Microsoft Teams is a free collaboration and communication tool which includes chat, video conferencing and screen sharing, file sharing and live collaboration, project management tools, simple forms and more. Microsoft Teams apps are available for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android and can also be accessed on the Web at https://teams.microsoft.com
Teams are commonly set up for research teams, project teams, administration and operational teams and are the University's recommended collaboration tools.
Please note Teams is currently limited to members of the University of Oxford with an active SSO meaning that collaborators from other institutions cannot be invited into a Team. We hope this will change in the future, in the meantime please use Skype for Business and OneDrive when working with external collaborators.
Anyone can request a new Team, and team owners can manage ongoing membership and enable and configure features directly without involvement of University IT teams.
To request a new team email ict@bsg.ox.ac.uk with the following details:
New Teams are usually provisioned within 48 hours.
We have summarised key Microsoft Teams features below, however as this service is rapidly changing we recommend that you visit the Microsoft Teams help centre for an up-to date list of new features as well as step-by-step help guides.
Using Teams Chat you can contact colleagues within the University (who are also logged into Teams) using ad-hoc instant messaging, audio or video calls, other colleagues can be added to create a Group Chat. You do not need to be a member of a Team or channel to use the Chat features.
Teams give groups of collaborators a space to securely store files, arrange online meetings, create project plans, set up team Wikis and more. Each Team is assigned 1TB of persistent cloud storage hosted in Microsoft data centres in the UK and approved for University data.
Tabs are organised along the top of the main Team window. On opening a team users see the Conversations tab, Conversations allow team members to highlight important information, link to files and @mention colleagues.
Channels can be created within a Team by an owner, all teams start with a General channel. Channels are intended as logical workspaces for work streams within a Team, for example a colleagues working on a substantial report, or a space to arrange a conference or workshop. A Channel can be visited by any member of the Team and has its own Conversations, Files, Tabs and Apps.
