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Microsoft have been adding lots of new features and applications to Office 365, such as Planner,Shifts and Microsoft Teams.

Collaborate for free with online versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Save documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online, in OneDrive. Office 365 as a platform: Reach 100 million Microsoft Office users with your web applications Introducing the Microsoft Teams Developer platform: Integrate your app to enable higher performing teams Engage more users by bringing your apps to Microsoft Outlook web, mobile, and desktop.

Taking on the likes of Slack, Microsoft describe Teams as a ‘chat-based workspace in Office 365’ allowing teams (internal only at this stage) to work together within one window to enhance teamwork. It's important to note that Microsoft Teams will be replacing Skype for Business (which will be retired 31st July 2021).

If you need any support adopting Microsoft Teams, please see our Microsoft Teams Services. You can also download this Quick Start PDF guide to give end users all the basics.

Need Teams governance guidance? Watch our on-demand recording of 'Managing Microsoft Teams' to see how to administer and govern Microsoft Teams.

What does Teams do?

Within one window, users can call upon a variety of key Office 365 apps and tools to help them work more effectively, such as:

• Calendars and meetings (Outlook)
• Create, share, edit and find content (SharePoint, OneDrive and OneNote)
• Call and meet team members (Skype)
• Chat and instant messaging (Skype)

Key benefits of Teams

Office 365 Teams Log In

• One centralised hub
• Office 365 integration
• Customise Teams through APIs and bot frameworks
• Enterprise security & compliance
• Azure Active Directory integration
• No extra cost to Office 365 users

Using Teams

Before getting started it’s important to understand how Teams fits into the larger Office 365 picture, as creating Teams has some wider implications. Every Team created will automatically create a matching Plan (find out more on this in our Guide to Planner here), SharePoint Team Site, Office 365 Group and shared OneNote. While this brings a number of great benefits, such as shared documents and centralised team information, it can cause some governance and admin headaches. Luckily, the admin side of Teams allows this to be managed as we'll cover below.

Overview

Once your organisation has access to Teams, you can: download the desktop application, access Teams through your browser or download the mobile app.

Teams and Channels

To start your teamwork collaboration, you need a team. Setting up Teams is easy and done in a few clicks, requiring a Team name and a description; this then allows team members to be added. As mentioned above, a new Team will create a matching Office 365 Group, OneNote, SharePoint site and Plan—so this does need to be done with some caution.

Each Team has subsections, which are called Channels, and a General Channel will automatically be created. You can have multiple Channels within a Team; for example, you could have a 'Marketing' Team and then Channels such as 'Social Media', 'Product Launch', 'Blogs' etc. Or a Company could be a Team and Channels can relate to departments - you can choose whatever suits your organisation's way of working. Whenever there is a new notification or activity, the Channel will become bold.

Channel Tabs

Each Channel all have their own tabs along the top. Conversation (group chat), Files (shared documents) and Notes (shared OneNote) are automatically created and you can then add your own tabs.

Conversation

Conversations are one of the key features of Teams, allowing each Team to have a centralised discussion that is saved and easily searchable. Conversations are the central component where all teamwork is recorded—from file sharing to video calls.

The use of @mentions allows you to tag participants or even whole teams to notify others. Users that look at Conversations will easily see where they have been mentioned through the red @ symbol to highlight areas of importance to them. On top of this, your desktop app will notify you through an alert. As well as tagging, users can 'like' content and share emoticons or GIFs.

Files

In your Teams window, you can perform a variety of tasks directly within that window or browser, so that you avoid flicking between different applications. These tasks include the ability to delete, download, move files, open, copy, edit or get a link to share with others – giving you all the key features you would get in the native apps.

You can also start a Group chat alongside the file, to allow team discussions while all working on the files - and this conversation will appear in your Conversation thread.

View team files, edit, upload and create

Notes

Notes takes you to the Team shared OneNote. Within Teams you can view and edit your OneNotes (directly within the Teams window) or you can click to edit in the OneNote app.

Edit within Teams

Edit in OneNote

Adding Tabs

As mentioned, as well as these three automatic tabs you can also add your own, which currently include Planner, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Power BI dashboards and more.

Microsoft products can easily be added now, but there are also many future integrations coming to Teams, such as Asana integration. With integration between systems being so vital to teamwork, we can expect to see many more partnerships and out-of-the-box integrations!

Asana Integration

Menu

Along the left-hand side you can navigate to different areas within Teams, such as Chats, Meetings, Files and Activity. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory:

Activities: Shows you the last activities of the Teams that you are part of.

Chat: This holds your Skype for Business conversations, providing a complete chat history. However, for a chat within a Team you should use the Teams menu and hold the group chat in 'Conversation'.

Teams: An overview of all your Teams that you are part of and allows you to drill-down into each Channel within the Teams. This is also where you can create Teams.

Meetings: The Meetings tab pulls your meetings in from Outlook and also allows you schedule meetings within the Meetings tab that are sent to a Team. If you want to schedule other meetings with external users or individuals, you will still need to use Outlook, as the Teams Meeting tab is only to schedule a meeting with a Team. (Remember the aim is team collaboration, not calendar management).

Files: Within Files you can quickly find and view files across OneNote, OneDrive and within Teams (stored in their own SharePoint sites). There’s also a very helpful ‘Recent’ tab so you can quickly access the latest documents you were working on, as well as a shortcut to your Downloads.

Admin

Microsoft Teams is a great product already as it allows great flexibility and gives you many possibilities. However, as mentioned earlier, getting started with Teams can also bring some knock-on effects, which can cause admin headaches. Luckily, within the Office 365 Admin, you can control Teams settings within the Groups control panel. Within Admin settings, you can control who can create teams, what features are or are not allowed, such as video meetings, screen sharing or animated images or if extensions can be used. This gives the control required to allow governance in line with your organisation's policy and ensures you can keep control over the app. Find out more here.

End User Adoption Guides

To find out how you can use Microsoft Teams Live Events to easily stream live events such as webinars, product demos or corporate presentations to external and internal audiences, read our 'How to use Microsoft Teams Live Events' guide.

For organisations with employees working on shift patterns, Shifts in Microsoft Teams provides shift scheduling and management capabilities. Find out more with our 'How to use Shifts in Microsoft Teams' guide.

There are also some great end-user adoption guides available online from Microsoft.

To learn how to use the meetings and calls functionality of Teams, you can take a look at these Meeting and Calling How-Tos.

A Microsoft Teams End User Quick Start Guide is also available to download and share with users.

FAQs

Is Teams available now? Yes - Teams is generally available.

Which Office 365 Plans include Teams? Teams is available to Business Essentials, Business Premium, F1, E1, E3, E4 (retired) and E5 customers. It's also available for Education and Non-profit plans but not yet Government.

What is on the Teams roadmap? You can view the full Teams roadmap here.

What about Skype for Business? Teams will be replacing Skype for Business! Find out more here.

Microsoft Teams Download

Does Teams work with those outside your organisation? Yes - this feature was added and can be turned on or off. Guest access is included with all Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 Enterprise, and Office 365 Education subscriptions. No additional Office 365 license is necessary. Guest access is a tenant-level setting in Microsoft Teams and is turned off by default. Find out more here.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams is already a robust offering and is benefiting from lots of new features and integrations. Even better, since Microsoft’s new direction under Satya Nadella, feedback and reviews on products have been well received with Microsoft actively acting upon public feedback. Microsoft Teams has a simple feedback program and you can go and view most popular suggestions, as well as see which ones are planned based on the number of up-votes. These requests and other features can then be seen on the public Office 365 Roadmap. This really shows a commitment to making a product aimed at user needs, so we have a great feeling about Microsoft Teams. What's more, seeing as Teams will be replacing Skype for Business we are sure that it will become well used!

Media coverage and reception has also been very positive with many Slack comparisons. Within these comparisons, Microsoft Teams is often faring very well in terms of features, usability and offering—but what makes it even more appealing is the fact that is it included with Office 365. For Office 365 users, this means that those who are already using other paid teamwork software can remove the licence expense, and those that aren't can gain access to a useful new application that competitors might be using - at no extra cost.

Next steps

If you are using Office 365, then we recommend trying Teams and providing your feedback to help shape the product. You can download a Quick Start PDF guide to get users started here.

If you are not using Office 365, then you can sign up for an Office 365 E3 trial (which includes Teams).

You can also find out how we can help with our Microsoft Teams Services or Contact Us and we can give an Office 365 demo or answer any questions.

This article describes some of the limits, specifications, and other requirements that apply to Teams.

Teams and channels

¹ Any directory object in Azure Active Directory counts towards this limit. Global admins are exempt from this limit, as are apps calling Microsoft Graph using application permissions.

² This limit includes archived teams.

³ To further increase the number of teams, you must contact Microsoft support and request further increase to the number of Azure Active Directory objects in your tenant. Increase is only made for real-life production scenarios.

⁴ Deleted channels can be restored within 30 days. During these 30 days, a deleted channel continues to be counted towards the 200 channel or 30 private channel per team limit. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted and the channel no longer counts towards the per team limit.

⁵ 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, number of connectors, and reactions.

⁶ Teams in GCC can accommodate 25,000 members but teams in GCCH/DoD can only accommodate 2,500 members. Further note that teams/channel mentions are blocked in teams with over 10,000 members.

Messaging

Chat

Users who participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams must have an Exchange Online (cloud-based) mailbox for an admin to search chat conversations. That's because conversations that are part of the chat list are stored in the cloud-based mailboxes of the chat participants. If a chat participant doesn't have an Exchange Online mailbox, the admin won't be able to search or place a hold on chat conversations. For example, in an Exchange hybrid deployment, users with on-premises mailboxes might be able to participate in conversations that are part of the chat list in Teams. However, in this case, content from these conversations isn't searchable and can't be placed on hold because the users don't have cloud-based mailboxes. (For more, see How Exchange and Microsoft Teams interact.)

Teams chat works on a Microsoft Exchange backend, so Exchange messaging limits apply to the chat function within Teams.

¹ If you have more than 20 people in a chat, the following chat features are turned off: Outlook automatic replies and Teams status messages; typing indicator; video and audio calling; sharing; read receipts. The 'Set Delivery Options' button (!) is also removed when private group chats contain more than 20 members.

² Only 200 members at a time can be added to a group chat. See this article for more information.

³ If the number of attachments exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

⁴ 28 KB is an approximate limit because it includes the message itself (text, image links, etc.), @-mentions, and reactions.

Emailing a channel

If users want to send an email to a channel in Teams, they use the channel email address. When an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Here are some of the applicable limits for sending email to a channel.

¹ If the message exceeds this limit, a preview message is generated and the user is asked to download and view the original email from the link provided.

² If the number of attachments or images exceeds this limit, you'll see an error message.

For more information, see Exchange Online limits.

Note

Message size, file attachments, and inline images limits are the same across all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses. Emailing a channel is not available in Teams for Office GCC/GCCH/DOD organizations.

Channel names

Channel names can't contain the following characters or words:

Channel names also can't start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).

Meetings and calls

Important

Microsoft 365 live event limit increases

To continue supporting our customers' needs, through June 30, 2021, we will extend temporary limit increases for live events, including:

• Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
• 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
• Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast

Additionally, Live Events with up to 100,000 attendees can be planned through the Microsoft 365 assistance program. The team will assess each request and work with you to determine options that may be available. Learn more.

Meeting expiration

Note

A meeting URL will never stop working. The expiry only relates to any PSTN dial-in numbers and/or underlying meeting policies and settings.

Note

Microsoft Teams meetings have a time limit of 24 hours.

Teams Live Events

¹ You can schedule as many Live Events as you want, but you can only run 15 at a time. As soon as the producer joins a live event, it's considered to be running. The producer who attempts to join the 16th live event gets an error.

For more information about live events and a comparison of Teams live events to Skype Meeting Broadcast, go to Teams live events and Skype Meeting Broadcast. See also Schedule a Teams live event.

Important

Microsoft 365 live event limit increases

To continue supporting our customers' needs, through June 30, 2021, we will extend temporary limit increases for live events, including:

• Event support for up to 20,000 attendees
• 50 events can be hosted simultaneously across a tenant
• Event duration of 16 hours per broadcast

Additionally, Live Events with up to 100,000 attendees can be planned through the Microsoft 365 assistance program. The team will assess each request and work with you to determine options that may be available. Learn more.

Presence in Outlook

Teams presence in Outlook is supported on the Outlook 2013 desktop app and later. To learn more about presence in Teams, see User presence in Teams.

Storage

Each team in Microsoft Teams has a team site in SharePoint Online, and each channel in a team gets a folder within the default team site document library. Parallel desktop 13 activation key. Files shared within a conversation are automatically added to the document library, and permissions and file security options set in SharePoint are automatically reflected within Teams.

Ms Teams In Office 365 Family

Note

Each private channel has its own SharePoint site (previously called 'site collection').

If you don't have SharePoint Online enabled in your tenant, Microsoft Teams users cannot always share files in teams. Users in private chat also cannot share files because OneDrive for Business (which is tied to the SharePoint license) is required for that functionality.

By storing the files in the SharePoint Online document library and OneDrive for Business, all compliance rules configured at the tenant level will be followed. (For more, see How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Microsoft Teams.)

Because Teams runs on a SharePoint Online backend for file sharing, SharePoint limitations apply to the Files section within a Team. Here are the applicable storage limits for SharePoint Online.

Channels are backed by folders within the SharePoint Online site (previously called 'site collection') created for the team, so file tabs within Channels share the storage limits of the team they belong to.

For more information, see SharePoint Online limits.

Class teams

Microsoft Teams for Education provides templates designed for unique education scenarios, such as classroom teaching. More information about team types, including class teams, is available in Choose a team type to collaborate in Microsoft Teams.

A class team is a template type with additional apps included, and with limits separate to the number of team members.

Note

Using class teams requires an Office 365 Education license.

Limits for class teams are listed in the following table:

A class team can support more than 200 members. However, if you plan to use either the Assignments app or Class Notebook app within your team, you will need to keep the number of members below the maximum limits above.

Tags

Contacts

Teams uses these contacts:

• Contacts in your organization's Active Directory
• Contacts added to the user's Outlook default folder

Teams users can communicate with anyone in your organization's Active Directory and can add anyone in your organization's Active Directory as a contact and to their contact lists by going to Chat > Contacts or Calls > Contacts.

Autoupdate mac. Teams users can also add a person who isn't in your organization's Active Directory as a contact by going to Calls > Contacts.

Browsers

Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.

¹ To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.

² Blur my background isn't available when you run Teams in a browser. This feature is only available in the Teams desktop client.

³ Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single incoming video feed of active speaker.

⁴ Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.

Note

As long as an operating system can run the supported browser, Teams is supported on desktop computers. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.

For mobile operating systems, we recommend that you run the Teams app, available from the Android and iOS stores. Running Teams in a mobile operating system is supported, but many features are unavailable.

Ms Office 365 Teams

Operating systems

Ms Office 365 Teams

For information about operating system requirements, see Get clients for Microsoft Teams. Gfortran mac os.