Microsoft Teams Mini Summit

Microsoft MVP & Crow Canyon Videos On-Demand

Find a range of resources from MVPs offering greater insights, tips, tools for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, and SharePoint in a series of webinars.



Digital Mini-Summit Teams Series


MVP Resources with Crow Canyon Software

Answering Your Questions About Microsoft Teams

People who attended our Microsoft Teams Mini-Summit in March 2020 sure asked a lot of questions! We hope the links below answer many of the questions. Certainly, there is a lot of interest in Teams at this point, with many new users and many questions about how organizations can use it to their best advantage.

Microsoft Teams Governance, Security, and Compliance

Microsoft Teams in the GCC (Government Community Cloud)

Plan for Microsoft 365 Government – GCC deployments: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-for-government-gcc

Microsoft Teams – Legal Hold

Place a Microsoft Teams user or team on legal hold: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/legal-hold

Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business

Joel Oleson has a great blog and infographic on this subject.

Microsoft Teams – Comparison to SharePoint & Office Groups

Microsoft Teams vs. SharePoint (SharePoint Maven): https://sharepointmaven.com/microsoft-teams-vs-sharepoint/

Teams and SharePoint Better Together: https://bob1german.com/2018/05/14/teams-and-sharepoint-better-together/

Microsoft Teams – Private Channels

General info: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/private-channels

Q: Does the team owner get access to the private channel?
Team owner can see the private channel in the list of channels, but cannot view the contents of the private channel, unless a member

Q: Can Private Channel Membership be managed by Azure AD/O365 Groups instead of individual users?
Not currently.

Q: Do the private channels have a folder in in the Team’s SharePoint site?
They do not currently. Support to add the folder into the existing Teams library is being worked on. A complete site collection is created for the channel.

Q: How do you add a new person to an existing Team but only give them access to a specific channel within that Team because other channels are not relevant?
This is not currently possible. Microsoft is looking at adding support for Member only Teams in a future update. Only work around is to make all private channels and the standard channel for the guest, but this is not recommended.

Q: Can Private Channel Membership be managed by Azure AD/O365 Groups instead of individual users?
Not currently.

Q: Do the private channels have a folder in in the Team’s SharePoint site?
They do not currently. Support to add the folder into the existing Teams library is being worked on. A complete site collection is created for the channel.

Q: If the owner of a private channel leaves the company, can you designate which other member gets promoted to owner or is it random?
Random, but the Team Owner can change it.

Q: Is the private channel hidden from non-members of the channel?
Yes, they are hidden, Owners can see the channels in Manage Team Settings > Channels tab only. (and Teams Global Admins)

Q: Can an external guest team member be a member of the private channel?
Yes, as long as they are a member of the Team first.

Q: Can a private channel be changed into a full team channel later?
Not currently.

Q: If I can’t create a private channel, does that mean that I’m really a guest and not a member of the team?
The Team owner may have it restricted so only owners of the Team can create Private channels, or they may be off all together for the Team / Tenant.

Q: Can you change an existing team or channel from public to private?
Yes, see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/make-a-public-team-private-in-teams-6f324fbc-6599-4612-8daa-ff5d35a746bf?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

Q: I know a Team can be changed from public to private, but can an existing channel be changed to private after it has been created?
No, currently a channel cannot be changed once created.

Q: Is it advisable to allow inexperienced to create the org-wide team- or one can just notify users not to create this type of team?
I would advise inexperienced users to not to create org-wide until they really know what they are doing.

Q: Can you add people out outside of your organization to a team?
Yes

Q: Can the tag have an @ at front like Twitter?
“@” is meant for people, to let that person know you mentioned him or her in the chat.

Microsoft Teams – Integrated Questions

Q: Do you know if there is an ITAR-compliant version of the Teams cloud ecosystem?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/offering-itar?view=o365-worldwide

Q: Is Microsoft Whiteboard another application that has be installed on the computer?
Here is info on that: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-whiteboard-in-microsoft-teams-7a6e7218-e9dc-4ccc-89aa-b1a0bb9c31ee?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Q: How did you access the Whiteboard?
Here is info on that: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-whiteboard-in-microsoft-teams-7a6e7218-e9dc-4ccc-89aa-b1a0bb9c31ee?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Q: Can Acrobat DC be added as an app to Teams? Would that allow users to electronically sign PDF documents within Teams?
See this article: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/business/integrations/microsoft-teams.html

Microsoft Teams – General Questions

Q: What is the average storage per user required for Teams?
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/storage-quota-for-microsoft-teams/m-p/106923

Q: What is the maximum number of people that can come together on a call through chat or through teams?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/limits-specifications-teams

Q: How can we facilitate the transition from email to Teams conversations? For many users, email is their “blue blankie” and they just can’t let go.
Exactly, that is a tough issue involving “organizational inertia”. People have to see the benefits of Teams versus email. We can discuss some strategies after these webinars.

Q: Could Teams be used to deliver training, video content, etc.? Can I use Team in place of Zoom for online teaching?
Yes, see these videos on YouTube that cover this subject: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=microsoft+teams+online+teaching

Q: When is Microsoft going to allow more than four participants to be able to be seen in a video conference meeting?
Currently 4 at once (Latest speakers get shown) – They announced long ago support for more, but not dates on that unfortunately.

Q: Joel mentioned a “celebration box”. Where is that?
This is available as an App Template that you can add to your Teams. See this page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/samples/app-templates

Q: What is Project Cortex? Not familiar with that term.
Microsoft has this to say: “Project Cortex uses advanced AI to deliver insights and expertise in the apps you use every day, to harness collective knowledge and to empower people and teams to learn, upskill and innovate faster.” https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-project-cortex/ba-p/966091

Q: How can end users access the chat conversations that are stored in Exchange?
They cannot, they should utilize search and chat history from within Teams itself!

Q: In calendar, can we send a schedule meeting to a group instead of selecting each participant?
If you know the email dist. address yes. If you use a Channel meeting the entire Team will get invited as well. But Dist. Groups do not show in type ahead at this Time. Using Outlook to schedule is usually easier in these cases.

Q: Can you have multiple owners of a team?
Yes, see this: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-ama/can-a-team-have-more-than-one-owner/m-p/28980

Q: The first slide and explanation says that Teams is a container of these various things, but I see Forms in there. Any Form that I create (even for my Team) is still owned by my O365 profile, not owned by the Team. Is there any way for the Team to own Forms? Otherwise, it is a problem for succession planning. Or do you have suggestions on how to deal with Forms’ succession planning within Teams (e.g. when an employee who originated the Form leaves the organization)?
Here is info on transferring ownership of an MS Form: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/transfer-ownership-of-a-form-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4ed63aa54b4?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

Q: When you archive a team and members still see the archived team?
Info on archiving in Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/archive-or-delete-a-team

Q: When would I use a private channel versus a chat with the same people?
Threaded Posts/Conversations and centralized file storage.

Q: Is it advisable to allow inexperienced to create the org-wide team- or one can just notify users not to create this type of team?
I would advise inexperienced users to not to create org-wide until they really know what they are doing.

Q: Can you add people out outside of your organization to a team?
Yes

Q: Can the tag have an @ at front like Twitter?
“@” is meant for people, to let that person know you mentioned him or her in the chat.