Teams has grown a lot in the last year; not just in usage but in functionality as well. The ability to archive helps us manage the growing usage of Microsoft Teams in our organization. Let's face it not all teams stay active forever, nor should they. As projects or campaigns come to a close, it's nice to be able to free up our Teams navigation for more relevant and active collaboration. We can use archiving to close out those silent Teams chat spaces.
*Note: This isn't the same as using retention policies. This is a manual, ad hoc process available to Team Owners.
To archive a Team, click on the settings gear to the right of "Add or create a team" in the left pane navigation.
This takes you to the Manage Teams page and displays an alphabetical listing of your Teams. Just click on the ellipsis to the right of the Team that you want to archive.
A dialogue box will open advising that this will freeze all team activity. You have the option to make the team read-only. To proceed with archiving click Archive.
A new section will be created below your active teams on the Manage Teams page. Should you ever need to make the team active again, click on the ellipses for your archived Team and select Restore Team.
If you chose to make the team read only, it still appears in the Archive section and it will show up in Teams search. If anyone goes into the team a message is displayed letting them know it's archived and read-only.
Regardless of if you archive as Read Only or not, the SharePoint site that is backing your team is not archived. It's still accessible and functional. Why? Because, as has always been the case, SharePoint calls its own shots. Archiving applies to the Teams team not the SharePoint site.
This is the hands-on, manual way to clean up your Teams navigation and close down unneeded/unnecessary chats. Policies can be written, and retention policies applied to make this an automatic process, once you have your governance in place. If you're not ready for that and just want to clean up, this is a fantastic and easy way to go about it!