Teams Can Have a General Channel Just Like Before

In July 2024, Microsoft announced that team owners would be able to rename the General channel (or local language value) of teams. The idea was that “General” is just too general in nature and that it would be better if team owners could assign a more meaningful name to the first channel created in a team. Once

Now Microsoft has reversed course a tad. Message center notification MC1048628 (updated 9 April 2025) says that team owners can choose General as the name for the first channel. The new channel creation UI even has a button to set the channel name to “General” (Figure 1). The change is already effective in targeted release tenants and will roll out worldwide in mid-May 2025.

The big thing about using General as the default channel name is that the General channel is always listed first in the channels for a team. If you use a different name for the first channel, Teams orders the channel list alphabetically. You can see the effect of renaming the General channel in Figure 2.

Channel Creation Made Easier

MC1053645 (11 April 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 479744) describes another channel-related change that will roll out to targeted release tenants in early May. The option to create a new channel is now present in the New Items menu (Figure 2).

Recent conference appearances by the Teams development group have emphasized that users should create channels rather than new teams. With 1,000 channels available in a team, there’s lots of room to avoid creating new teams with the attendant overhead that comes with a team. The more teams in a tenant, the higher the likelihood for digital debris. That wasn’t such a problem years ago, but digital debris can influence the accuracy and usefulness of AI-generated content, so it’s a real issue now.

No More Code Snippets

In other Teams news related to channels, MC1055554 (15 April 2025) announces the retirement of the code snippets feature in chat and channel conversations starting May 30, 2025. Microsoft is replacing code snippets with code blocks. Type /code in the editor or click on the code block icon in the menu bar to insert a new block, and then select the type of code so that the block displays the code appropriately (Figure 4).

Microsoft believes that code blocks are faster and more efficient. Line numbers aren’t current available in code blocks but will be soon, and code blocks will also be viewable on mobile clients.

You might ask what’s driving the change. I think it’s a matter of Teams dropping an older component that doesn’t probably get much use for a shared component that’s under active development. Microsoft says that the change will allow users to “create, edit, and share code directly in the compose box without needing a title.” That’s true when someone composes a message, but if you want channel or chat members to be able to edit code in a code block, considering using the Loop paragraph component and format it as code (Figure 5).

Posting a Loop component to a channel allows team members to edit the content, so it’s possible to have real-time collaboration to discuss code issues and potential solutions. Loop components posted in this manner are stored in the channel folder in the document library of the SharePoint Online site belonging to the team.

Adieu Classic Teams

Another change that’s coming up is that the classic Teams client will be unavailable after July 1, 2025 (MC1059667, 21 April 2025). Microsoft will block attempted access to Teams with the classic client after that date. It really is time to embrace the new (well, slightly used) Teams client.

Learn about using Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365 by subscribing to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Use our experience to understand what’s important and how best to protect your tenant.