This guide provides information for Students and Employees on how to create and manage teams in MS Teams.
Creating a team is not required in order to use Microsoft Teams for chat, meetings, file sharing, and collaboration. If you need a dedicated workspace to collaborate with a certain group of people, then you can create a new team from scratch, use an existing team as a template, or connect an existing Outlook group to a Microsoft Teams through self-service on the web, desktop client, or mobile app.
When you create a Microsoft Team, a Microsoft 365 group is created to manage the membership for the team and connected applications and services used by the team. Please review the Microsoft 365 group usage guidelines before creating a Microsoft Team.
How to Create a Team?
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Open and Sign into MS Teams using your UFV email address and password.
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First, click Teams on the left side of the app, then click Join or create a team at the bottom of your teams list.
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Under Join or create a team, click Create team.
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Select from one of the four types of teams shown below.
Note: You cannot change the Team type after creation. One of the key differences across the different team types is the OneNote notebook and whether it features built-in templates, for example, the Staff or Class Notebook.
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Next, enter the following team details:
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Name: Enter a descriptive name for the team.
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Description: Enter a Description for the team.
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Privacy: Select one of the below privacy settings from the drop-down list.
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To limit content and conversation to a specific set of people, choose Private.
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For a community or topic that anyone in the organization can join, choose Public.
If you set Privacy to Public - Anyone in your organization can join, please be aware that files and videos stored in the team will be accessible to all active UFV M365 users. Users will not need to join the team in order to access files and videos stored in SharePoint Online.
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Click Next.
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On the Add people to "Team-Name" window,
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Type the name of the individual you want to add to the team.
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Select the name from the drop-down list, and click Add.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 to add any other users you need to add.
If you don't want to add any members to the team at this time, click Skip.
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Once team members are added, you can update their role as below:
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From the member drop-down list of the user account, select one of the two roles below:
Make sure to review this article - Team owner, member, and guest capabilities in Teams for information on the capabilities of both the roles listed below.
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Once done, click Close.
Please note that the recommendation is to have at least two team owners for full coverage (to accommodate vacations etc.)
Once a team owner leaves UFV, ensure the following:
1. Either the second owner removes the employee from team ownership following the steps shown above.
2. Or if only one owner exists, an authorized requestor when submitting an employee offboarding form mentions the team the employee should be removed as an owner from and who should be the new owner.
If you have any questions, please contact the IT Service Desk.
You have now successfully created a new team!
When Microsoft 365 group is created, the following policy listed will be configured on it.
M365 Expiration Policy
- When an M365 group is created, an expiration date is set up for 365 days.
- M365 sends an automatic message to the defined group owners of any inactive M365 groups periodically as listed: 30 days, 15 days, and a day before expiry.
- At this point, the owners have the option to renew the group as needed. See the steps here on how to renew the group.
- If there is no user activity on the M365 group or not renewed by the owner before expiry, it will be soft deleted. Groups in the “Soft-delete” state can still be restored within 30 days, after which the content is deleted permanently. If you need to restore a group within a 30-day period after deletion, contact the IT Service Desk.
The following user actions will lead to the automatic renewal of M365 groups
- SharePoint – View, Edit, Download, Move, Share, Upload Files
- Outlook – Join group, Read/write group message from group space, Like a message (OWA)
- Teams – Visit a Teams channels
The owners receive an email notification on the expiry date of the group with instructions on how to renew the group. Follow the instructions provided in the email to renew the group.