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What is a Public Team?
A public team is a team that everyone in the organization (including students) can see and join without approval from the owner. When a user joins, they will have access to all parts of the team – conversations, public channels, folders and files, and SharePoint site.
What is it good for?
Since everything is accessible by everyone, you should consider creating a public team:
- When there won’t be sensitive data that could cause a data breach (personal information about employees, students, donors, etc.)
- For educational purposes and sharing knowledge
- When there is a common interest in a specific topic
The most significant advantage of a public team is collaboration, but you need to be careful as everyone can see everything.
What is a Private Team?
Private Teams are permission-based. Users can join only after the team owner lets them in. Private team membership is controlled in one of two ways: Team owners can add members, or another member can invite others to join. A request is sent to the team owner who needs to approve it. Users cannot see private Teams when they go to the “Join or create a team“ inside Microsoft Teams.
What is it good for?
As private teams can be accessed only by members and owners, they are more secure. You consider using a private team:
- When there will be sensitive data not allowed to be seen by everyone
- For working on a project with specific people, both from the organization and outside the organization.
- For different departments across the organization
We hope that this helps to explain this important difference between public and private teams and how they should be used.