A guide to Microsoft Teams templates and teams

Teams

With any Microsoft Teams…team, there are channels, tabs, and apps - each of which serves its own purpose:

• Teams: Bringing a group of people together, be that for a common interest, work projects, or general announcements.
• Channels: Within every team, there can be many channels– similarly to how many files may sit within a folder. Think of these as separate areas for different themes or topics, where meetings can be held, conversations can take place and files can be worked and collaborated on between team/channel users.
  • Channels can be public or private; public channels allow existing members of the team access, whereas private channels can have their own specific permissions for more sensitive topics.
• Tabs: Within every channel, a set of tabs can be setup to allow for quick access to the likes of webpages, files and applications. These tabs sit at the top the screen and will differ as you dive into different channels.

As an example, we have a Company Events team, which holds various channels for specific types of events:  

Teams templates

New teams can be created from scratch, or by utilising an existing template which will hold a predefined structure of channels, tabs, and apps. Microsoft kindly provides a selection of templates to use freely, however, it may be helpful to create custom templates to further streamline this process for your organisation and users.

Custom templates can easily be created and shared with users, with the ability to set the exact structure of channels, tabs and apps that is desired. Any custom templates will then automatically appear for users to reference when creating new teams from templates moving forwards.

To create custom team templates, this can be quickly achieved:

1. Head to the Teams Admin Centre for your organisation
2. Select ‘Teams’
3. Under ‘Teams’, select ‘Team templates’. Then simply edit an existing template, or create as many new templates as required.

Limitations of Team Templates

It’s worth noting that there are some limitations around Teams templates, which may affect the approach required for your organisation specifically, depending on use-case:

If such limitations are likely to be an issue, it may be that any teams required above the these thresholds may need to be created manually.

Known issues

At the time of publishing, there are a few known issues to be aware of prior to creating custom team templates for your organisation:

• Custom tabs: Custom tabs that have been setup within a team’s template may appear as blank tabs for end-users when using this template. Such tabs may therefore need to be removed upon each team creation, and re-created.
• Website rendering: When using Microsoft Teams in any web-browser, some websites may not be rendered properly within a teams tab. It therefore may be necessary to access these tabs via Microsoft Teams Desktop, instead of via the web-browser.

To find out more about Microsoft teams templates and teams in general, join our Couch to 365 community here: www.couchto365.com 

Or contact billy.pickin@waterstons.com