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About this lesson

In this lesson, we'll discuss how to create Teams and Team Channels for your needs. Learn the difference between private and public channels, and how to control channel settings. 

Quick reference

Creating Teams and Channels

Creating teams and channels is one of the main activities in Teams.

When to use

Users can create a team and then add channels to the team to use for collaboration according to their needs.

Instructions

To create a team, just click on Join or create a team at the bottom of the Teams list. Give some thought to using a descriptive name so people will know the function and identity of the team. If the team will have guests, you may want to add "with guests" to the name for example so people know to treat conversations in that channel with a different level of privacy and confidentiality. The team can be public or private.

If the person creating the team is the Team's administrator, they can also create an Organizational team where everybody is subscribed automatically. Once created, the person who created the team is assigned to be the Team Owner and has special rights to control what Teams members can do. To access the setting, you click on the team, click the ellipses (...) and click Manage team. This brings up a page with Teams Owner can manage Members, Channels, Settings, and more. Clicking on Settings show many options to manage the team including the Team Picture and Member permissions. Member permissions is where you remove the ability for users to create channels, work with tabs, delete their own messages, and other capabilities that are granted by default.

To create a channel, click on the ellipses next to the Team name, and select Add Channel. Give some thought to the channel name so people know the function and identify the channel. You also specify if the channel is public or private. Members have to be invited to a private channel, whereas all members of a Team have access to a public channel. 

A channel has fewer configuration settings than a team, yet you access them the same way as a Team. Click on the ellipses (...) next to the channel name and select Manage settings. Also, note you can get a link to the channel or email address from the same menu.

You can hide, show, and pin a team or channel to stay focused on those you work with regularly.

Hints & tips

  • Explore the show/hide/pin mechanics as those become very useful in an active Teams deployment.
  • Encourage a company-wide policy for naming Teams and Channels. Having 20-30 Teams with confusing or unclear names can quickly lead to a confusing experience.
  • Be sure to treat channels and teams that have guests separately from those which are strictly internal. When other people join in the conversation, you want it to be clear to everyone that people outside the company have access to the chats, posts, and channel meetings and recordings.
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  • 00:04 Before we begin talking about creating and managing teams and channels,
  • 00:08 here are some leading thoughts.
  • 00:10 Anyone in your organization can create a team and
  • 00:13 by default, any team member then can create a channel.
  • 00:19 So as a company, you should have some thoughts around and
  • 00:22 a plan for who has administrative rights on teams.
  • 00:27 You should probably have more than one person,
  • 00:29 be a team administrator in a company of any size.
  • 00:33 Give some thought to creating policies around how team names are created.
  • 00:38 For example, it doesn't help to create a team called
  • 00:41 new projects if you have multiple teams involved in new projects.
  • 00:45 As a result, you don't know which one to post to.
  • 00:49 If a team is created for
  • 00:50 use by a department, the team name should include some reference to that department.
  • 00:55 Also be sure that the intent of the team and a channel name is clear.
  • 01:00 Create team names that designate if guests are allowed in the team.
  • 01:04 When you do that you have the best chance of making sure that it's clear to
  • 01:07 everyone.
  • 01:08 That all the chats, conversations, and content that occur in the team, and
  • 01:12 the channels in that team are suitable for people outside of your organization.
  • 01:17 Creating a team is easy.
  • 01:19 In this case, we're logged in as Irvin who's just a regular user,
  • 01:22 he's not a team administrator.
  • 01:25 Irvin looks over at these teams and he says, I need a new team for
  • 01:29 my special interest group.
  • 01:31 And so he's going to click Join or Create a team at the bottom of the screen.
  • 01:35 And now there are two choices create team or join team with a code.
  • 01:40 In this case, we're creating a team so we'll select Create team.
  • 01:44 And here you can see the choices build a team from scratch or
  • 01:48 create from existing Office 365 group or team.
  • 01:52 In most cases, you'll want to create a team from scratch,
  • 01:56 Irvin is a regular user that doesn't have administrative privileges.
  • 02:00 Megan is a team's administrator in Office 365 Administrator and
  • 02:04 has a slightly different set of choices.
  • 02:07 Now we're logged in as Megan, who is a team's administrator.
  • 02:12 When she creates a team,
  • 02:13 she has a different choice when she selects build teams from scratch.
  • 02:18 An organization wide team is one that everybody is automatically joined to.
  • 02:23 Consequently, it's not necessary to send invitations to join this team.
  • 02:28 Returning to Irvin we can see that he can create a private or a public team.
  • 02:33 In most cases, you'll want to create a public team,
  • 02:35 which means anyone in your company can join or be invited to join.
  • 02:39 A private team can only be seen by people who are members or teams administrators.
  • 02:46 And this is for a special interest group, we'll call it binge watchers, and
  • 02:51 we'll create this.
  • 02:52 The next thing he can do is add in people that he wants to invite to the group.
  • 02:56 This can be done now or of course you can do it later as well.
  • 02:59 We're going to have an ad marketing group because that's the people
  • 03:02 that he works with.
  • 03:03 Now the entire marketing group will receive a notification
  • 03:06 that they've been added to the team.
  • 03:09 Switching to Megan, we can see that she gets a notification
  • 03:13 in the lower right corner it says, new team you've been added to binge watchers.
  • 03:18 So she can click on that and she can see the new team in her listing.
  • 03:23 She'll also get the same notification via email if notification settings are set up
  • 03:27 for that, which we covered in a previous lesson.
  • 03:30 Returning to Irvin's team's app,
  • 03:33 Irvin decides that he would like Megan also to be a team owner.
  • 03:36 And this way she can manage the team if he's not available.
  • 03:40 So we click on the Ellipses and we click Manage teams.
  • 03:44 Here we can see that Megan is a member.
  • 03:48 On the right under role, Irvin can select owner for Megan and
  • 03:52 make Megan a co-owner of the team with Irvin.
  • 03:55 On this screen team owners have a special tab called settings.
  • 03:59 This is an important tab that allows team owners to control the behavior of
  • 04:03 the team.
  • 04:05 You can change the picture for example, which can be a lot of fun, so
  • 04:08 let's do that.
  • 04:10 And now we have a team appropriate picture.
  • 04:13 Clicking member permissions allows the team owners to control, how much
  • 04:18 authority team members have over channels and other actions within the team.
  • 04:23 So for example, you can determine whether or
  • 04:25 not team members can create their own channels.
  • 04:29 Other important settings include giving members the option to delete and
  • 04:33 or edit their messages in a team chat.
  • 04:35 In general this is a good idea, but
  • 04:37 there may be situations where you want to modify those settings.
  • 04:40 Team owners can enable guest permissions, allowing people with email addresses that
  • 04:45 are not your companies to join a team and participate in activities.
  • 04:50 This can be exceptionally valuable but needs to be managed carefully.
  • 04:53 Keep in mind that these settings may be disabled for
  • 04:56 the entire teams experienced by your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 Administrator.
  • 05:01 Now that we've added a team and adjusted the settings, let's add a channel.
  • 05:04 We'll click on the Ellipsis and then select Add channel.
  • 05:09 So let's add a Netflix channel to our binge group.
  • 05:13 You can provide a description and
  • 05:15 you have the option of saying whether there's a standard or a private channel.
  • 05:19 For the private channel as the description says
  • 05:22 this accessible only to a specific group of people within the team.
  • 05:25 Those that are invited to be members are added.
  • 05:29 Let me show you how private channels are hidden from view.
  • 05:32 Here you can see that on the left Megan's listings of teams and channels.
  • 05:37 And you can see the senior leadership channel has a lock icon
  • 05:40 indicating it's a private channel.
  • 05:43 Next to this is the listing for a different user,
  • 05:45 where the senior leadership channel is not visible, that's a private channel.
  • 05:50 The setting automatically show this channel and everyone's channel list.
  • 05:54 Will make sure that the channel that you've created is visible right away
  • 05:57 whenever people log into teams.
  • 06:00 Otherwise, there's a risk that the team could be marked as hidden.
  • 06:03 This is not the same as we saw before.
  • 06:06 With a hidden channel list invisible, this is hidden but discoverable.
  • 06:10 Let me show you, teams will automatically
  • 06:12 hide certain channels in order to reduce visual clutter.
  • 06:16 You can click on Hidden Channels to see the channels that aren't visible, and
  • 06:20 then click the channel that you want to view.
  • 06:22 If this was a private channel, it would not be listed here.
  • 06:26 So in this way you can control which channels are in your listing, and
  • 06:30 hide the ones that you don't use.
  • 06:33 And that's the importance of this setting automatically show this channel and
  • 06:36 everyone's channel list that we were discussing.
  • 06:40 Click the Ellipsis next to a channel and
  • 06:42 then manage channel to show the channel settings.
  • 06:45 If channel moderation is enabled,
  • 06:47 all posts have to be approved by the channel owners.
  • 06:50 In general, you want to leave this off, but
  • 06:52 there could be circumstances where this makes sense.
  • 06:55 By default, everyone can start a new post.
  • 06:58 There may be scenarios where you want to deny guests that capability.
  • 07:02 And if so, select everyone except guests can start a new post.
  • 07:08 So let's review creating and managing teams and channels.
  • 07:12 By default, everyone can create a Team and channels within them.
  • 07:16 Teams service administrators can create Organization wide teams.
  • 07:20 Team owners can elevate other members to be owners and adjust team settings.
  • 07:25 These settings include allowing team members to create channels, and
  • 07:29 private channels, and to edit and delete messages.
  • 07:33 Remember guests can be invited as team members when allowed, and
  • 07:37 channels when created can be made visible for all to discover.
  • 07:41 And users and the team's app can hide teams or
  • 07:44 channels to reduce visual clutter.
  • 07:47 In the next lesson,
  • 07:48 we'll talk about adding different kinds of file shares to teams.

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