People belonging to a team in Microsoft Teams can have on of the three roles assigned: Owner, Member or Guest. This guide is intended to support people who have the role of Team Owner. A team owner has full control over a team and its associated group, SharePoint files and apps. The role of the team owner is important, and this guide will help you better understand the associated tasks and prevent common problems. The following topics are covered in this article:
Basic Concepts
Team Management
Content Management
Additional Information
Basic Concepts
Teams = Office 365 Groups = SharePoint
An Office 365 Group is a set of users (owners and members) authorized to access a set of resources associated with that group, such as group's mailbox, and SharePoint Site. The SharePoint Site and Document Library is used as group's storage area in the cloud where members of a group can create, modify and delete files and folders in document libraries.
Microsoft Teams provides an easy way to access groups and SharePoint locations. Using the Teams app, or teams.microsoft.com Web site, you can access documents (stored in SharePoint), communicate instantly with members of the team (audio, video or text), and manage the team (and group) if you are an owner.
A Microsoft Team is an extension of a group. What you do when managing the team will affect the Office 365 group and any associated resources such as SharePoint.
Specifically, the linkages are:
- Adding a member to a team will automatically add that person to the group and give them access to SharePoint. Likewise, removing a team member removes them from the group and removes access to SharePoint (OneDrive – University of Windsor)
- Creating a new channel in Teams will create a new folder with that name in SharePoint.
- When you share a document in a post in Teams, it will be saved in the root folder of that channel.
- If a private channel is created, a SharePoint folder is created. A team member who is not part of the private channel will not be able to see that folder in SharePoint.
- Every team and channel can have an email address. When an email is sent to that channel, attachments will be saved in a folder in that channel called “Email Messages”
- Deleting a team will delete the associated Office 365 group, the mail address and the SharePoint documents.
But in some cases, actions will not be performed:
- Creating a folder in SharePoint will not create a channel in Teams
- Deleting a folder in SharePoint will not delete that channel in Teams. If you add a file to that channel, it will recreate the folder in SharePoint
Messaging - Chat vs Posts
Microsoft Teams treats data in Chats (one-on-one or group chats) and data in teams Posts (also called conversations) differently. Even though they look very similar, there are some key differences.
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Chat
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Team Posts
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Any user can start a chat with any other user. Only people in the chat can see the messages and files.
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Conversations are started with members of a channel, and adding users is not necessary. All members of the team can see all files and posts in the channels, unless a channel is private.
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Any chat participant can add additional members to the chat instantly.
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A user needs special privilege to create and manage a private channel.
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When adding members to a chat, you can restrict how many messages they will see in the past.
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When a user is added to the team, or to a private channel, they can see all previous files and messages.
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Messages are shown in chronological order.
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Members can reply to a post, thus creating conversation threads.
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A video call in a chat cannot be recorded.
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A meeting can be recorded. The meeting can be started in channel or scheduled in the calendar.
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Individual chat messages can be marked as important or urgent.
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No delivery options are available for individual posts.
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If a chat is getting distracting, you can mute the chat so that you will not receive notifications. Messages will still appear in the chat, but your device will not chime of flash to alert you of a new message.
When a chat is muted, the icon will change.
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Users can set specific notification settings for each channel, by setting channel notification settings. “Banner and feed” will chime or flash on your device, “Only show in feed” will show a red dot in channel, and “Off” will only show new items in bold, and not send a notification or feed message.
If you are not interested in staying up to date with a channel’s conversation, you can hide the channel. The channel will be collapsed into the hidden channels section. You can then show the channel later to see all the messages.
Do not delete a channel just to manage notifications. If you delete a channel, it will be deleted for everyone in the team.
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Sharing Files - Chat vs Posts
When you share a file using the paper clip icon in the message entry area, and select “Upload from my computer”, Teams will store a copy of the file:
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Chat
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Posts (Conversations)
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The file will be stored in the personal OneDrive of the person who uploaded it, and it will be automatically shared with the recipients.
Files can be seen in the conversation messages, in the Files tab of the chat and:
- The sender can see the file under the folder “Microsoft Teams Chat Files”.
- The recipients can see the files in the “Shared with Me” view in OneDrive.
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Files will be stored in the root folder of the channel and shared with all team members (or private channel members).
Files can be seen in the Files tab of the channel or
- In the OneDrive client, the files are available under the shared library of that team (group), under a folder with the channel name.
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Attached Files that are Emailed to a Team or Channel
Every team (group) and every channel has an email address. If a user sends a message to that group or channel, attached files will be stored automatically in the channel in a folder named “Email Messages”.
Team Management
Updating Members and Guests List
Only people included on the team's members list will be able to access content of the team, including files, posts, etc. Each team has one or more people designated as team Owners who have the ability to add and remove Members and Guests of a team. Members are people who have UWin Account, while Guests are external people who don't have UWin Account. With the exception of class teams, the membership list of a team is public. This means that even people who are not members of a team can access it and see who belongs to a particular team.
If you are a team Owner, follow these steps to access and manage membership list of your team:
- Open your team and click on three dots next to team's name to access team's menu.
- Select Manage Team
- Expand the list by clicking on Members and Guests
- To remove existing Member of Guest, click on X next to their name.
- To promote a Member to be the co-owner of a team, click on the chevron next to Member and select Owner.
- To add a new Member or Guest, click on Add member button on the right side of the screen. Note, you don't see this button, it means you are not the Owner tof this team.
- Start typing person's name, then select the person you want to add from the search results.
NOTE: If you are adding someone who does not have UWin Account, use their e-mail address.They will be automatically added as Guest user. See Guest access in Microsoft Teams for more information.
Updating Permissions
It is important for the team owners to review the permissions of the team. You can have an “open” team where all members can create and delete channels, or you can have a more controlled team where the members have less “power” to create and delete resources in the team.
To review the permissions, click on the three-dots menu to the right of the team name and select “Manage Team” and then change to the “Settings” tab.
There are three levels of access in Teams: Owner, Member and Guest. The owners can change permissions for members and guests. Each team will have its own set of requirements, so it is your job as the team owner to set permissions and settings as appropriate for your group of users. If you have a very large group, you may want to limit some of the permissions.
Below is an example of the member and guest permissions for an existing team. Adding or removing checkmarks will add or remove permissions.
The team owner can also:
- Choose who can use @team and @channel mentions
- Enable or disable Giphy for the team (short video loops) with the ability to filter content
- Enable or disable stickers and memes
- Allow or disallow memes to be uploaded
The team owners also have access to statistics (analytics), and they can add and remove apps.
Channel Management
After Manage Team is selected from the team three-dots menu, switch to the Channels tab to list and manage channels. You can rename a channel and its description, and automatically show the channel to all users (or keep it hidden until users decide to show it).
The “Manage Channel” item in the three-dots menu to the right of the channel name in the list will bring up the permissions menu for a particular channel. Here you can:
- Turn channel moderation on or off.
- If channel moderation is on, moderators and owners can create new posts. You can also allow or disallow members to reply to existing (approved) messages.
- If channel moderation is off, the team owner can either allow everyone to start a new post, or everyone except guests to start a new post.
Content Management
Recovering a Deleted Channel
When the team owner or user deletes a channel, the impact is immediate. The recovery procedure is also immediate. The procedure is as follows:
- Open the three-dots menu on the team that contained the deleted channel and select “Manage Team”.
- Switch to the Channels tab. Under the Deleted header, you will find the deleted channel.
- Click on the Restore button to the right of the channel name.
- Confirm the restoration at the prompt.
Recovering a Deleted Team (Group)
A team is a group, so that when you delete a team inside of Microsoft Teams, you are deleting the entire group, as outlined in the warning message.
To recover a deleted team and group, you will need to submit a service request with IT Services uwindsor.ca/help
Provide the team or group name in the service request. Once the restoration task is started, it may take up to 24 hours for the data to fully appear.
Additional Information
When you click on the three-dots menu to the right of the team name and select “Leave the team”, it will remove you from the team and the underlying Office group, so you will lose access to the team and its associated files (SharePoint). If you are the owner and you leave the team, you will be removed as the owner and as a member of the team.
When a non-owner clicks on the “Add member” option in the three-dots menu, and selects a user or group, a request will be sent to the team owners and they can accept or deny the request. If the team owner accepts the request, the new member will have regular access to the team’s resources. Only a University of Windsor affiliated user can be added as a member. People outside of the University are added as guests, with slightly limited access to the team.
Resource Links for More Information