Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams

• 8/15/2019
• 5 minutes to read
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• Applies to:

  Microsoft Teams

This article describes some of the limits, specifications, and other requirements that apply to Teams.

Teams and channels

¹Any directory object in Azure Active Directory counts towards this limit. Global admins are exempt from this limit, as are apps calling Microsoft Graph using application permissions.

²This limit includes archived teams.

³Deleted channels can be restored within 30 days. During these 30 days, a deleted channel continues to be counted towards the 200 channel per team limit. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted and the channel no longer counts towards the 200 channels per team limit.

Channel names

Channel names can't contain the following characters or words.

Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Meetings and calls

Teams live events

For more information about live events and a comparison of Teams live events to Skype Meeting Broadcast, go to Teams live events and Skype Meeting Broadcast.

Storage

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams.

If you don't have SharePoint Online enabled in your tenant, Microsoft Teams users cannot always share files in teams. Users in private chat also cannot share files because OneDrive for Business (which is tied to the SharePoint license) is required for that functionality.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed. (For more, see How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Microsoft Teams.)

Because Teams runs on a SharePoint Online backend for file sharing, SharePoint limitations apply to the Files section within a Team. Here are the applicable storage limits for SharePoint Online.

Channels are backed by folders within the SharePoint Online site collection created for the team, so file tabs within Channels share the storage limits of the team they belong to.

For more information, see SharePoint Online limits.

Messaging

Users who participate in conversations that are part of the Chat list in Microsoft Teams must have an Exchange Online (cloud-based) mailbox for an admin to search chat conversations. That's because conversations that are part of the Chat list are stored in the cloud-based mailboxes of the chat participants. If a chat participant doesn't have an Exchange Online mailbox, the admin won't be able to search or place a hold on chat conversations. For example, in an Exchange hybrid deployment, users with on-premises mailboxes might be able to participate in conversations that are part of the Chat list in Microsoft Teams. However, in this case, content from these conversations isn't searchable and can't be placed on hold because the users don't have cloud-based mailboxes. (For more, see How Exchange and Microsoft Teams interact.)

Microsoft Teams chat function works on a Microsoft Exchange backend, so you can apply the Exchange messaging limits to the chat function within Microsoft Teams. If users want to send an email to a channel in Teams, they use the channel email address. Once an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Here are some of the applicable limits for sending email to a channel.

† If the message exceeds this limit, a preview message is generated and the user is asked to view/download the original email from the link provided.

‡ If the number of attachments or images exceeds this limit, the message will not be processed and an NDR email will be sent back to the sender notifying them of the error.

For more information, see Exchange Online limits.

Browsers

Teams fully supports the following internet browsers, with noted exceptions.

Operating systems

For information about operating system requirements, see Get clients for Microsoft Teams.