We have the option to archive a Team in Microsoft Teams. This allows us to keep the content of an inactive Team for future reference, but move it out of our way to reduce clutter. And it helps us to stop new contributions, because these would not be seen by colleagues who don’t monitor the archives. Or does it? Let us take a look how archiving a Team works and what you actually get when you archive a Team. Let us take a look.
How do you archive a Team?
You need to be an Owner of the Team you want to archive; Members cannot archive Teams. If you are an Owner, you can archive your Team as follows:
- Click at the bottom of the Teams section on the Gear icon: Manage Teams.
- Find the Team you want to archive by scrolling down the list under the heading Active, or by using the search field.
- Click for your Team on the ellipsis dots … > Archive Team.
The Team Owner can archive a Team via the ‘Manage Teams’ gear icon.
- In the pop-up, select ‘Make the SharePoint site read-only for team members’ and click Archive.
When the Team Owner archives a Team, he or she selects ‘Make the SharePoint site read-only for team members’
What happens to the archived Team?
A Microsoft Team is a collaboration hub for your team, which brings together various applications that help your team to work together: the shared files are stored in a SharePoint site. You can take notes in the associated OneNote notebook, which is also stored in SharePoint. If you want, you can store videos like meeting recordings in a Stream channel associated to this Team and manage your team actions in a Planner plan board associated to this Team. So what happens in these apps when you archive the Team? Foreshadowing: it is not always what you would expect as an innocent user…
In Microsoft Teams itself: The Team disappears from the navigation
You no longer see the archived Team listed in Microsoft Teams. But both Members and Owners can still find the archived Team via Manage Teams, under the heading Archived. The Team then appears under the Hidden Teams, labeled with an archive icon.
An archived Team is no longer listed in Microsoft Teams, but you can still find it via Manage Teams.
In Microsoft Teams itself: Posts become inactive
When you open an archived Team, you can no longer add, edit or delete posts in the conversations. You can still read them, and take actions that do not make any changes in the archived Team, like translating posts.
By the way, during my test I did see the option to delete my post. But when I clicked it, it blocked me with a message “Delete failed”. And I did see the edit option. When I tried to edit my post, I got the message “This team was archived, so you cannot post any more messages” and now I am stuck for that post: I cannot see that post anymore. So don’t try to edit archived posts…
You can no longer add, edit or delete posts in the archived Team.
In SharePoint (Files): the Team Members are demoted to Visitors in the site
The Files sections in the Teams channels are handled in the SharePoint site associated with the Team. When I archived the Team, I selected the option ‘Make the SharePoint site read-only for team members’. And that is literally what happened: the entire Team members group, and everyone in it, was moved from the SharePoint Members group to the Visitors group. So the site became read-only for them.
However:
- The Team Owners are still the site owners in SharePoint, so they can still perform the same actions as before the Team was archived. An important gotcha when you test the archiving functionality as an owner…
- Anyone who was added to the SharePoint Members manually from SharePoint still has contribute permissions.
- If you have added a group to the SharePoint site, like ‘External users’, they still have the same permissions they had, including any contribute permissions or more. We tend to give read or sometimes contribute permissions to such a group of ‘External users’ in a separate library ‘External documents’. That is still active, after the Team has been archived.
Not necessarily a problem, but you need to be aware of this when you archive your Team.
When you archive your Team, the Team Members are demoted to Visitors. Anyone who received permissions directly in SharePoint still has the original permissions.
In SharePoint (Wiki): The wiki read-only for the Team Members
Each Microsoft Teams channel has a wiki tab by default. After the Team has been archived, the Team Member can only read the wiki pages. They can no longer add or edit them.
We only use the wiki inside the Team, but the pages are actually stored inside the associated SharePoint site. This explains the behaviour I noticed: as we saw in the paragraph about the files in SharePoint, the team members are demoted to read-only Visitors.
In Stream: The video channel is still active
For every Team, we have a corresponding Group in the video portal Stream. For these groups, we can create channels where the Team Members can upload videos. Even after I archived the Team. Archiving does not have any impact on the associated Stream channels. You can see that in Stream itself, or in the tab where the video channel is displayed.
Even after the Team has been archived, a Team Member managed to upload a video into the associated video channel.
In Planner: The Plan is still active
For my Team, I can add a plan in Planner, to manage the actions of my Team. Or a Planner plan for each channel. The members of my Team are automatically members of the plans hosted in Planner and I can add these plans to my Teams tabs for greater visibility.
Nice integration, but it is not that close: when I archive my Team, the associated plan(s) in Planner remain active. Team Members can still add, edit and delete tasks in those plans.
The Planner plan remains active, after the Team has been archived.
When I view the plan inside Teams, I see the message “The Team is archived, you cannot make any changes” but that does not apply to the plan displayed here. In Planner, I can use the plan without even knowing the associated Team has been archived. Confusing for our innocent Team Members. As the Owner, I can even add members to the Plan.
As the Owner, I can still add members to the plan associated to my Team in Planner.
And yes, these new members are then added to the Team, despite its archival status. This is announced in the General channel. I can no longer post messages myself, but the system can…
The archived Team can still get new members and these new members are still announced in the General channel.
In Microsoft Teams: User management is still active
Even though the Team has been archived, I can still manage the Team Members and Owners from the Team itself. The advantage is that this allows the owner to remove users who should no longer be able to see the content of this Team, because their role has changed. The problem is that Owners won’t be very alert when it comes to managing users in an archived Team that you only see when you navigate to the ‘Manage Teams’ section. So make sure you do more than just hitting ‘Archive’ when you want to archive sensitive content.
Although the Team has been archived, the Owner can still manage the team users.
Conclusion
When you archive your Team, you do not archive the underlying Office 365 Group. Actually, you only archive the posts and you switch the associated SharePoint site to read-only for the people you had added to your Team Members. But if you made any specific changes to the permissions in your SharePoint site, that part is not archived. And if you use associated apps in the tabs of your Team, like a plan in Planner plan or a video channel in Stream, those are not archived either.
So if you want to archive your Team, you need to be aware of what happens. And you may have to take additional steps to really archive the entire Team including all its associated apps.
