit a file or folder it will be updated in all.. aghhh.. so that doesn't help… trying to figure out a way to change that… stand by!
UPDATE: 15 minutes later!! LOL
- OK scratch what you saw… this is what needs to happen. The idea was good, but essentially the way I did it just kept moving the same files, so if you had done this 20 times and edited a file in one of the new channels they would all update!! Aghh… glad I did not get to far haha
- What To Do Now: OK nothing too crazy here. What you will need to do is this. Create your MASTER TEMPLATE folder outside of onedrive/sharepoint… you can just keep in your local documents.
- Now You can just create your channel in TEAMS, then give it a minute to sync and show up in your File Explorer onedrive/sharepoint folders
- Once you see it you can copy over your local MASTER TEMPLATE and you should be good to go.
- Hope that makes sense! I didn't feel like recording a new video lol!
OK so if you are using Office 365… oops sorry Microsoft 365 like I do, then you know it is an ever living growing beast! In a good way. The good thing is there is a lot of people using it, supporting it and implement new things on the fly. The bad is sometimes you login and something changed when you just got used to it LOL!
Anyways I really enjoy using Microsoft Teams and it is really getting better day by day!
Even without a team it is a great way to manager your own projects, but since my TEAM is growing and I really need a way to speed things up I was looking into copying a team channel to another team channel.
Copy Teams Channels? Teams Channel Template? Oh Yeah!
Why would I copy a Team Channel to a new one? Well simple! This would essentially be a template channel that has everything setup the way I like to work…. with default files, folders, and planner and whatever else you would want to add.
The issue is from within teams… “oh and use the desktop app by the way”… you cannot simple click on a channel and hit copy or move etc…. it will be an option someday I am sure, but I figured out a work around!
So basically watch the video below which helps visual learners of course ;-), but as you know if you create a team channel you can sync that channel via onedrive… so now you would see the Channel you created in Teams in file explore… we need to flip the switch on that!
- Go into your file explore sharepoint/onedrive and look for your Teams Project name. In my case it was Clients
- In that folder are your channel folders.
- So now what you want to do is just create a Template Channel…. in my case it is NEW-CLIENT-MASTER
- This has all my default folders I use and documents when I bring on a new client.
- So now head on over to Teams and create a new channel with the exact same name NEW-CLIENT-MASTER
- After a few seconds you will see all your folders, files etc… in TEAMS! YEY
- Now you can change the name to whatever it needs to be and when you bring on a new client, project whatever, you rinse and repeat! Easy peasy!
Make sense? Let me know! Please leave a comment below if this helped and if you really feeling frisky go like that YouTube video and subscribe. I plan to post more about what I find in TEAMS. I am definitely that guy that breaks stuff and always try's to figure out different ways to use things LOL!
How To Copy A Channel In Microsoft Teams As A Template
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Hi Chris,
I just follow your instructions but noticed that the channels I created (with the template folder) are linked to the same SharePoint folder, then, If I change something in one channel all the channels (the ones that were created with the template) get the same changes.
Have you notice this as well?
Thank you.
Natalia
Hey yeah you have to read what I wrote up here….. that should fix it.. Where it says update 15 minutes later LOL: Create your MASTER TEMPLATE folder outside of onedrive/sharepoint… you can just keep in your local documents.
I am not even using TEAMS anymore… too much of a pain. I have moved to Slack & Trello
This works fine if you only want to copy what’s in files but I have custom tabs pointing to Wikis, web pages and documents that I also want to copy over. This won’t do that. 🙁