Microsoft Teams: Requesting and Managing a Team

In this video, learn more about tasks related to requesting and managing a team in Microsoft Teams at IU, including how to request a team using the Request Institutional Storage form, how to manage your institutional storage locations through the IU Institutional Storage website, and how to perform many common team management tasks.

Microsoft Teams: Requesting and Managing a Team

Last updated: 1/17/2024

Description of the video:

[music] In this video, we’ll see how to request and manage a team in Microsoft Teams at Indiana University. Specifically, we’ll cover the following topics: how to create a new team, including what you’ll need to know when filling out the Request Institutional Storage form, how to manage your storage locations through the IU Institutional Storage site, and how to manage a team, including tasks such as adding and removing team members, adjusting member roles, changing team settings, and creating channels. At the time of this recording, Microsoft is in the process of rolling out a new version of the Microsoft Teams app, so your interface may look different than what’s shown in this recording and some features may not be available yet in your version of Microsoft Teams. We’ll start out today’s demonstration by exploring how to create a new team. Before you start the process, there are a few things you’ll need to determine ahead of time regarding the team and what you’ll be doing with it. First, you should determine who you want to create the team, as that person will be on record as the main owner of the team. You can add a co-owner here as well, but if you’re not sure who to add as the co-owner at this point, that’s okay – you can add multiple co-owners to the team once the team has been created. Additionally, you should think about whether you’ll need to share files in your team with people outside of IU before creating your team. You’ll have the option to set up your team so you can work with external collaborators during the team creation process. Finally, you’ll also want to know the highest data classification level that applies to the data you’ll be storing in the team. Knowing this ahead of time will be helpful, as you’ll be able to choose the right data classification for your team when creating it. You can learn more about the different data classification levels at datamanagement.iu.edu. To create a new team at IU, you’ll need to use the Request Institutional Storage Form. You can access the form through a web browser by going to securestorage.webhost.iu.edu/, or from inside Microsoft Teams using the New Team button in the app bar on the left side of the screen. Do not use the “Join or create team” option that’s visible with the list of teams you’re a member of, as it’s not appropriate to use for storing IU data. If you need to create a team using a template other than those provided by the secure storage form, you’ll need to contact the Support Center for more assistance. For more information about requesting a team, view the IU Knowledge Base document Request Institutional Storage in Microsoft Shared Storage at kb.iu.edu/d/bghi. In today’s session, I’ll demonstrate how to create a new team using the New Team button in the app bar. To get started, in the app bar on the left side of the Microsoft Teams interface, click on New Team. The Request institutional storage in Microsoft Teams at IU landing page will display. From here, click on the institutional storage request form link to continue. At this point, your web browser will open and a new tab will load, displaying the IU Login screen if you haven’t previously logged in with your IU username and passphrase today. If you have logged in, you’ll be brought directly to the Request Institutional Storage form. As a note, group or departmental accounts can’t be used to create a team at IU. In order to create a team, you’ll need to log in with your individual IU account. Let’s take a look at the different parts of the form, so you’re familiar with them when you request a team of your own. Your username should automatically show up in the Your Username field. if you’ve designated a co-owner for the team you’re requesting, fill in their username in the Co-Owner Username field. As a reminder, you can’t add a group or departmental account as a team co-owner. Only individual accounts can be added as team co-owners. If you’re not sure who to add as a team co-owner right now, that’s okay – you can add additional owners later on in Microsoft Teams. Next is the Storage purpose field – here, you’ll write a very brief description of what you’ll be using the team for. The Intended Use drop-down menu lets you indicate how the storage location will be used. For a team, you’ll want to choose employee or student shared storage, depending on your status with IU. In the Choose your storage service section, you’ll choose the Microsoft Teams option, as you’re creating a team. Next, we see the External collaborators section – if you’ll be working with people outside of IU, choose Yes here. Otherwise, choose No. In the Data Classification drop-down menu, choose the highest data classification level that applies to the data you’ll be storing in the team. In the Sensitive data categories section, check the checkbox next to whichever data categories apply to the data that will be stored in the team. Now we’re at the Storage location name section of the form. Here, you’ll fill in information that will be used to generate the name of your storage location, including the campus you’re located on, a short department or description code, and a short name for the team. As you fill in the information, the contents of the Generated Name field will automatically populate with the name of your team. There are a few things to note about team names here. If you’re working with public or University-Internal data, your team’s name will start with O365. If you indicated that the team will contain critical or restricted data, you’ll see “Sec” in square brackets at the beginning of the team name instead of O365. If you indicated you’ll be working with external collaborators and your team will contain critical or restricted data, your team name will start with “Sec-E” in square brackets. Once you’re done creating your team’s name, check the box next to “I agree to the responsibilities detailed in this agreement”, and then type your initials in the text entry field below. To submit the form and create the team, click the Submit button at the bottom of the form. It may take a few moments for your team to be created. When the process is done, you’ll see a confirmation screen indicating your team has been created, and if you go to Microsoft Teams, your newly-created team should show up in your list of Teams. While we’re on the IU Institutional Storage website, let’s look at the options available to us for managing our storage locations. At the top of the Request Storage form, there are two additional options here – Manage Storage and Register Team. I’ll visit the Manage Storage page first by clicking on it in the navigation at the top of the screen. On the Manage Storage Locations page, you can manage the institutional storage locations that you’re listed as an owner or co-owner of. In order to view the list of storage locations you own, at the bottom of the Manage My Storage section of the page, click Select. A list of storage locations you own or co-own will be displayed. To view options for a particular storage location, click on the Select button in that location’s section. I want to view the options for the team O365-IU-UITS-TrainingDemo, so I’ll scroll through the list until I see the team’s name, then click on the Select button that’s displayed underneath the location’s status. Here, we can view and edit the storage location’s details. The View Details tab shows the information you entered when creating the new team, as well as a list of the team’s members. The Edit Details tab allows you to change many settings about the team, including the team’s data classification. The options available to change here are very similar to the options that we see on the Request Institutional Storage form. The Details Log tab shows information about changes to the team’s settings and metadata that were made using the Manage Storage Locations page. The Usage Log tab displays information about actions members have taken within the storage location over the past month. You can use the filters in the Optional Filters section to show more data from a specific time range, if desired. Now, let’s take a look at the Register Team options. To view the options, in the navigation at the top right side of the screen, click on Register Team. If you’re an owner of a team that was created outside of the Request Institutional Storage form, it needs to be registered in order to appropriately store IU data. This includes teams that were created before the Request Institutional Storage form existed. This page will display any teams that you’ve created outside of the Request Institutional Storage form that need to be registered. Now that we know how to create a team, let’s learn how to manage a team in Microsoft Teams. As the team owner, you can add new members to the team, adjust access permissions as needed, and perform other basic team management tasks. In this part of the session, we’ll go over how to accomplish these tasks. Before we add people to the team, let’s talk about team member roles and permissions in Microsoft Teams. There are three roles a person can be assigned in Microsoft Teams: owner, member, and guest. Let’s start with the permissions everyone on a team has, regardless of role. By default, everyone in a team can upload files to a team, edit and delete messages posted in channels, and leave a team if desired. They can also participate in any discussion in a public channel within the team and attend channel meetings in public channels, even if they’re not directly invited to the meeting. Now, let’s talk about the additional permissions each role has. Everyone in the owner role can add new members to a team, change team settings such as the team’s name and picture, add new apps to a team, create, edit, and delete channels, as well as adjust permissions for team members. One thing to note about the owner role is that you’ll want to limit how many people are assigned this role. While a team can have up to 100 owners, it’s best to designate only two or three people as team owners and adjust the permissions for what members can do based on your team’s needs. We’ll discuss changing permissions later on in the session. Those in the member role can request to add a member to a team, as well as any other permissions the owner has granted to those in the member role. Lastly, we have the guest role. This role is automatically assigned to members of a team who are not IU users. This isn’t a role you can manually assign through the Role drop-down menu. The Guest role will be automatically assigned to team members who are added using a non-IU email address. As a reminder, if you’re working with critical or restricted data and also want to work with external users, make sure you select Yes in the External collaborators section of the Request Institutional Storage form. Now, let’s see how to add new members to a team. By default, only people in the team owner role can add new members to a team. To start adding new members to a team, find the name of the team you want to work with. I’ll be working with the team O365-IU-TEST-DemoTeam. Once you’ve found the team, click on the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of the team’s name. In the menu that appears, click on Add member. The Add members dialog box will appear. To start adding a new member to the team, click inside the Type a name or email field, then type the name or username of the person you want to add. I’ll start by adding Abby Abernathy, whose username is demo31. As you type, a list of suggested people will appear in a pop-up below the text entry field. These are pulled from the IU Global Address List. You can scroll through the list until you see the person you want to add, or keep typing until you see their name. Once their name appears, click on it to select it. Repeat this process as many times as necessary to add more members to the team. I’ll add Carol Cape, Diane Dell, Cathy Catt, and Doris Daily to the team while I’m here. As you select people to add to the team, their names will appear underneath the text entry field, along with their role. If you added someone by mistake, you can remove them here by clicking the x to the far right of their name. If you want to change a person’s role as you’re adding them to the team, to the right of their name, click on the role drop-down menu and click the appropriate option in the menu that appears. By default, new team members are added with the Member role. If you want to add non-IU users to a team, you can do that here as well. However, you’ll need to type in their full email address to add them to the team, and not just their username. Anyone added to the team who’s not an IU user will be given the Guest role. It’s important to note that Microsoft Teams will let you add non-IU users to any team regardless of whether the team’s been set up to work with external collaborators. However, if the team isn’t configured to allow external collaborators, non-IU users won’t be able to access the team or any folders inside the team that they have access to via a share link or direct access, so make sure that your team is set up to work with external users before adding them to your team. I’ll add the account carolcape.iu@outlook.com here so you can see how to add a non-IU user to a team. To finish adding the new members to the team, click the Add button in the lower right corner of the dialog box. The new members will be added to the team, and the dialog box will briefly show the text Done with a checkmark before closing automatically. Let’s learn about some basic team management tasks you may need to perform as a team owner. First, let’s see how to change a team’s settings. Team owners can change the settings for a team as needed – this includes changing the team’s name or picture, assigning permissions for team users, and more. To access the settings for a particular team, click the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of a team’s name. I’ll be working with the team O365-TrainingDemoTeam for the next part of the demonstration, so I’ll click on the More options button for that team. Then, in the menu that appears, click Manage team. You’ll be brought to the team management view. To view the team’s settings, in the tabs near the top of the screen, click on the Settings tab. Here, we can change many settings for a team. I’ll touch on the most frequently adjusted settings here. First, we can change the team picture. To start the process, under the current team picture, click on Change Picture. The Change team picture dialog box will open. From here, to upload a picture, click on Upload. The Open dialog box will appear – from here, navigate to the image file you want to use as the team picture, then click on it to select it and click the Open button to select the file. The team picture preview will change to display the uploaded file. To finish changing the team picture, at the bottom right corner of the Change team picture dialog box, click on the Save button. Next, let’s look at how to adjust permissions for team members. To adjust the permissions that team members and guests have, click on the heading for the appropriate group of permissions that you want to change. I’ll start by clicking on Member permissions to explore the permissions we can assign to members. The list of member permissions expands, and we can see the different permissions we can grant to team members, such as allowing members to create and update channels, add and remove apps, and more. To assign or remove permissions, click the checkbox to the right of the permission you want to change. Your changes will automatically be saved as you make them. Let’s explore another team management task: creating channels. Team owners can create channels to help organize a team and set aside areas for specific topics or parts of a project. Owners can also give members permission to create channels, if desired. I’ll demonstrate how to create a channel by creating a new channel for staff meetings that might be held in this team. To start the process, click on the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of the team’s name. Then, in the menu that appears, click on Add Channel. The “Some quick details about your channel” dialog box will appear. From here, you can give your channel a name, and a description if desired. To give the channel a name, I’ll click in the text entry field under the text “Channel name”, then type in the name “Staff meetings”. You can also change what type of channel it is by clicking on the channel type drop-down. There are three different channel types: first, we have Standard, which means the channel is accessible to everyone on the team. This is the default privacy level when creating a channel. Next is we have Shared channels. With shared channels, you can share a channel with all members and owners of the source team and another team, specific members of the source team and another team, specific members of the source team and specific non-team members, or any combination of these. There is a caveat to using shared channels, though. If the team you share a channel with has guest members, those guests cannot access the shared channel, so you’ll want to be aware of that when sharing channels with other teams. Lastly, we have Private channels, which are only accessible to team members who have been added to the channel. There are some important things to know about private channels before you create one. A private channel isn’t accessible through SharePoint, nor can Teams administrators access the channel – which means if all members of a private channel leave, any files in that channel will be inaccessible. Additionally, a private channel can’t be turned into a public one later on. For today’s demonstration, I want to create a Standard channel, so I’ll click on Standard in the drop-down menu. Before finishing the channel creation process, you can choose to have the channel show up in everyone’s channel list by default by clicking the Automatically show this channel in everyone’s channel list check box. If you don’t check that checkbox, the channel will be hidden from the channel list. Team members can still access the channel by expanding the list of the team’s hidden channels. To finish creating the new channel, at the bottom of the dialog box, click the Create button. At this point, we should be more familiar with how to create a new team using the Request Institutional Storage form, how to manage any storage locations we own using the IU Institutional Storage website, and how to manage a team in Microsoft Teams. To learn more about Microsoft Teams, visit IT Training’s Microsoft 365 page at ittraining.iu.edu/microsoft. [music]

Introduction

  • In this video, we’ll see how to request and manage a team in Microsoft Teams at Indiana University.
  • Specifically, we’ll cover the following topics:
    • How to create a new team, including what you’ll need to know when filling out the Request Institutional Storage form,
    • How to manage your storage locations through the IU Institutional Storage site,
    • and how to manage a team, including tasks such as adding and removing team members, adjusting member roles, changing team settings, and creating channels.
  • At the time of this recording, Microsoft is in the process of rolling out a new version of the Microsoft Teams app, so your interface may look different than what’s shown in this recording and some features may not be available yet in your version of Microsoft Teams.

Creating a team

  • We’ll start out today’s demonstration by exploring how to create a new team.
  • Before you start the process, there are a few things you’ll need to determine ahead of time regarding the team and what you’ll be doing with it.
    • First, you should determine who you want to create the team, as that person will be on record as the main owner of the team. You can add a co-owner here as well, but if you’re not sure who to add as the co-owner at this point, that’s okay – you can add multiple co-owners to the team once the team has been created.
    • Additionally, you should think about whether you’ll need to share files in your team with people outside of IU before creating your team. You’ll have the option to set up your team so you can work with external collaborators during the team creation process.
    • Finally, you’ll also want to know the highest data classification level that applies to the data you’ll be storing in the team. Knowing this ahead of time will be helpful, as you’ll be able to choose the right data classification for your team when creating it. You can learn more about the different data classification levels at https://datamanagement.iu.edu.
  • To create a new team at IU, you’ll need to use the Request Institutional Storage Form. You can access the form through a web browser by going to https://securestorage.webhost.iu.edu/, or from inside Microsoft Teams using the New Team button in the app bar on the left side of the screen.
    • Do not use the “Join or create team” option that’s visible with the list of teams you’re a member of, as it’s not appropriate to use for storing IU data.
    • If you need to create a team using a template other than those provided by the secure storage form, you’ll need to contact the Support Center for more assistance.
    • For more information about requesting a team, view the IU Knowledge Base document Request Institutional Storage in Microsoft Shared Storage at https://kb.iu.edu/d/bghi.
  • In today’s session, I’ll demonstrate how to create a new team using the New Team button in the app bar.
  • To get started, in the app bar on the left side of the Microsoft Teams interface, click on New Team. The Request institutional storage in Microsoft Teams at IU landing page will display.
  • From here, click on the institutional storage request form link to continue.
  • At this point, your web browser will open and a new tab will load, displaying the IU Login screen if you haven’t previously logged in with your IU username and passphrase today. If you have logged in, you’ll be brought directly to the Request Institutional Storage form.
    • As a note, group or departmental accounts can’t be used to create a team at IU – in order to create a team, you’ll need to log in with your individual IU account.
  • Let’s take a look at the different parts of the form, so you’re familiar with them when you request a team of your own.
    • Your username should automatically show up in the Your Username field – if you’ve designated a co-owner for the team you’re requesting, fill in their username in the Co-Owner Username field.
      • As a reminder, you can’t add a group or departmental account as a team co-owner – only individual accounts can be added as team co-owners.
      • If you’re not sure who to add as a team co-owner right now, that’s okay – you can add additional owners later on in Microsoft Teams.
    • Next is the Storage purpose field – here, you’ll write a very brief description of what you’ll be using the team for.
    • The Intended Use drop-down menu lets you indicate who will be using the storage location. For a team, you’ll want to choose employee or student shared storage, depending on your status with IU.
    • In the Choose your storage service section, you’ll choose the Microsoft Teams option, as you’re creating a team.
    • Next, we see the External collaborators section – if you’ll be working with people outside of IU, choose Yes here. Otherwise, choose No.
    • In the Data Classification drop-down, choose the highest data classification level that applies to the data you’ll be storing in the team.
    • In the Sensitive data categories section, check the checkbox next to whichever data categories apply to the data that will be stored in the team.
    • Now we’re at the Storage location name section of the form. Here, you’ll fill in information that will be used to generate the name of your storage location, including the campus you’re located on, a short department or description code, and a short name for the team.
    • As you fill in the information, the contents of the Generated Name field will automatically populate with the name of your team.
      • There are a few things to note about team names here.
      • If you’re working with public or University-Internal data, your team’s name will start with O365.
      • If you indicated that the team will contain critical or restricted data, you’ll see “Sec” in square brackets at the beginning of the team name instead of O365.
      • If you indicated you’ll be working with external collaborators and your team will contain critical or restricted data, your team name will start with “Sec-E” in square brackets.
    • Once you’re done creating your team’s name, check the box next to “I agree to the responsibilities detailed in this agreement” and type your initials in the text entry field.
    • To submit the form and create the team, click the Submit button at the bottom of the form. It may take a few moments for your team to be created – when the process is done, you’ll see a confirmation screen indicating your team is created, and if you go to Microsoft Teams, your newly-created team should show up in your list of Teams.

Managing your storage locations through the IU Institutional Storage website

  • While we’re on the IU Institutional Storage website, let’s look at the options available to us for managing our storage locations.
  • At the top of the Request Storage form, there are two additional options here – Manage Storage and Register Team. I’ll visit the Manage Storage page first by clicking on it in the navigation at the top of the screen.
  • On the Manage Storage Locations page, you can manage the institutional storage locations that you’re listed as an owner or co-owner of.
    • In order to view the list of storage locations you own, at the bottom of the Manage My Storage section of the page, click Select. A list of storage locations you own or co-own will be displayed here.
    • To view options for a particular storage location, click on the Select button in that location’s section. I want to view the options for the team O365-IU-UITS-TrainingDemo, so I’ll scroll through the list until I see the team’s name, then click on the Select button that’s displayed underneath the location’s status.
    • Here, we can view and edit the storage location’s details.
      • The View Details tab shows the information you entered when creating the new team, as well as a list of the team’s members.
      • The Edit Details tab allows you to change many settings about the team, including the team’s data classification. The options available to change here are very similar to the options we see on the Request Institutional Storage form.
      • The Details Log tab shows information about changes to the team’s settings and metadata that were made using the Manage Storage Locations page.
      • The Usage Log tab displays information about actions members have taken within the storage location over the past month. You can use the filters in the Optional Filters section to show more data from a specific time range, if desired.
    • Now, let’s take a look at the Register Team options. To view the options, in the navigation at the top right side of the screen, click on Register Team.
      • If you’re an owner of a team that was created outside of the Request Institutional Storage form, it needs to be registered to appropriately store IU data. This typically applies to teams that were created before the Request Institutional Storage form existed.
      • This page will display any teams that you’ve created outside of the Request Institutional Storage form that need to be registered.

Managing a team

  • Now that we know how to create a team, let’s learn how to manage a team in Microsoft Teams.
  • As the team owner, you can add new members to the team, adjust access permissions as needed, and perform other basic team management tasks. In this part of the session, we’ll go over how to accomplish these tasks.

Team member roles and permissions

  • Before we add people to the team, let’s talk about team member roles and permissions in Microsoft Teams. There are three roles a person can be assigned in Microsoft Teams: owner, member, and guest.
  • Let’s start with the permissions everyone on a team has, regardless of role.
    • By default, everyone in a team can upload files to a team, edit and delete messages posted in channels, and leave a team if desired. They can also participate in any discussion in a public channel within the team and attend channel meetings in public channels, even if they’re not directly invited to the meeting.
  • Now, let’s talk about the additional permissions each role has.
    • Everyone in the owner role can add new members to a team, change team settings such as the team’s name and picture, add new apps to a team, create, edit, and delete channels, as well as adjust permissions for team members.
      • One thing to note about the owner role is that you’ll want to limit how many people have been assigned that role. While a team can have up to 100 owners, it’s best to designate only two or three people as team owners and adjust the permissions for what members can do based on your team’s needs. (We’ll discuss changing permissions later on in the session.)
    • Those in the member role can request to add a member to a team, as well as any other permissions the owner has granted to those in the member role.
    • Lastly, we have the guest This role is automatically assigned to members of a team who are not IU users – this isn’t a role you can manually assign through the Role drop-down menu. The Guest role will be automatically assigned to team members who are added using a non-IU email address.
      • As a reminder, if you’re working with critical or restricted data and also want to work with external users, make sure you select Yes in the External collaborators section of the Request Institutional Storage form.

Adding members to a team

  • Now, let’s see how to add new members to a team. By default, only people in the team owner role can add new members to a team.
  • To start adding new members to a team, find the name of the team you want to work with – for today, I’ll be working with the team O365-IU-TEST-DemoTeam. Once you’ve found the team, click on the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of the team’s name. In the menu that appears, click Add member.
  • The Add members dialog box will appear. To start adding a new member to the team, click inside the Type a name or email field, then type the name or username of the person you want to add. I’ll start by adding Abby Abernathy, whose username is demo31.
    • As you type, a list of suggested people will appear in a pop-up below the text entry field. These are pulled from the IU Global Address List. You can scroll through the list until you see the person you want to add, or keep typing until you see their name.
    • Once their name appears in the drop-down, click on it to select it.
  • Repeat this process as many times as necessary to add members to the team. I’ll add Carol Cape, Diane Dell, Cathy Catt, and Doris Daily to the team while I’m here.
  • As you select people to add to the team, their names will appear underneath the text entry field, along with their role. If you added someone by mistake, you can remove them here by clicking the x to the far right of their name.
  • If you want to change a person’s role as you’re adding them to the team, to the right of their name, click on the role drop-down menu and click the appropriate option in the menu that appears. By default, new team members are added with the Member role.
  • If you want to add non-IU users to a team, you can do that here as well – however, you’ll need to type in their full email address to add them to the team, and not just their username. Anyone added to the team who’s not an IU user will be given the Guest role.
    • It’s important to note that Microsoft Teams will let you add non-IU users to any team regardless of whether the team’s been set up to work with external collaborators. However, if the team isn’t configured to allow external collaborators, non-IU users won’t be able to access the team or any folders inside the team that they have access to via a share link or direct access, so make sure that your team is set up to work with external users before adding them to your team.
  • To finish adding the new members to the team, click the Add button in the lower right corner of the dialog box.
  • The new members will be added to the team, and the dialog box will briefly show the text Done with a checkmark before closing automatically.

Basic team management tasks

  • Let’s learn about some basic team management tasks you may need to perform as a team owner.

Changing team settings

  • First, let’s see how to change a team’s settings.
  • Team owners can change the settings for a team as needed – this includes changing the team’s name or picture, assigning permissions for team users, and more.
  • To access the settings for a particular team, click the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of a team’s name. I’ll work with the team O365-TrainingDemoTeam for the next part of the demonstration, so I’ll click on the More options button for that team. Then, in the menu that appears, click Manage team.
  • You’ll be brought to the team management view. To view the team’s settings, in the tabs near the top of the screen, click the Settings
  • Here, we can change many settings for a team. I’ll touch on the most frequently adjusted settings here.
  • First, we can change the team picture.
    • To start the process, under the current team picture, click on Change Picture.
    • The Change team picture dialog box will open. From here, to upload a picture, click on Upload.
    • The Open dialog box will appear – from here, navigate to the image file you want to use as the team picture, then click on it to select it and click the Open button to select the file.
    • The team picture preview will change to display the uploaded file. To finish changing the team picture, at the bottom right corner of the Change team picture dialog box, click the Save button.
  • Next, let’s look at how to adjust permissions for team members. To adjust the permissions that team members and guests have, click on the heading for the appropriate group of permissions you want to change. I’ll start by clicking on Member permissions to explore the permissions we can assign to members.
    • The list of member permissions expands, and we can see the different permissions we can grant to team members, such as allowing members to create and update channels, add and remove apps, and more.
    • To assign or remove permissions, click the checkbox to the right of the permission you want to change. Your changes will automatically be saved as you make them.

Creating channels

  • Let’s explore another team management task: creating channels.
  • Team owners can create channels to help organize a team and set aside areas for specific topics or parts of a project. (Owners can also give members permission to create channels, if desired.)
  • I’ll demonstrate how to create a channel by creating a new channel for staff meetings that might be held in this team.
  • To start the process, click on the More options (or three-dots) button to the right of the team’s name. Then, in the menu that appears, click on Add Channel.
  • The “Some quick details about your channel” dialog box will appear.
    • From here, you can give your channel a name, and a description if desired.
      • To give the channel a name, I’ll click in the text entry field under the text “Channel name”, then type in the name “Staff meetings”.
    • You can also change what type of channel it is by clicking on the channel type drop-down. There are three different channel types:
        • First, we have Standard, which means the channel is accessible to everyone on the team. This is the default privacy level when creating a channel.
        • Next is we have Shared With shared channels, you can share a channel…
          • With all members and owners of the source team and another team,
          • Specific members of the source team and another team,
          • Specific members of the source team and specific non-team members,
          • Or any combination of these.
        • Lastly, we have Private channels, which are only accessible to team members who have been added to the channel.
          • There are some important things to know about private channels before you create one.
          • A private channel isn’t accessible through SharePoint, nor can Teams administrators access the channel – which means if all members of a private channel leave, any files in that channel will be inaccessible.
          • Additionally, a private channel can’t be turned into a public one later.
  • For today’s demonstration, I want to create a Standard channel, so I’ll click on Standard in the drop-down menu.
  • Before finishing the channel creation process, you can choose to have the channel show up in everyone’s channel list by default by clicking the Automatically show this channel in everyone’s channel list check box. If you don’t check that checkbox, the channel will be hidden from the channel list. Team members can still access the channel by expanding the list of the team’s hidden channels.
  • To finish creating the new channel, at the bottom of the dialog box, click the Create button.

Wrapping up

  • At this point, we should be more familiar with how to create a new team using the Request Institutional Storage form, how to manage any storage locations we own using the IU Institutional Storage website, and how to manage a team in Microsoft Teams. To learn more about Microsoft 365 and the applications that are part of it, visit IT Training’s Microsoft 365 page at ittraining.iu.edu/microsoft.