Changing Microsoft Teams from Private to Public… What to expect?

When creating a Microsoft Teams team, you can choose Private, Public, or even Org-wide.
For the purpose of this blog post, we’re going to talk about Private and Public teams.

Create a Private Microsoft Teams

So, I create a Teams, set it up as Private, and add only one member.

IT Demo in MSTeams

As we know, when creating a Microsoft Teams, a SharePoint site is automatically created as well, and the membership should reflect what’s in Teams.
Meaning nobody else than those 2 users can access the Teams, nor the SharePoint site.

IT Demo Group Membership

IT Demo Site Permissions

Changing from Private to Public

Now let’s change our team’s privacy setting to make it Public…

Navigate to your MS Teams >> ellipses >> “Edit team”

Edit your Teams

From the drop-down menu, change from Private to Public, and click on “Done”

Make IT Demo team Public

Did anything change?

Well, at first glance, not much 🤔

But if we dig a bit deeper into the SharePoint site permissions, we now have an added entry for Everyone except external users! 😮

New SP permission added for Everyone

🔓 If a user with the appropriate license(s) knows the URL of the SharePoint site, or the Teams, then he/she can access the resources & documents.

This user will be presented with the following:

Join public Teams

And therefore, be a member of the associated SharePoint site.

So be careful when changing the Teams privacy settings, because Public means Public!