How to Add Tabs in Microsoft Teams

Adding tabs to your Teams channels is an easy and effective way to combine apps into one productivity hub. This guide goes over the basics of tabs, how to add new ones and a couple of tab suggestions.

May 5, 2020
Valiant Technology
4 min

Microsoft Teams has a lot of ways for you to customize your experience to suit your productivity needs. Adding tabs can especially help to centralize Office apps as well as some third party integration into your various channels. We’ve assemble a quick guide that goes over the simple steps for adding tabs in Teams channels.

Where to find default tabs

Tabs are channel specific, so you’ll have to navigate to a particular channel to see any tabs that have been added. Channels start off the bat with 3 tabs at the top of the pane. The Posts tab is permanent and is where all your conversations around that channel go. What is Teams without this instant chat feature?

Channel posts can be used for important work tasks or general office communication like where to get lunch.

The Files tab is next and is also a permanent fixture. This will include any files uploaded to the channel folder in the Team’s SharePoint. What many people don’t realize is that any files you upload to the chat are stored here. So if you have a chat that includes lots of pictures, like our pet chat below, your pictures will be stored in the corresponding SharePoint folder for future access.

You can view files as a list or as tiles which is great for your more photo driven channels.

Lastly, the Wiki default tab is a great place to store information and policies regarding this topic/channel. It’s up to you to fill this out and make the most of it. However, if you don’t find this useful you can easily remove this tab by right clicking it.

The wiki page is adaptable to your needs and can look very different from channel to channel.

How to add a new tab to a channel

Each icon represents a different application that you can add as a tab.

If you don’t see the notebook you want, try scrolling down or use the paste a link option at the top.

Your new tab will now be accessible at the top of your channel. You can drag and drop tabs to reorder. If you add enough tabs you may need to click the more tabs button to see them all.

Accessing your notes is now quick and easily accessible in the Teams channel.

It’s important to keep in mind that tabs tend to contain a lighter version of the app. There may be limited features when viewing in Teams. If needed, the upper right-hand corner of the tab will have options to open your application. Since most of these are web based, the internet icon will launch the web version in your default browser.

Examples of useful Teams tabs

As pictured above, a OneNote notebook can be useful in channels to keep notes for brainstorming, quick reference, meeting minutes and more. We used this in our Dungeons and Dragons channel to keep notes on the backstory and any other information needed for the players to refer back to.

Adding a website is great for any page that you visit frequently for quick reference. You can see the website in Teams or use it as a bookmark and click the internet icon to open it in a browser. In the general channel of our Training Department team, we added a tab that is a link to our knowledge base for quick access.

Want a simple way to visualize and assign tasks? Microsoft Planner is easy to use and helps organize tasks. The Teams version includes the ability to create and assign tasks, move from difference buckets, and set due dates. We use this for our editorial calendar to track and review articles like this one from just an idea to a published piece.

There are so many applications that can be added as a tab and this barely scratches the surface. Exploring your options is the best way to make this work for you and your team. Start by seeing if there are any applications you already use that have integrations, then explore the apps that you never thought of before. For more Office 365 application information, visit our knowledge base.