Overview
Creating a new team is super simple and you can do it anytime! Before proceeding make sure you already have the Microsoft Teams app installed, and you're signed in with your UA email address, please review the Get Started with Microsoft Teams article. Then follow the steps below.
In this article:
What materials do I need?
- Microsoft Teams application
- Your UA username and password
How do I use this technology?
Look before you leap
Before creating a team, search to see if a Team or Group for that purpose already exists. In the case of private Teams you should ask around your office/team to see if someone else already beat you to Teams!
Recommended Naming Conventions
We generally recommend keeping Team names concise and descriptive. For departmental Teams we recommend the following practices:
- Prepend the Major Administrative Unit (MAU) your department is associated with (e.g. UAA, UAF, UAS, SW). In the case of a cross-MAU team consider prepending the team name with "UA".
- Prepend the abbreviation of the major unit your department is associated with (e.g. COENG, CAS).
- Use a short but descriptive text associated with the team (e.g. Deans Office).
- Avoid the use of spaces in the name. We suggest using the underscore character (i.e. '_') instead.
- Avoid the use of special characters (e.g. #, $, &). We recommend sticking to the standard alpha-numeric characters (e.g. a-z, A-Z, 0-9).
Some examples:
- UA_Human_Resources
- UAA_COENG_Deans_Office
- UAA_CAS_Deans_Office
- UAF_CFOS_Deans_Office
- UAS_ACE_Deans_Office
By following these recommendations individuals that are members of more than one Team associated with a department will find the Teams sorted together in the list of Teams. Additionally, by keeping the names relatively short it will make scanning through the list of names on mobile devices less challenging with the limited screen real estate.
Create a team
- Select Join or create a team.
- Select Create team to create a new team.
- Click the desired type of team to create. In most cases the Staff type will be appropriate.
- Give the team a name and add a short description if you like, then click Next.
- By default, your team is Private, meaning you'll have to add the people or groups you want to add to the team. Select Public if you want anyone in the University of Alaska system to be able to find and join the team.
- Add members. You can add people, or groups. If you need to add people from outside your organization, use their email address to invite them as guests. Add a friendly display name for them too.
- When you're done finding members, click Add.
- You can make one, or more, of the members of the Team an owner by selecting the drop-down menu to the right of their name and selecting Owner.
- After adding desired members click Close.
Create a channel
By default, every team gets a General channel, which is a good channel to use for announcements and information the whole team needs. To add more:
- Select ellipse (...) More options next to the team name.
- Select Add channel.
- A Create channel dialog window will be displayed.
- In the Channel name field, enter a name.
- In the Description field, enter a description for the channel.
- In the Privacy drop-down menu, select one of the following options:
- Standard - Accessible to everyone on the team
- Private - Accessible to only a specific group of people on the team
- If Privacy is set to Standard, you have the option to select Automatically show this channel in everyone's channel list if you want the channel to be automatically visible to everyone.
- Depending on the Privacy option selected for the Channel, click either Add or Next.
- Microsoft Teams will now create the Channel.
- If you elected to create a Private Channel the Add members dialog window will be displayed, otherwise skip to step 11.
- In the text field begin typing the name, or username of the Team that will have access to the private channel. As you type an list of matching individuals will be displayed. Click on the desired account to select it.
Important
Only individuals, or groups, that are members of the parent Team are available to be granted access to a private Channel within the Team.
- Repeat step 6 until all desired individuals have been added to the private Channel.
- Once all individuals have been selected, click Add.
- You can make one, or more, of the members of the private Channel an owner of that channel by selecting the drop-down menu to the right of their name and selecting Owner.
- Click Done.
- The newly created Channel will be displayed in the Team.
Is there any additional information I should know about?
- What is the difference between a Team and a Channel?
A Team is a collection of people, conversations, files, and tools – all in one place. Teams are made up of Channels, which are the conversations you have with your teammates. Each channel is dedicated to a department, project, or topic.
Channels are where the work actually gets done - where text, audio, and video conversations open to the whole team happen, where files are shared, and where apps are added.
While channel conversations are public, chats are just between you and someone else (or a group of people). Think of them like instant messages in Skype for Business or other messaging apps.
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Is there a limit to the number of people that can be in a Team?
Yes, each team can support up to 10,000 members.
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How many Channels can each Team have?
Each team can have a maximum of 200 channels, including channels deleted within the last 30 days.
Channels deleted within the last 30 days still count towards the channel limit as they can still be restored. After 30 days, a deleted channel and its content are permanently deleted at which time the channel no longer counts towards the 200 channels per team limit.
Need additional help or have issues
For additional assistance contact the IT Services Technical Support Center via phone at (907) 786-4646, toll-free at (877) 633-3888, email us at uaa.techsupport@alaska.edu.