Introduction
Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace. It serves as a hub for teamwork and collaboration by connecting you to applications, people and chats, data, and more - all within one space.
Teams is available to students, faculty, and staff with an Office 365 mailbox at https://teams.microsoft.com. You can download the Teams desktop application at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/download-app
Note: UTMail addresses (@utexas.edu) cannot be used forlogin to or invited as guest accounts in Teams. UT Austin faculty and staff must use their Office 365 (@austin.utexas.edu) address to login. UT Austin students are encouraged to claim and use an Office 365 mailbox to use Teams, but may use a personal (non UTMail) address if preferred.
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Save time by organizing all work in one hub
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Set up recurring or one-on-one staff meetings
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Collaborate in conversation stream posts
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Communicate via chat, audio, or video calls
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Make announcements using @mention to the team’s General channel or by pinning important documents as permanent tabs
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Share and organize content
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Use OneNote Staff notebook, which includes a Content Library for all members to read, a Collaboration Space where members can edit collaboratively, and private notebooks for each staff member that only they and the staff leader(s) can see
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Add tabs such as Planner, Power BI, and more
Learn about adding guests (non-UT Austin affiliates) to your Teams here. Join a Team
To join a team, you must be added by a Team owner.
Create a Team
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Login to the Teams application
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Select Teams in your left rail to view your teams.
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Select Join or create team > Create a new team.
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Select Staff to create a Staff Team. More information on Team types can be found here.
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Enter a name and optional description for your team, then select Next.
Learn more about creating Teams >>
Getting Started
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Navigation
- Activity Feed: Your activity feed aggregates important content from Teams, channels, chats, and applications you interact with to create an inbox for activity across Teams.
- Chat: 1-1 or group chat with users in our organization
- Teams: Access and communicate with Teams you're part of. They'll automatically appear here once you've been added by a Team owner
- Assignments: If you're part of a Classroom Team, you'll be able to create, upload, and access Assignments here
- Meetings: View your calendar and schedule meetings with users and Teams in our organization
- Files: Add and access content from cloud storage locations like UTBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more
- More Added Apps: View bots, tabs, connectors, or messaging extensions added to your current Teams
- Apps: View available bots, tabs, connectors, or messaging extensions you can to Teams
- Help: Get training on various topics, see what's new, share an idea, or report a problem
- New Chat: Start a new chat with on person or a group of people
- Search: Use the keyword search to find matches in messages, contacts, or files
- Profile: Change your profile picture, update your status, and update your notification settings here
- Join or Create a team: Join a public Team. If you would like a Team created, email microsoftteams@austin.utexas.edu with your desired Team name, Team owner, and the Department and Unit your Team represents.
- Start a Conversation: Send and participate in conversations and share content to members of your team
- Team: A team is a group of people gathered together to get something done.
- Channels: Teams are made up of channels, which give you the ability to create topic specific places to have conversations, upload content, and more
- Team Options: Create channels, add members, manage your team, and more using this menu
- Hidden Teams: Use the 'Hide team' and 'Unhide team' in the Team options menu to add and remove Teams from this list
Get Working
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Chat
Private
Start a 1-1 chat with someone by clicking the New Chat button
at the top of the Teams window and typing in the name of the person you want to send a message to.
Group
Use the New Chat button to start a new group chat and type the names of the people you'd like to chat with. From an existing chat, you can click the add people button and type the names of the people you'd like to add to your chat.
Team
To send a message to your Team, open the channel you want to send the message to and open the message format menu. Once you're ready, click the arrow at the bottom right to send your message.
Use @mentions to get someone's attention from a chat or channel conversation by typing the @ symbol before their name and selecting them from the menu. Users and groups you @mention will receive a notification.
Type @[Team Name] to message everyone on your Team. You can use @[Channel Name] to notify everyone who is following that channel.
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Working in Teams
A Team is a group of people who get together to get stuff done.
A Team can represent a department, sub-unit, project group, and more! Are you a member of multiple Teams? You can sort and customize which Teams you view by hiding or unhiding a team or reordering the Teams list. You can always learn more about teams and channels or find more information about a teammate to get the most out of your Team space!
Sending A Message to Everyone
To send a message to your Team, open the channel you want to send the message to and open the message format menu. Once you're ready, click the arrow at the bottom right to send your message.
Use @mentions to get someone's attention from a chat or channel conversation by typing the @ symbol before their name and selecting them from the menu. Users and groups you @mention will receive a notification. Type @[Team Name] to message everyone on your Team. You can use @[Channel Name] to notify everyone who is following that channel.
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Working in Channels
Channels are spaces within your Team you can dedicate to certain topics, events, share files, add applications, and share conversations.
Channels are designed to hold content specific to the topic, event, or category it represents. You can do things in channels like host online meetings for your Team, share documents, chat conversations, and integrate applications.
Document Collaboration
Each channel on your Team has a folder you can store files in that's available to all of your team members. Click on the Files tab at the top of a channel to view documents that have been added to it. Documents are saved to Sharepoint, which means you can co-author and collaborate in real time and have your changes sync.
Add folders from cloud storage locations like UTBox, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
Click on a file in your document library to open it. Open the more options menu to open the document in different locations and have changes sync as you make them. Use the Start a conversation button to create a threaded conversation around a document.
Learn about teams and channels>>
Learn more about editing files in Teams>>
Notifications
You can get notifications on missed activity from Team channels by following them.
Learn more about how to favorite or follow a channel>>
Channel Management
- Create a new channel
- Delete a channel
- Change a channel name
- See who's in a channel
- See all the channels in a team
- Check a channel for notifications
- Send an email to a channel
- Auto-favorite channels for the whole team
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Tabs and Connectors
Tabs
Use tabs in channels to connect your Team to Office 365 and third-party applications and services like websites, Office documents, Trello, JIRA, and more. Each channel is automatically provisioned with a Conversations and Files tab. Click the + icon to see a list of available tabs you can add.
Connectors
You can use connectors in each channel to get updates on activity in services like Trello, GitHub, Twitter, and more. Click on the channel's more options menu to open the list of available connectors.
Using Teams and Other Apps
Microsoft Teams works as a hub for your business and productivity applications by providing built-in integration opportunities for a wide variety of Office 365 and third-party applications.
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Teams, Sharepoint, and Document Storage
Each Team will automatically have a Sharepoint Team site provisioned for it upon creation. Sharepoint acts as the backbone of your Team's document library, and can be accessed from the Files tab within any channel. Click Open in Sharepoint to navigate to your Sharepoint Team site.
In Sharepoint, Channel names represent folders, and files that are shared with your Team will be available in the Files tab of the folder they are shared in.
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Adding More Apps to Teams
Tabs
Use tabs in channels to connect your Team to Office 365 and third-party applications and services like websites, Office documents, Trello, JIRA, and more. Each channel is automatically provisioned with a Conversations and Files tab. Click the + icon to see a list of available tabs you can add.
Connectors
You can use connectors in each channel to get updates on activity in services like Trello, GitHub, Twitter, and more. Click on the channel's more options menu to open the list of available connectors.
