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Teams

What is Teams?

Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s main modern collaboration tool. It allows you to create “Teams” of people for projects, or courses, or along organisational lines; basically, any type of grouping that might want to work together – whether on a short-term project or long-term.

What can Teams do?

  • 1:1 chat / group / teams chat – chat with colleagues individually, or in ad-hoc groups. Chats are persistent, so when you come back, you can see what you were last chatting about.
  • File storage – each Team has its own file storage, so you can share what you’re working on with your Team. Or if you share files in a chat, they’ll be shared from your OneDrive.
  • Calling – Call other Teams users, with voice or you can add video.
  • Meetings – you can arrange ad-hoc meetings with colleagues, or, once your mailbox has been moved to Office 365, you can schedule Teams meetings.
  • Desktop sharing and remote control – you can share your screen during meetings, or with your permission, allow other users to remote control your computer.
  • Other applications can also integrate into Teams – for example, Yammer and Planner.

How do I get to Teams?

  • From your computer: Teams is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux
  • From your mobile device: Teams is available for iOS, iPadOS and Android.
  • Via the web site: https://teams.microsoft.com/

What is a Team?

A Team is group of people – it might be for a specific project, a department or a paper. You can create a Team, name it, add some colleagues or students, or guests, and use it to collaborate. A Team contains one or more channels, and each channel can have chat, file storage and other applications, such as planner.

What is a channel?

A channel is used to organise a Team into different areas – this might be by subject area or project. Each Team starts with a “General” channel and you can create as many channels as you need to organise your Team. Each channel has its own file storage area and may also have applications.

There are two types of channels:

  • Public channels – Everyone in the team can access public channels, and contribute to conversation. They’re also able to upload, download and modify files. This is the most frequently used channel type in Teams, as a Team is generally a collaborative space.
  • Private channels – The person who creates the channel, plus those they nominate can access the channel; it will not show up to non-members. An example of where a private channel may be more appropriate, is where a Team contains both students and staff, and the staff wish to have a private space. Each Team can have no more than 30 private channels. There are also limitations on available applications in private channels.

Who decides who is in a Team?

The owner(s) of a team can add and remove members of a team to make sure it still suits the intended purpose.

What is this departmental team that I’m already in?

When Office 365 was rolled out, we did a one-time bulk creation of Teams based on staff departments. All staff should have been put into their departmental team with their fellow staff in each department. This is not 100% accurate though, so you may need to be added manually.

There is no initial owner set for these automatic departmental teams, so if you are an HoD or Senior Manager or Administrative staff and would like to manage your departmental team going forward, please contact AskOtago to be made an owner.