Welcome to Teams!

Teams is a fantastic collaboration tool that is part of the Microsoft 365 offering. We are hoping that this will help meet your needs as far as collaboration goes, while maintaining the same level of security and discoverability as the rest of our Microsoft Suite. 

  • ALL Team members can see ALL content in the Team, even external users (private channels are coming, soon we hope)
  • To invite people to join a team, look next to the team name in the list and select More options …> Add members.
  • Adding users to a Team gives that user access to all content across the Team
  • You can add external users to your Team. Select Teams and go to the team in your team list, then Select More options  …> Add member. Then enter the guest's email address. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can join your team as a guest.
      • To see if a Team has any guests, just look below the heading where the team name shows up. You can tell if someone is a guest by looking anywhere their name appears—the word “Guest” appears after it. You can also see everyone’s roles in the Members tab of a team. Go to the team name and select More options  …> Manage team and then Members.
  • Every team, by default, comes with one channel: General.
    1. Reserve the General channel for team related discussions (what the team is for etc.), but create additional channels for topic discussions. Consider making it read only for members.
  • Channels are where the work actually gets done—where text, audio, and video conversations open to the whole team happen, where files are shared, and where apps are added.
    1. By default only Team owners can create channels.
  • Try to limit the number of channels as this can cause confusion amongst users as to where to post.
  • While channel conversations are public, chats are just between you and someone else (or a group of people). Think of them like instant messages in Skype for Business or other messaging apps.
  • You can share files in Teams. When you do, they'll show up in the Files tab of the chat or channel where you uploaded them. They'll also be listed when you select Files on the left side of Teams. 
  • The Recent view shows you every Office 365 document you’ve viewed or edited in recent history. 
    1. Note: Another way to view your recent files is to type /files into the command box at the top of Teams.
  • The Microsoft Teams view shows you all the documents that have been created or edited recently within your favorite channels. 
  • In the Downloads view, you'll see a list of all the files you've downloaded to Teams. 
  • If you schedule your meetings in Outlook, select Teams Meeting in the Outlook toolbar to make sure participants can join in Teams. It's a good habit, especially if anyone's remote or sharing their screen.


For more information, click on the Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide attachment.