Creating an MS Team

University Staff can create and own a team within Microsoft Teams which includes any combination of staff and/or students. Staff who create teams are responsible for managing.

  • Ownership: There should be at least two staff owners for each team
  • Membership: Team owners can add and remove members, add guests, change team settings, and handle administrative tasks
  • Content of the team: team owners can set different permissions for different Files/folders/members
  • For a full list of responsibilities please see Responsibilities of a team owner page

Creation options:

  • Create a team from scratch
  • Create using an existing team as a template
  • Create from an existing Office 365 Group
Responsibilities of a team owner
Guide for team owners

Instructions to create a Team

Teams icon

Select the Teams icon from the left navigation bar

Create a team

Click the Join or create a team and select the Create a team button

Image of the button to join an MS Team‌

Image of the creating a Team button

Select team type

Take care to choose the correct type of team you require as this cannot be changed later. º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ commonly use Class type teams for teaching and Other for all other cases.

Image showing the options of MS Teams types to choose from
Choose a team type

Enter a team name

Prefix your team name with a school, department, programme, project or similar short code, for example:

  • AACME Admin Support Team
  • SDCA Project ACE
  • PRJ0014801 – Microsoft Teams Implementation Project
  • LB-Line-Managers
  • IDR-<research project> (for Inter-Disciplinary Research where applicable)
  • ABCE - PhD <name of PhD researcher>
Add description

This will provide members with a brief overview of the team they have been invited to join.

Offensive or reserved words may be blocked. Please contact IT Services if you need a team with a blocked word.

Note: Module Class teams are automatically created and updated based on a data feed from º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ Student Information system, so it is best to avoid using module codes as complete team names

Image of Creating your Team details menu
Contact IT Services

Team setting

To avoid accidental information disclosure to all staff and students, public teams are automatically converted to private teams unless you notify IT Services of the reason that you need a public team.

Microsoft guidance - Public and Private Teams

Image showing how to rename your team

Adding members

You will automatically become the Team Owner. º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ policy requires a minimum of two owners except where authorised by a School Operations Manager or Head of Professional Service. You can add members and elevate them to 'owner' status.

You can add members during team creation, or you can opt to skip and add members once the team has been created.

Microsoft guidance - Team owner, member, and guest capabilities in Teams

Image showing adding members to a team

Manage settings

To add members and additional owners select the three dots (...) next to the Team profile to access the menu settings.

Select 'Manage Team' and 'Add members'. Once you have added members, to change their status from 'Member' to 'Owner', select the drop-down icon next to their name.

Image shows all the additional options available

Important

Permissions

All members have access add to the chat and files stored in each of the channel locations. However, to prevent members from creating private channels that have limited visibility to other member and owners, we recommend that you disable the option.

Go to the 'Settings' tab > 'Members permissions' > untick the box 'Allow members to create private channels'.

Image showing assigning members permissions

Additional information

Microsoft Teams information and guides 

Responsibilities of a Microsoft Team owner