Shared Tab for Files and Hyperlinks Replaces Files

Message center notification MC800850 (11 June 2024, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 396169) is about another tweak Microsoft is making to the user interface of the new Teams client. On the surface, renaming the Files tab in Chat to be Shared is an innocuous change, but the update goes deeper.

The update is for the Teams Windows and Mac desktop clients and the browser client, and the new software will roll out to targeted tenants in early July 2024. General availability will follow soon afterward, and full worldwide deployment should be complete by the end of July. As with any date, don’t declare success until you see the change appear in your tenant.

The Shared Tab

The Files tab is a shortcut to allow users to see and access the files shared in a chat. It is a default tab for Chat and cannot be removed by users. The Files tab served its purpose, but the simple fact is that other objects, notably hyperlinks, are also commonly shared in chats. The new Shared tab exposes both files and hyperlinks in what Microsoft calls “a new, richer format” (code for a slightly nicer listing layout). The tab is available in one-to-one and group chats with tenant members and guests. It is not available in federated chats (with people in other tenants).

Figure 1 shows the new Shared tab in use in a chat between myself and Vasil Michev, who’s a guest in my tenant. We share many hyperlinks in the chat, including Graph API URIs, which are probably less exciting than links to documents or websites.

When a chat participant opens the Shared tab, Teams fetches the most recent items. It seems like Teams tries to find files and hyperlinks shared in the last two months, but you can scroll back to find older files. During testing, I could find files and hyperlinks back as far as December 2020, which seems reasonable. This might or might not have been the first time I shared something in the chat, but 42 months later I can’t remember!

No Change in Channels

Microsoft is not changing the Files tab for channels. This tab serves a completely different purpose because it lists the files in the channel’s SharePoint Online folder. The focus for the Files channels tab is to maintain feature parity with the SharePoint browser interface. Teams has steadily improved this position over the years and the two are pretty close now.

Future Updates for the Shared Tab

Microsoft says that they will enable image previews for hyperlinks and a keyword search facility in the Shared tab “soon after the rollout.” The keyword search seems to be available now (Figure 2), so perhaps plans changed after the message center notification was written.

Microsoft also discusses the next version of the Shared tab that includes support for media links (images, videos, GIFs, etc.). No dates are given for “soon” or the next version.

Change Doesn’t Please Everyone

Sometimes people complain when Microsoft introduces features that don’t seem to be as important from a business or technology perspective. Certainly, I received plenty of feedback on that point after writing about custom emojis. I don’t think custom emojis are very important to Teams, but others obviously do.

The thing to remember is that the Teams development group serves a very large installed base of over 320 million monthly active users. The base spans very large enterprise tenants like Accenture and Microsoft. It also includes a mix of small businesses, educational, and government tenants. All have their own demands and priorities. This change will please some and annoy others. It’s just the nature of software development.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.