One of my favorite things about using Microsoft Teams is how it can bust of out the formal nature of the everyday work environment.  While there is a time and place for putting on your formal attire, there is also time for some fun.  One of the ways we can add a little personality to our Teams is by getting creative with Channel naming.

When we think of traditional naming, we may think of something like this:

Instead, though, we can add some flair by mixing in some emojis.  Adding an emoji to your name is as simple as editing the current Channel name, then using the Windows 10 shortcut (WIN + Period) to open the emoji keyboard and finding your desired icon.  (NOTE: It is recommended that you first name the channel, then go back and edit as described here to add the emoji. This is because the channel name will be used on the SharePoint side and the emojis can make it a little wonky). We can transform Channel names to this instead:

There are a few things to consider if you do this:

1. You cannot rename the General Channel, so no fun with that one.
2. You can still @mention the Channel easily.  In my examples above, simply starting with @adv…you will see the Adventures Channel suggested.
3. Channel names are listed in alphabetical order.  Adding an emoji to the beginning is similar to adding an ! to the beginning of a folder, it will push it to the top of the list.
4. If you are working with Channels in PowerShell, you may have trouble.  When using the Teams PowerShell commandlet Get-TeamChannel, the displayname returned for channels with emojis has a ? in place of the symbol since it cannot display the actual character.