Microsoft Teams is a hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365 for Education. Keep all your content, apps, and conversations together in one place. Training: Watch these videos to help your school, work, or organization use Microsoft Teams to video conference, work remotely, and become proficient using Teams.
Microsoft Teams is the chat-based workspace in Office 365. It's the hub for team chats, calls, meetings, and messages. Microsoft Teams is extensible and customizable, and it's secured and standards-compliant to make sure your company's most sensitive collaborations are private.
Important
Office 365 Teams: Sign-in and Setup. Sign in & Get Started Quick Start Guide: Teams; Introduction to Microsoft Teams; Teams Best Features; Office 365 Teams: Creating, Finding, and Sharing Information. Chat and Share Files Upload and Find Files; Office 365 Teams: Conversation Tools. Chat in MS Teams (several articles). Download Microsoft Teams now and get connected across devices on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Collaborate better with the Microsoft Teams app. Teams in use during a meeting For bigger organizations - Office 365 Enterprise. For larger organizations with more than 300 employees, Office 365 Enterprise would be the best way to get.
- Microsoft Teams is a separate application that you can integrate with other Office 365 features such as Groups. For more information about Groups, please view: Office 365 - Getting Started with Groups.
- As of 6/10/2019, Groups created via Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop, Outlook mobile, SharePoint, Microsoft Stream, and Microsoft Teams are now created Private by Default.
Microsoft Teams and Office 365
- How can I access Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams can be accessed via a browser or desktop client.
- Who can create a Microsoft Team?
Any fully licensed UW-Madison faculty/staff/student Office 365. See Office 365 - Reduced access to services due to an affiliation change article to verify your affiliation. Create a team.
- Who can access Microsoft Teams?
Only accounts that have an Office 365 Teams license - service accounts cannot access Microsoft Teams (see Office 365 - Reduced access to services due to an affiliation change article to verify your affiliation).
- What email address should you use to login into Teams application?
You can use any UW-Madison Office 365 email address.
- Who can be invited to a Microsoft Team?
Anyone with a valid email address.
Important:
- If the UW-Madison Office 365 account you are attempting to add is hidden in the GAL (Global Address List), it cannot be added through the Teams/Group client. You will need to use theWisc Account Administration site to add this member.
- It may take up to 24 hours for a UW-Madison Office 365 member to be able to access the Teams application.
- If the UW-Madison Office 365 account you are attempting to add is an alumni/emeriti/service account (one that is not licensed for Teams), you will not be able to add them as a Team member.
- Can I dial-in (audio conferencing) to Teams Meetings?
Yes. This feature is enabled for all faculty/staff Office 365 accounts. If you are a student, you will not be able to create a Teams meeting that allows for dial-in feature. Learn more.
- Can external accounts (guests) be invited to a Microsoft Team?
Yes. Non-Microsoft accounts can be added as a member of a team - they will be considered as 'Guest' accounts and will have limited capabilities. See Microsoft documentation for further details.
- Can I create a live event?
Yes. With Microsoft Live Events, you can broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences. Anyone can attend a live event. Learn more.
- Can I use read receipts for messages in Teams?
Yes. When they read your message the Seen confirmation appears next to it. Otherwise, you'll just see a confirmation that your message was sent . Learn more.
- Can I take meeting notes?
Yes. Meeting notes are a great place to capture and share notes before, during, and after a Teams meeting. Learn more.
- Are breakout rooms available in Teams meetings?
Yes. Make sure all participants, including the meeting organizer are using the latest version of Teams. If joining on Android or iOS mobile or tablet, make sure participants go to their App Store and download the latest update.
To see the breakout rooms option within your meetings, you must turn on the new Teams meeting experience by Download aplikasi tv online.
- Clicking on your profile image within Teams
- Select Settings
- Checking the Turn on new meeting experience option within 'General' settings.
- Restart your Teams client.
- You can double check that the setting is setup correctly by starting a meeting and verifying that the meeting opens in its own window.
Learn more.
- How is Microsoft Teams different from Office 365 Groups?
Microsoft Teams is built upon Office 365 Groups and provides a new way to access shared assets for an Office 365 Group. Microsoft Teams is the best solution for persistent chat among group/team members.
- Can I add a Microsoft Team to an existing Office 365 Group?
Yes. When creating a new team in Microsoft Teams, an owner of an existing private Office 365 Group has an option to use the membership in the Office 365 Group to create the team. Create a team from an existing group.
- Can I create a new Teams using the Microsoft Teams app?
Yes - but when a new team is created via Microsoft Teams application and not associated with an existing Group, an Office 365 Group is created for the team but the group will not appear in Outlook. The group will not be visible in the Outlook left hand navigation and will not be visible in the address book (Global Address List - GAL). Additionally, the group name will not resolve when attempting to resolve the address while authoring a new mail message in Outlook clients. If the associated group does not currently exist and you want the group to be visible in the GAL, then it would be easier to create the group/team using the Group interface. If the Group already exists and is hidden in the GAL, you can request to have the Group made visible in the GAL. However, for new groups/teams created via Teams, this will not make the group visible in the Outlook left hand navigation menu - contact the DoIT Help Desk and ask them to make the Team visible to Outlook clients.
- Can I add Microsoft Teams to an existing Yammer group?
Yammer groups can't be activated into Microsoft Teams. However, you can add a Yammer feed as a connector to a channel in Microsoft Teams.
- When an existing Office 365 Group is associated with a team in Microsoft Teams, what happens to the group conversation?
The group email conversation remains in Microsoft Outlook. In Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Group members can use chat to communicate in a separate service within Teams.
- Can a deleted Team be restored?
If it has been more than 30 days since the Team was deleted, it cannot be restored. Microsoft purges all data related to a deleted Team after 30 days. If within 30 days, follow these steps to restore it:
- As the owner who deleted the Group/Team, log into Outlook on the web.
- Go to People from within Outlook screen.
- Expand the 'Groups' section.
- Click Deleted folder.
- Find the Group/Team in question and click the Restore button.
Note: It may take up to an hour for the Team and all its related data to be restored and available within all clients. At this time, Shifts data/schedule is not restored - Microsoft is aware of this and is working on a solution.
Limitations
| Number of members in a team | 10,000 |
| Number of channels per team | 200 |
| Number of Private channels per team | 30 |
| Number of people in a meeting (can chat and call in) | 300 |
| Number of attendees in a Teams live event | 10,000 |
Desktop and web
Mobile devices
Interactive Demo
FAQs and resources
See Also:
Microsoft have been adding lots of new features and applications to Office 365, such as Planner,Shifts and Microsoft Teams.
Taking on the likes of Slack, Microsoft describe Teams as a ‘chat-based workspace in Office 365’ allowing teams (internal only at this stage) to work together within one window to enhance teamwork. It's important to note that Microsoft Teams will be replacing Skype for Business (which will be retired 31st July 2021).
O365 Teams
If you need any support adopting Microsoft Teams, please see our Microsoft Teams Services. You can also download this Quick Start PDF guide to give end users all the basics.
Need Teams governance guidance? Watch our on-demand recording of 'Managing Microsoft Teams' to see how to administer and govern Microsoft Teams.
What does Teams do?
Within one window, users can call upon a variety of key Office 365 apps and tools to help them work more effectively, such as:
- Calendars and meetings (Outlook)
- Create, share, edit and find content (SharePoint, OneDrive and OneNote)
- Call and meet team members (Skype)
- Chat and instant messaging (Skype)
Key benefits of Teams
- One centralised hub
- Office 365 integration
- Customise Teams through APIs and bot frameworks
- Enterprise security & compliance
- Azure Active Directory integration
- No extra cost to Office 365 users
Using Teams
Before getting started it’s important to understand how Teams fits into the larger Office 365 picture, as creating Teams has some wider implications. Every Team created will automatically create a matching Plan (find out more on this in our Guide to Planner here), SharePoint Team Site, Office 365 Group and shared OneNote. While this brings a number of great benefits, such as shared documents and centralised team information, it can cause some governance and admin headaches. Luckily, the admin side of Teams allows this to be managed as we'll cover below.
Overview
Once your organisation has access to Teams, you can: download the desktop application, access Teams through your browser or download the mobile app.
Teams and Channels
To start your teamwork collaboration, you need a team. Setting up Teams is easy and done in a few clicks, requiring a Team name and a description; this then allows team members to be added. As mentioned above, a new Team will create a matching Office 365 Group, OneNote, SharePoint site and Plan—so this does need to be done with some caution.
Each Team has subsections, which are called Channels, and a General Channel will automatically be created. You can have multiple Channels within a Team; for example, you could have a 'Marketing' Team and then Channels such as 'Social Media', 'Product Launch', 'Blogs' etc. Or a Company could be a Team and Channels can relate to departments - you can choose whatever suits your organisation's way of working. Whenever there is a new notification or activity, the Channel will become bold.
Channel Tabs
Each Channel all have their own tabs along the top. Conversation (group chat), Files (shared documents) and Notes (shared OneNote) are automatically created and you can then add your own tabs.
Army O365 Teams
Conversation
Conversations are one of the key features of Teams, allowing each Team to have a centralised discussion that is saved and easily searchable. Conversations are the central component where all teamwork is recorded—from file sharing to video calls.
The use of @mentions allows you to tag participants or even whole teams to notify others. Users that look at Conversations will easily see where they have been mentioned through the red @ symbol to highlight areas of importance to them. On top of this, your desktop app will notify you through an alert. As well as tagging, users can 'like' content and share emoticons or GIFs.
Files
In your Teams window, you can perform a variety of tasks directly within that window or browser, so that you avoid flicking between different applications. These tasks include the ability to delete, download, move files, open, copy, edit or get a link to share with others – giving you all the key features you would get in the native apps.
You can also start a Group chat alongside the file, to allow team discussions while all working on the files - and this conversation will appear in your Conversation thread.
View team files, edit, upload and create
Notes
Notes takes you to the Team shared OneNote. Within Teams you can view and edit your OneNotes (directly within the Teams window) or you can click to edit in the OneNote app.
Edit within Teams
Edit in OneNote
Adding Tabs
As mentioned, as well as these three automatic tabs you can also add your own, which currently include Planner, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Power BI dashboards and more.
Microsoft products can easily be added now, but there are also many future integrations coming to Teams, such as Asana integration. With integration between systems being so vital to teamwork, we can expect to see many more partnerships and out-of-the-box integrations!
Asana Integration
Menu
Along the left-hand side you can navigate to different areas within Teams, such as Chats, Meetings, Files and Activity. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory:
Activities: Shows you the last activities of the Teams that you are part of.
Chat: This holds your Skype for Business conversations, providing a complete chat history. However, for a chat within a Team you should use the Teams menu and hold the group chat in 'Conversation'.
Teams: An overview of all your Teams that you are part of and allows you to drill-down into each Channel within the Teams. This is also where you can create Teams.
Meetings: The Meetings tab pulls your meetings in from Outlook and also allows you schedule meetings within the Meetings tab that are sent to a Team. If you want to schedule other meetings with external users or individuals, you will still need to use Outlook, as the Teams Meeting tab is only to schedule a meeting with a Team. (Remember the aim is team collaboration, not calendar management).
Files: Within Files you can quickly find and view files across OneNote, OneDrive and within Teams (stored in their own SharePoint sites). There’s also a very helpful ‘Recent’ tab so you can quickly access the latest documents you were working on, as well as a shortcut to your Downloads.
Admin
Microsoft Teams is a great product already as it allows great flexibility and gives you many possibilities. However, as mentioned earlier, getting started with Teams can also bring some knock-on effects, which can cause admin headaches. Luckily, within the Office 365 Admin, you can control Teams settings within the Groups control panel. Within Admin settings, you can control who can create teams, what features are or are not allowed, such as video meetings, screen sharing or animated images or if extensions can be used. This gives the control required to allow governance in line with your organisation's policy and ensures you can keep control over the app. Find out more here.
End User Adoption Guides
To find out how you can use Microsoft Teams Live Events to easily stream live events such as webinars, product demos or corporate presentations to external and internal audiences, read our 'How to use Microsoft Teams Live Events' guide.
For organisations with employees working on shift patterns, Shifts in Microsoft Teams provides shift scheduling and management capabilities. Find out more with our 'How to use Shifts in Microsoft Teams' guide.
There are also some great end-user adoption guides available online from Microsoft.
To learn how to use the meetings and calls functionality of Teams, you can take a look at these Meeting and Calling How-Tos.
A Microsoft Teams End User Quick Start Guide is also available to download and share with users.
FAQs
Is Teams available now? Yes - Teams is generally available.
Which Office 365 Plans include Teams? Teams is available to Business Essentials, Business Premium, F1, E1, E3, E4 (retired) and E5 customers. It's also available for Education and Non-profit plans but not yet Government.
What is on the Teams roadmap? You can view the full Teams roadmap here.
Microsoft Teams
What about Skype for Business? Teams will be replacing Skype for Business! Find out more here.
Does Teams work with those outside your organisation? Yes - this feature was added and can be turned on or off. Guest access is included with all Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 Enterprise, and Office 365 Education subscriptions. No additional Office 365 license is necessary. Guest access is a tenant-level setting in Microsoft Teams and is turned off by default. Find out more here.
Conclusion
O365 Teams Help
Microsoft Teams is already a robust offering and is benefiting from lots of new features and integrations. Even better, since Microsoft’s new direction under Satya Nadella, feedback and reviews on products have been well received with Microsoft actively acting upon public feedback. Microsoft Teams has a simple feedback program and you can go and view most popular suggestions, as well as see which ones are planned based on the number of up-votes. These requests and other features can then be seen on the public Office 365 Roadmap. This really shows a commitment to making a product aimed at user needs, so we have a great feeling about Microsoft Teams. What's more, seeing as Teams will be replacing Skype for Business we are sure that it will become well used!
Media coverage and reception has also been very positive with many Slack comparisons. Within these comparisons, Microsoft Teams is often faring very well in terms of features, usability and offering—but what makes it even more appealing is the fact that is it included with Office 365. For Office 365 users, this means that those who are already using other paid teamwork software can remove the licence expense, and those that aren't can gain access to a useful new application that competitors might be using - at no extra cost.
O365 Teams Msi
Next steps
If you are using Office 365, then we recommend trying Teams and providing your feedback to help shape the product. You can download a Quick Start PDF guide to get users started here.
O365 Teams Ip
If you are not using Office 365, then you can sign up for an Office 365 E3 trial (which includes Teams).
O365 Teams Logo
You can also find out how we can help with our Microsoft Teams Services or Contact Us and we can give an Office 365 demo or answer any questions.