Conversion of Office 365 Groups into Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams app is the hub for team collaboration in Office 365 that integrates the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. Teams is built on the foundation provided by Office 365 Groups which in turn are powered by SharePoint Document Libraries.

As part of the Y2K20 Modern Desktop project, all existing Office 365 Groups are being gradually converted into Teams. The top-level departmental group will be converted into what we call the internal departmental team, while other departmental Groups and their content will be merged as general or private channels into either internal or external departmental team.

When Group Becomes a Team

Once an Office 365 Group is converted into a Team, the location of files that are stored inside the Group will change. That's because Microsoft Teams stores documents and files in a folder in the SharePoint Document Library which is named after the Channel. By default, the only channel that exists in a newly created Microsoft Team is called General. As more channels are added to a Team, more folders with names corresponding with these channels will appear in the underlining SharePoint Document Library.

In general, when a Group is converted into a Team, all folders and files will be moved into the "General" folder. This will ensure that these folders and files can be accessed inside the Microsoft Teams app. Any folders and files that exist in SharePoint outside of the channel folder structure will be inaccessible in Teams. In some cases, we may create corresponding channels for some top-level folders.

If you were syncing files from the Group that was converted into a team, the syncing will continue to work. However, the folder structure will change to reflect changes in the SharePoint Document Library. If you are no longer able to find your files where they used to be, please look for them in the General folder.

When Group Becomes a Private Channel

Secondary departmental Office 365 Groups and their content will be merged into the main departmental Team as private channels, which are sub-teams of the main team. Files stored inside those Private Channels will be accessible only to a subset of the main team's members, that is members of the private channel.

If you were syncing files from the Group that was converted into a team, the syncing will no longer work until you update the setitngs in the OneDrive Sync client:

1. Right click on the blue cloud icon in the Windows tray and select Settings from the menu
2. Click on Stop sync link next to the name of the Group that was merged into a team
3. In Microsoft Teams app, open the main departmental team and click on the private channel that corresponds with the merged Group
4. Click on Files tab
5. Click Sync button

More Information

For more information, please be sure to watch our Y2K20 Modern Desktop Orientation Session video and review the following articles:

• Overview of teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

• Private channels in Microsoft Teams

The following diagram illustrates three different ways to interact with files stored in Microsoft Cloud