Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that ties together multiple Microsoft applications and services in one location to facilitate communication and collaboration within and between units at Indiana University. Accessing your storage through Microsoft Teams can be confusing and complicated, however. This session focuses on using Microsoft Teams to access your files stored in Microsoft Storage, as well as how to control access to files in Microsoft storage through Microsoft Teams.
About this session
- Instructor: Beth Lynn Nolen
- Duration: 24 minutes 47 seconds
- Audience: IU instructors, staff, and students
Understanding Storage in Microsoft Teams
Description of the video:
[music] Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that ties together multiple Microsoft applications and services in one location to facilitate communication and collaboration within and between units at Indiana University. Microsoft Teams also connects to Microsoft’s cloud storage platform, allowing easy access to files you’ve stored in your team as well as your individual files. In this session, we’ll focus on how Microsoft storage works with Microsoft Teams. Specifically, we’ll cover the following topics: We’ll discuss how storage is handled in Microsoft Teams, learn where we can find our files in the Microsoft Teams app, and explore how to control access to files in Microsoft Teams. This video assumes you’ve either watched the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365, or that you have a basic understanding of how storage works in Microsoft 365. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft 365’s storage structure, you may want to watch Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365 before watching this video. As a heads-up, your Microsoft Teams interface may look different than what’s being presented here, and some features may not be available yet in your version of Microsoft Teams. Before we begin, let’s briefly review the structure of the underlying storage in Microsoft 365. All storage in Microsoft 365 is handled by SharePoint. SharePoint has two major parts, Sites and My Sites. Sites are the institutional storage spaces typically created when a user creates a team through the Request Institutional Storage form on Storage at IU and serves as that team’s cloud storage space. My Sites are the individual storage spaces associated with each individual user account. [silence] As discussed in Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams can access SharePoint storage in three ways. Microsoft Teams accesses SharePoint Sites through the Files tab in an individual channel for file storage. Files directly uploaded to a conversation in a channel are stored with the channel’s files on the Files tab. Microsoft Teams also accesses SharePoint My Sites through the Files tab in individual chats in the Chat app. Files uploaded directly via a private chat are accessible through the Files tab in that chat. You can also access your Sites and My Sites storage through the Files application within Microsoft Teams. When we look at two of the three ways that Microsoft Teams accesses storage, there’s a clear distinction within Microsoft Teams between a conversation that happens in a channel and a standalone chat that mirrors how SharePoint storage is split between institutional and individual storage. Conversations in a standard channel in a team are available to all team members and guests. Any files uploaded to that conversation are accessible through the channel’s Files tab, which is also available to all team members and guests. The file storage associated with that channel is contained in a folder named after the channel in the team’s SharePoint Site’s document library. SharePoint Sites are institutional storage. Chats, on the other hand, are private and limited only to the people involved in the chat. Any file uploaded to a chat is available to all chat participants via the Files tab in that particular chat. Files shared within a chat are stored within the “Microsoft Teams Chat Files” folder in the My Sites storage of the person who uploaded the file. SharePoint My Sites are individual storage. Let’s explore how to access files stored in SharePoint from Microsoft Teams. There are three main ways to do this: through a channel’s Files tab, through the files tab in a chat, and through the Files app in Microsoft Teams. The first method we’ll explore is the most straightforward – accessing the files through a channel’s Files tab. As a heads-up, I’m using Grid view to view my teams in Microsoft Teams – if you’re using list view, the steps here will be slightly different. To start in Grid view, navigate to the team containing the files you want to work with. For me, I want to access the team named O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab, so I’ll click on Teams in the app bar on the left side of the screen, then click on the O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab tile in the list of teams. The selected team will display, and we see the General channel. From here, in the list of channels on the left side of the screen, click on the channel you want to work with. For today’s demonstration, I’ll choose the Project Planning channel. If you’re using list view to view your teams, in the navigation on the left side of the screen, look for the team you want to work with, and if necessary, click on the team’s name to expand the list of channels. Then, in the list of channels that appears under the team’s name, click on the channel you want to work with. [silence] From here on out, the steps will be the same whether you’re viewing your teams in List view or Grid view. The selected channel loads and displays the Posts tab by default. In the Project Planning channel I’m viewing, we can see a conversation that includes an image of a map. This image was directly uploaded to the conversation, so when we switch to the Files tab in a moment, we’ll be able to see it located in the contents of the Files tab. To view this channel’s file storage, I’ll click on the Files tab. We see several files here, as well as the map image that was uploaded as part of that conversation we saw on the Posts tab. As a reminder, any files that are uploaded to a conversation in a channel are stored in that channel’s storage, accessible through the Files tab. Next, let’s see how to access files through a chat’s Files tab. We’ll need to be in the Chat app to do this, so in the App bar on the left side of the screen, click on Chat. Next, to open the chat that contains the files you want to view, click on the desired chat. In this chat, we see a picture of a cat that’s been shared as part of the chat. To see this picture in the Files tab, along with any other files that may have been shared during the chat, click on the Files tab. Here we see all the files that have been shared in the chat – in this particular chat, only one file has been shared, anya.png. We can use the Files app to access files in both Sites and My Sites. The Files app is accessible through the app bar on the left side of the Microsoft Teams window. In newer versions of Microsoft Teams, you may see the OneDrive app instead of the Files app. The two apps are essentially the same, and the instructions in this video will work for both the Files app and the OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams. On the left side of the screen we have the navigation pane, split into two sections – Let’s see how to access our files using the Files app. To start, in the app bar on the far-left side of the screen, click on Files. The Files app displays. If you’ve accessed Microsoft storage through OneDrive or the Microsoft 365 app, the layout of the Files app should look somewhat familiar to you. On the left side of the screen we have the navigation pane, split into two sections – the top section focuses on files in your My Site, while the Quick Access section provides access to SharePoint Sites storage. Many (if not all) of the SharePoint Sites you see in this list will have the same names as the teams you’re a member of, since each team’s files are stored in a SharePoint site. The Files app behaves very similarly to OneDrive. If you’re not already familiar with how to navigate and use OneDrive, you’ll want to watch the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365. [silence] As a reminder, team members have write access to all files stored in standard or shared channels in a team as a privilege of team membership. This is how team membership works in Microsoft Teams – there’s no way to modify this behavior. If you have someone who needs to access these files, but isn’t a member of the team yet, the easiest way to manage their access is to add them to the team. If someone outside of your team needs to access one or more files or folders stored inside the team’s SharePoint Site storage, but you don’t want them to be able to attend standard channel meetings, access all the files within a team, or participate in team conversations, you can grant them direct access to team files or any subset of team files separately from the team. There are two methods of doing this: you can give direct access to specific files or folders, or you can give them access using a share link. We’ll explore how both of these methods work today. One important thing to remember about granting access to files is that if you grant someone access to a specific folder or file, that permission will have to be managed separately from team membership – even if the person is added as a team member in the future or is a current team member. Removing someone from a team won’t remove any access they were given through direct access permissions or share links. As a heads-up, unless the team you’re working with has been set up for working with external collaborators, you won’t be able to share files in a team with people outside of IU. While Teams and SharePoint will act like the external user has been granted access to a file or folder, the person for whom you’re attempting to grant access won’t be able to access the files, regardless of what permission level you grant them. It’s important to be aware of this behavior when trying to grant access to a file in a SharePoint Site, and to make sure your team is set up to work with external collaborators before attempting to share a file with an external user. If you’re not sure whether or not the team you’re working in was set up to work with external collaborators, check with the team’s owner to learn more. If you’re the owner of a team and want to see whether your team was set up for external sharing, you can check this by visiting the Manage Storage page, accessible through the IU Institutional Storage page at securestorage.webhost.iu.edu. For more information about enabling external sharing in an existing team, check out the IU Knowledge Base article Enable external sharing in Microsoft Teams at IU at kb.iu.edu/d/bgov. The team I’m working with today wasn’t set up to share with people outside of IU, so that option will be greyed out in the permissions list when I’m sharing a file. [silence] Before we dive into granting access to folders and files, let’s take a moment to explore how file access in SharePoint works. As a refresher for those who watched the Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365 video, access to files stored in a SharePoint site is controlled via team membership. If you’re a member of a team, you can edit any file stored in a standard or shared channel within that team. Let’s take a closer look at how permissions are structured for a team in Microsoft Teams. There are two different systems at work granting access to files: Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. When a team is created in Microsoft Teams, several SharePoint groups are created that control access to the team’s files and grant other permissions inside of Teams. Adding someone to a team also adds them to one of these groups, based on their role when added to the team. People who are added as a team owner are added to the Owners group, while those added as members are added to the Members group. If someone outside of the team needs access to a file or folder, they can be given access permissions without being added to the team. However, that access will need to be managed separately from team membership, even if someone is added to a team later on. Team membership and either granting access via a share link or direct access are methods of granting access that act independently of each other. Removing one type of access will not affect the other. [silence] In SharePoint, your access to a file or folder is determined by the highest level of access you have for that item. If you have access through team membership and through direct access to an item, those two permissions are combined and whichever permission level is higher is the permission level you have for the file. A more detailed example of how this works can be found in the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365. Now that we have a better understanding of how file access works, let’s see how to grant someone access to folders and files stored in a SharePoint Site. One method of allowing access to files stored in a SharePoint site is to grant direct access to a file or folder. This method makes the file show up in the Shared sections of OneDrive, the Microsoft 365 app, and the Files app within Microsoft Teams for whoever you share the file with. If you’re planning on an ongoing collaboration with an individual or a group, this is the best method to use. This method will work whether you’re sharing a file from the Files app or from a channel’s Files tab. One important thing to note about granting direct access to files or folders is that there isn’t a way to remove a specific person’s direct access to multiple files or folders within a SharePoint Site all at once. Instead, you’ll have to go to each individual folder or file you granted someone direct access to and remove their direct access permissions from there. If you’re not already in Microsoft Teams, you can manage access to a file from OneDrive, or you can open Microsoft Teams and follow the steps I’m about to demonstrate. To grant someone direct access, first, navigate to the file or folder you want to share. Within Microsoft Teams, we can do this in either the Files tab of the channel containing the file you want to share or through the Files app. Since I’m already in the Files app, I’ll use it to navigate to the O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab team, then open the Project Planning folder. Next, point to the file or folder that you want to grant someone access to. For my demonstration today, I’ll point to the folder Premiere Rush workshop planning. Then, click the three-dots, or “Show more actions for this item” menu button, and in the menu that appears, click on Manage access. The Manage Access dialog box will appear. Before continuing, let’s take a closer look at the different parts of the dialog box. The Manage Access dialog box has three tabs in it that allow us to control access to a file: the People tab, the Groups tab, and the Links tab. The People tab is used to grant direct access to a file or folder to an individual user. You can add and remove access privileges for individual users on this tab. The Groups tab shows the groups that control access to a team and the files contained in the associated SharePoint Site. You’ll typically see four groups listed here that all start with the Team’s name – two owners groups, a members group, and a visitors group. You can add members to the groups listed here though the Members tab in the team’s settings in Microsoft Teams. The Links tab shows a list of share links that have been created for a specific file, as well as information about who can access the file for each link. To grant someone access to the item, in the upper right corner of the Manage Access dialog box, click the Grant Access icon – it looks like a person with a plus sign on their lower right side. The Grant access dialog box will appear. From here, in the To: Name, group, or email text entry field, type in the name, username, or email address of the person you want to grant access to. For demonstration purposes, I’ll grant access to one of IT Training’s demonstration accounts here, Abby Abernathy. Her username is demo31. When her name appears underneath the text entry field, I’ll click on it to select it. Once I’ve selected the person I want to grant access to, I can set what kind of access they have to the file by clicking the role drop-down to the right of the To: field. Right now it’s displaying the icon for Can Edit, which looks like a pencil. I’ll change their access to Can View by clicking on that option in the drop-down menu. After selecting the access role, I’ll click the Grant access button to continue granting Abby Abernathy access to the file. Then, I’ll close the Access Granted dialog box by clicking the Close button in the upper right corner of the dialog box. If I reopen the Manage access dialog box, I can see the person I just granted access to on the People tab. To revoke someone’s direct access, on the People tab of the Manage Access dialog box, to the far right of the name of the person you want to remove, click on the Role icon. The icon’s appearance varies depending on the role the user has – if they have edit access, the Role icon will appear as a pencil. If they have view access, the icon will appear as an eye. In the access summary view, under the Ways this person has access heading, click the Direct Access heading for the role to expand the section. Then, click on the Select a role for the user drop down menu, and in the menu that appears, click on Remove direct access. A dialog box will appear, confirming you want to remove the person’s direct access, and reminding you that they may still have access to the item through a group or a link. Click the Remove button here to continue. [silence] Keep in mind if the person who’s access you’re removing also happens to be a team member, revoking their access in this way will not completely revoke their access as they still have permission to write the file through the group that controls access for team members. Unfortunately, you can’t see the individual members of a SharePoint group through the Manage Access dialog box. To check and see if someone is a member of a team (and the SharePoint groups associated with the team), in Microsoft Teams, a team’s owner can check the Members list in the Manage team options for a given team. [silence] Another method is to grant access using a share link and then distribute the link to whoever needs access to the file. This method is useful when you need to share a document or folder with a group of people, but don’t expect an ongoing collaboration – in other words, granting access using a share link is a temporary collaboration or information-sharing solution. One important thing to know about sharing with a share link is that this method doesn’t allow the file to appear in the Shared, Browse by, or Locations views in OneDrive or the Microsoft 365 app of the person you’re giving the share link to. The person will only be able to access the file through the share link you give them. Files shared using a share link can have either Can view or Can edit permissions applied to them. Microsoft Word documents also have an added available permission level of Can review, which limits editing access to comments and tracked changes only. To start, first, navigate to the file you wish to share. I’ll demonstrate sharing the map image we saw earlier that’s located in the Project Planning channel folder. Next, point to the file you want to share, and click on the Share icon when it appears. It looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it. I’ll click the Share icon for the file hotel_map.png. The Share file dialog box will appear – to set the access permissions for the share link, click the Sharing settings icon near the top right of the dialog box – it looks like a little gear. There are different levels of access you can grant when sharing a file or folder using a share link. First is Anyone – this means the file is accessible to anyone who has the link. Files with this permission are indexed within the IU Microsoft 365 tenant and available to anyone from IU who searches for a particular file or a term related to that file. If you choose the Anyone permission, it’s best practice to set an expiration date and a password for the link to help limit unauthorized access to the file. This access level should only be used as a last resort, and only when individuals outside of IU need to access a resource via a hyperlink. It’s better to grant individuals direct access to the link rather than using the Anyone permission, unless you truly want anyone to be able to access the particular file. As I mentioned earlier, this team was not set up for working with external collaborators, so the Anyone option is grayed out for me. The next access level is People in Indiana University. This makes the file available to anyone who can log in to Microsoft with an @iu.edu email address. Files with this permission are also indexed and available to anyone from IU who searches for them, just like with the Anyone permission. For example, if I search for “resume” in the search bar in Microsoft Teams, and then click on Files to show only files that match the search terms I entered, you can see there are plenty of results that show up here – these are all accessible by anyone at IU. You should only use this permission level if your file is truly something that anyone at IU may access, since any IU user can find the file by searching for its name or contents. We also have People with existing access – this means the link will only work for people who already have access to the linked resource. Last, we have People you choose. This makes it so only certain people can access the file. You can grant access to anyone with an email address, even people outside of IU. If the person you’re granting access to doesn’t already have a Microsoft account associated with their email address, they’ll need to create a free Microsoft account before they can access the file. Additionally, the team in which the file resides must be configured to allow for sharing with external collaborators for non-IU users to be able to access the file using the link, even if you’ve added their email address here. Once you choose the access level for the file, you can set the access role for the file using the More Settings drop-down. I’ll leave the access role at Can edit for today’s example. To apply the changes, click the Apply button at the bottom of the Sharing settings dialog box. You’ll be brought back to the Share dialog box. If you're sharing a link with a specific person, type in their name, username, or email address in the Add a name, group, or email text entry field. I’ll type in the username for Abby Abernathy again, which is demo31, then I’ll click on her name when it shows up in the pop-up under the text entry field. Whether I’m sharing the link with a specific person or sharing the link with anyone, at this point, I can click the Copy Link button so I can share the link with someone in a chat message or send it to them through an email. If I’m giving access to a specific person, I can click on the Send button to send them an email that contains a link to the file so they can access it. [silence] At this point, we should be more familiar with how to access Microsoft storage through the Microsoft Teams app, as well as how to share files with people outside of a team and manage their access level. 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. [music]
Introduction
- Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that ties together multiple Microsoft applications and services in one location to facilitate communication and collaboration within and between units at Indiana University.
- Microsoft Teams also connects to Microsoft’s cloud storage platform, allowing easy access to files you’ve stored in your team as well as your individual files.
- In this session, we’ll focus on how Microsoft storage works with Microsoft Teams. Specifically, we’ll cover the following topics:
- how storage is handled in Microsoft Teams
- where we can find our files in the Microsoft Teams app
- how to control access to files in Microsoft Teams
- This video assumes you’ve either watched the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365, or that you have a basic understanding of how storage works in Microsoft 365. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft 365’s storage structure, you may want to watch Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365 before watching this video.
- As a heads-up, your Microsoft Teams interface may look different than what’s being presented here, and some features may not be available yet in your version of Microsoft Teams.
Review: Microsoft storage structure
- Before we begin, let’s briefly review the structure of the underlying storage in Microsoft 365.
- All storage in Microsoft 365 is handled by SharePoint. SharePoint has two major parts, Sites and My Sites.
- Sites are the institutional storage spaces typically created when a user creates a team through the Request Institutional Storage form on Storage at IU and serves as that team’s cloud storage space.
- My Sites are the individual storage spaces associated with each individual user account.
Accessing storage in Microsoft Teams
- As discussed in Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams can access SharePoint storage in three ways.
- Microsoft Teams accesses SharePoint Sites through the Files tab in an individual channel for file storage. Files directly uploaded to a conversation in a channel are stored with the channel’s files on the Files tab.
- Microsoft Teams also accesses SharePoint My Sites through the Files tab in individual chats in the Chat app. Files uploaded directly via a private chat are accessible through the Files tab in that chat.
- You can also access your Sites and My Sites storage through the Files application within Microsoft Teams.
- When we look at two of the three ways that Microsoft Teams accesses storage, there’s a clear distinction within Microsoft Teams between a conversation that happens in a channel and a standalone chat that mirrors how SharePoint storage is split between institutional and individual storage.
- Conversations in a standard channel in a team are available to all team members and guests.
- Any files uploaded to that conversation are accessible through the channel’s Files tab, which is also available to all team members and guests.
- The file storage associated with that channel is contained in a folder named after the channel in the team’s SharePoint Site’s document library. SharePoint Sites are institutional storage.
- Chats, on the other hand, are private and limited only to the people involved in the chat.
- Any file uploaded to a chat is available to all chat participants via the Files tab in that particular chat.
- Files shared within a chat are stored within the “Microsoft Teams Chat Files” folder in the My Sites storage of the person who uploaded the file. SharePoint My Sites are individual storage.
- Conversations in a standard channel in a team are available to all team members and guests.
Accessing files stored in SharePoint
- Let’s explore how to access files stored in SharePoint from Microsoft Teams. There are three main ways to do this: through a channel’s Files tab, through the files tab in a chat, and through the Files app in Microsoft Teams.
Accessing files through the Files tab in a channel
- The first method we’ll explore is the most straightforward – accessing the files through a channel’s Files tab.
- As a heads-up, I’m using Grid view to view my teams in Microsoft Teams – if you’re using list view, the steps here will be slightly different.
-
To start in Grid view:
- Navigate to the team containing the files you want to work with. For me, I want to access the team named O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab, so I’ll click on Teams in the app bar on the left side of the screen, then click on the O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab tile in the list of teams.
- The selected team will display, and we see the General channel. From here, in the list of channels on the left side of the screen, click on the channel you want to work with. For today’s demonstration, I’ll choose the Project Planning channel.
-
If you’re using list view to view your teams:
- In the navigation on the left side of the screen, look for the team you want to work with, and if necessary, click on the team’s name to expand the list of channels. Then, in the list of channels that appears under the team’s name, click on the channel you want to work with.
- From here on out, the steps will be the same whether you’re viewing your teams in List view or Grid view.
- The selected channel loads and displays the Posts tab by default. In the Project Planning channel I’m viewing, we can see a conversation that includes an image of a map. This image was directly uploaded to the conversation, so when we switch to the Files tab in a moment, we’ll be able to see it located in the contents of the Files tab.
- To view this channel’s file storage, I’ll click on the Files tab.
- We see several files here, as well as the map image that was uploaded as part of that conversation we saw on the Posts tab. As a reminder, any files that are uploaded to a conversation in a channel are stored in that channel’s storage, accessible through the Files tab.
Accessing files through the Files tab in a chat
- Next, let’s see how to access files through a chat’s Files tab. We’ll need to be in the Chat app to do this, so in the App bar on the left side of the screen, click on Chat.
- Next, to open the chat that contains the files you want to view, click on the desired chat.
- In this chat, we see a picture of a cat that’s been shared as part of the chat. To see this picture in the Files tab, along with any other files that may have been shared during the chat, click on the Files tab.
- Here we see all the files that have been shared in the chat – in this particular chat, only one file has been shared, anya.png.
Accessing files through the Files app
- We can use the Files app to access files in both Sites and My Sites. The Files app is accessible through the app bar on the left side of the Microsoft Teams window.
- In newer versions of Microsoft Teams, you may see the OneDrive app instead of the Files app. The two apps are essentially the same, and the instructions in this video will work for both the Files app and the OneDrive app in Microsoft Teams.
- Let’s see how to access our files using the Files app.
- To start, in the app bar on the far-left side of the screen, click on Files.
- The Files app displays. If you’ve accessed Microsoft storage through OneDrive or the Microsoft 365 app, the layout of the Files app should look somewhat familiar to you. On the left side of the screen we have the navigation pane, split into two sections – the top section focuses on files in your My Site, while the Quick Access section provides access to SharePoint Sites storage.
- Many (if not all) of the SharePoint Sites you see in this list will have the same names as the teams you’re a member of, since each team’s files are stored in a SharePoint site.
- The Files app behaves very similarly to OneDrive – if you’re not already familiar with how to navigate and use OneDrive, you’ll want to watch the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365.
Controlling access
- As a reminder, team members have write access to all files shared in standard or shared channels in a team as a privilege of team membership. This is how team membership works in Microsoft Teams – there’s no way to modify this behavior. If you have someone who needs to access these files, but isn’t a member of the team yet, the easiest way to manage their access is to add them to the team.
- If someone outside of your team needs to access one or more files or folders stored inside the team’s SharePoint Site storage, but you don’t want them to be able to attend standard channel meetings, access all the files within a team, or participate in team conversations, you can grant them direct access to team files or any subset of team files separately from the team.
- There are two methods of doing this: you can give them access using a share link, or you can give them direct access to specific files or folders. We’ll explore how both methods work today.
- One important thing to remember about granting access to files is that if you grant someone access to a specific folder or file, that permission will have to be managed separately from team membership – even if the person is added as a team member in the future or is a current team member. Removing someone from a team won’t remove any access they were given through direct access permissions or share links.
Important information about working with external collaborators
- As a heads-up, unless the team you’re working with has been set up for working with external collaborators, you won’t be able to share files in a team with people outside of IU.
- While Teams and SharePoint will act like the external user has been granted access to a file or folder, the person for whom you’re attempting to grant access won’t be able to access the files, regardless of what permission level you grant them. It’s important to be aware of this behavior when trying to grant access to a file in a SharePoint Site, and to make sure your team is set up to work with external collaborators before attempting to share a file with an external user.
- If you’re not sure whether or not the team you’re working in was set up to work with external collaborators, check with the team’s owner to learn more.
- If you’re the owner of a team and want to see whether your team was set up for external sharing, you can check this by visiting the Manage Storage page, accessible through the IU Institutional Storage page at https://securestorage.webhost.iu.edu.
- For more information about enabling external sharing in an existing team, check out the IU Knowledge Base article Enable external sharing in Microsoft Teams at IU at https://kb.iu.edu/d/bgov.
- The team I’m working with today wasn’t set up to share with people outside of IU, so that option will be greyed out in the permissions list when I’m sharing a file.
Understanding how file access works
- Before we dive into granting access to folders and files, let’s take a moment to explore how file access in SharePoint works.
- As a refresher for those who watched the Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365 video, access to files stored in a SharePoint site is controlled via team membership – if you’re a member of a team, you can edit any file stored in a standard or shared channel within that team.
- Let’s take a closer look at how permissions are structured for a team in Microsoft Teams.
- There are two different systems at work granting access to files: Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.
- When a team is created in Microsoft Teams, several SharePoint groups are created that control access to the team’s files and grant other permissions inside of Teams.
- Adding someone to a team also adds them to one of these groups, based on their role when added to the team.
- People who are added as a team owner are added to the Owners group, while those added as members are added to the Members group.
- If someone outside of the team needs access to a file or folder, they can be given access permissions without being added to the team. However, that access will need to be managed separately from team membership, even if someone is added to a team later on.
- Team membership and either granting access via a share link or direct access are methods of granting access that act independently of each other. Removing one type of access will not affect the other.
- In SharePoint, your access to a file or folder is determined by the highest level of access you have for that item. If you have access through team membership and through direct access to an item, those two permissions are combined and whichever permission level is higher is the permission level you have for the file.
- A more detailed example of how this works can be found in the video Understanding Storage with OneDrive and Microsoft 365.
- Now that we have a better understanding of how file access works, let’s see how to grant someone access to folders and files.
Granting direct access to a file or folder
- One method of allowing access to files stored in a SharePoint site is to grant direct access to a file or folder.
- This method makes the file show up in the Shared sections of OneDrive, the Microsoft 365 app, and the Files app within Microsoft Teams for whoever you share the file with.
- If you’re planning on an ongoing collaboration with an individual or a group, this is the best method to use.
- This method will work whether you’re sharing a file from the Files app or from a channel’s Files tab.
- One important thing to note about granting direct access to files or folders is that there isn’t a way to remove a specific person’s direct access to multiple files or folders within a SharePoint Site all at once. Instead, you’ll have to go to each individual folder or file you granted someone direct access to and remove their direct access permissions from there.
- If you’re not already in Microsoft Teams, you can manage access to a file from OneDrive, or you can open Microsoft Teams and follow the steps I’m about to demonstrate.
- To grant someone direct access, first, navigate to the file or folder you want to share. Within Microsoft Teams, we can do this in either the Files tab of the channel containing the file you want to share or through the Files app – since I’m already in the Files app, I’ll use it to navigate to the O365-IU-UITS-TeamsCollab team, then open the Project Planning folder.
- Next, point to the file or folder that you want to grant someone access to. For my demonstration today, I’ll point to the folder Premiere Rush workshop planning.
- Then, click the three-dots, or “Show more actions for this item” menu button, and in the menu that appears, click on Manage access.
- The Manage Access dialog box will appear. Before continuing, let’s take a closer look at the different parts of the dialog box.
- The Manage Access dialog box has three tabs in it that allow us to control access to a file: the People tab, the Groups tab, and the Links tab.
- The People tab is used to grant direct access to a file or folder to an individual user. You can add and remove access privileges for individual users on this tab.
- The Groups tab shows the groups that control access to a team and the files contained in the associated SharePoint Site. You’ll typically see four groups listed here that all start with the Team’s name – two owners groups, a members group, and a visitors group. You can add members to the groups listed here though the Members tab in the team’s settings in Microsoft Teams.
- The Links tab shows a list of share links that have been created for a specific file, as well as information about who can access the file for each link.
- To grant someone access to the item, in the upper right corner of the Manage Access dialog box, click the Grant Access icon – it looks like a person with a plus sign on their lower right side.
- The Grant access dialog box will appear. From here, in the To: Name, group, or email text entry field, type in the name, username, or email address of the person you want to grant access to. For demonstration purposes, I’ll grant access to one of IT Training’s demonstration accounts here, Abby Abernathy. Her username is demo31. When her name appears underneath the text entry field, I’ll click on it to select it.
- Once I’ve selected the person I want to grant access to, I can set what kind of access they have to the file by clicking the role drop-down to the right of the To: field – right now it’s displaying the icon for Can Edit, which looks like a pencil. I’ll change their access to Can View by clicking on that option in the drop-down menu.
- After selecting the access role, I’ll click the Grant access button to finish granting demo31 access to the file. Then, I’ll close the Access Granted dialog box by clicking the Close button in the upper right corner of the dialog box.
- If I reopen the Manage access dialog box, I can see the person I just granted access to on the People tab.
- The Manage Access dialog box has three tabs in it that allow us to control access to a file: the People tab, the Groups tab, and the Links tab.
Revoking direct access to a file
- To revoke someone’s direct access, on the People tab of the Manage Access dialog box, to the far right of the name of the person you want to remove, click on the Role icon. The icon’s appearance varies depending on the role the user has – if they have edit access, the Role icon will appear as a pencil. If they have view access, the icon will appear as an eye.
- In the access summary view, under the Ways this person has access heading, click the Direct Access heading for the role to expand the section. Then, click on the Select a role for the user drop down menu, and in the menu that appears, click on Remove direct access.
- A dialog box will appear, confirming you want to remove the person’s direct access, and reminding you that they may still have access to the item through a group or a link. Click the Remove button here to continue.
- Keep in mind if the person who’s access you’re removing also happens to be a team member, revoking their access in this way will not completely revoke their access as they still have permission to write the file through the group that controls access for team members. Unfortunately, you can’t see the individual members of a SharePoint group through the Manage Access dialog box.
- To check and see if someone is a member of a team (and the SharePoint groups associated with the team), in Microsoft Teams, a team’s owner can check the Members list in the Manage team options for a given team.
Granting access using a share link
- Another method is to grant access using a share link and distribute the link to whoever needs access to the file.
- This method is useful when you need to share a document or folder with a group of people, but don’t expect an ongoing collaboration – in other words, granting access using a share link is a temporary collaboration or information-sharing solution.
- One important thing to know about sharing with a share link is that this method doesn’t allow the file to appear in the Shared, Browse by, or Locations views in OneDrive or the Microsoft 365 app of the person you’re giving the share link to. The person will only be able to access the file through the share link you give them.
- Files shared using a share link can have either Can view or Can edit permissions applied to them.
- Microsoft Word documents also have an added available permission level of Can review, which limits editing access to comments and tracked changes only.
- To start, first, navigate to the file you wish to share. I’ll demonstrate sharing the map image we saw earlier that’s located in the Project Planning channel folder.
- Next, point to the file you want to share, and click on the Share icon when it appears. It looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it. I’ll click the Share icon for the file hotel_map.png.
- The Share file dialog box will appear – to set the access permissions for the share link, click the Sharing settings icon near the top right of the dialog box – it looks like a little gear.
- There are different levels of access you can grant when sharing a file or folder using a share link.
- First is Anyone – this means the file is accessible to anyone who has the link.
- Files with this permission are indexed within the IU Microsoft 365 tenant and available to anyone from IU who searches for a particular file or a term related to that file.
- If you choose the Anyone permission, it’s best practice to set an expiration date and a password for the link to help limit unauthorized access to the file.
- This access level should only be used as a last resort, and only when individuals outside of IU need to access a resource via a hyperlink. It’s better to grant individuals direct access to the link rather than using the Anyone permission, unless you truly want anyone to be able to access the particular file.
- As I mentioned earlier, this team was not set up for working with external collaborators, so the Anyone option is grayed out for me.
- The next access level is People in Indiana University. This makes the file available to anyone who can log in to Microsoft with an @iu.edu email address.
- Files with this permission are also indexed and available to anyone from IU who searches for them, just like with the Anyone permission.
- For example, if I search for “resume” in the search bar in Microsoft Teams, and click on Files to show only files that match the search terms I entered, you can see there are plenty of results that show up here – these are all accessible by anyone at IU.
- You should only use this permission level if your file is truly something that anyone at IU may access, since any IU user can find the file by searching for its name or contents.
- Files with this permission are also indexed and available to anyone from IU who searches for them, just like with the Anyone permission.
- We also have People with existing access – this means the link will only work for people who already have access to the linked resource.
- Last, we have People you choose. This makes it so only certain people can access the file.
- You can grant access to anyone with an email address, even people outside of IU. If the person you’re adding doesn’t already have a Microsoft account associated with their email address, they’ll need to create a free Microsoft account before they can access the file.
- Additionally, the team in which the file resides must be configured to allow for sharing with external collaborators for non-IU users to be able to access the file using the link, even if you’ve added their email address here.
- Once you choose the access level for the file, you can set the access role for the file using the More Settings drop-down. I’ll leave the access role at Can edit for today’s example.
- To apply the changes, click the Apply button at the bottom of the Sharing settings dialog box.You’ll be brought back to the Share dialog box.
- If sharing a link with a specific person, type in their name, username, or email address in the Add a name, group, or email text entry field. I’ll type in the username for one of our demo accounts, demo31, then I’ll click on their name when they show up in the pop-up under the text entry field.
- Whether I’m sharing the link with a specific person or sharing the link with anyone, at this point, I can click the Copy Link button so I can share the link with someone in a chat message or send it to them through an email.
- If I’m giving access to a specific person, I can click on the Send button to send them an email that contains a link to the file so they can access it.
- First is Anyone – this means the file is accessible to anyone who has the link.
Wrapping up
At this point, we should be more familiar with how to access Microsoft storage through the Microsoft Teams app, as well as how to share files with people outside of a team and manage their access level. 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.