As part of the Microsoft 365 offering, Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaboration space that allows a group of people to communicate and organize information in a single area. It creates a central location where you can:
Note that Microsoft Teams is a McGill-approved Cloud Service. All the data in Teams is stored on Microsoft infrastructure located in North America. Although, you can store protected and personal data in Teams, it must not be used to store certain types of regulated data. For definitions of the various types of institutional data and guidance about which type of data cannot be stored in Teams, see Cloud services that have been approved / rejected for McGill use (This list is only accessible to faculty and staff members).
New Features:
Development of Microsoft Teams is ongoing, with new features regularly released to improve your experience.
Recent additions to Microsoft Teams at McGill include:
Active McGill students, faculty and staff.
Affiliated consultants, lecturers and service providers are also eligible (Teams is provided for all affiliates with email accounts).
You can access MS Teams a number of ways:
For a quick overview visit our Microsoft Teams How-To website.
To Create a new team in Teams:
Caution: Public vs. Private Teams
When creating a new Team, you can generally select between a Private Team and a Public Team. A Private Team is the best option for most use cases.There is no cost associated with this service.
This service is available 24 X 7. Check the home page of the IT Support site for announcements in case of any outages.
All documents in the Files tab of a Team are stored on a SharePoint Online site, similar to OneDrive. If these documents are accidentally deleted, you have 93 days to recover them from the Recycle Bin.
In SharePoint Online, items are retained for 93 days from the time you delete them from their original location. They stay in the site Recycle Bin the entire time, unless someone deletes them from there or empties that Recycle Bin. In that case, the items go to the site collection Recycle Bin, where they stay for the remainder of the 93 days. View more on the Microsoft web site.
For all the content a team generates -- e.g., chat sessions, team email, planner -- if a group/channel is deleted it can be restored, with all its content within 30 days.
Affiliated consultants, lecturers and service providers are eligible to be added to teams as members, or team owners. They cannot create new teams.
If you are a team owner, you can invite a person from outside of McGill (non-McGill address) to your team. This person will be added as a guest. Guests have fewer capabilities than team members or team owners, but there's still a lot they can do. For a deeper look, see Guest capabilities in Teams.
To host a Teams meeting with people from outside of McGill, create your meeting using Outlook and add participants to your meeting by adding their email address.
Note: Create your meeting using the Outlook New Teams Meeting plugin when adding participants from outside of McGill.
You can access teams through the McGill Office 365 portal. You can also use teams on your mobile smart phone or laptop by downloading the Teams app and signing in with your McGill credentials. Avoid using Remote Desktop to connect to your work computer for Teams meetings, as the connection may try to use the microphone and camera at McGill instead of your local personal computer.
Limits and specifications can be viewed on the Microsoft Website.
Meeting notes are stored in the personal OneDrive folder of the person who creates them under: Files/Microsoft Teams Data/Wiki and they are automatically accessible to all meeting participants (shared).
However, it is important to note that when that person leaves McGill, their OneDrive folder will be deleted, including meeting notes that may contain important team data. See best practices for creating meeting notes and storing files below.
They are either saved in the OneDrive account of the person who started the recording, or on the SharePoint site of the channel meeting. Recordings will automatically expire and be moved to the recycle bin after 1 year, unless action is taken by the owner. See Managing MS Teams meeting recordings for details.
All Teams have a 1-year expiration policy. If a team site is unused for 11 months, the team owner receives a renewal notification 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the team's expiration date. The owner can renew the team by selecting Manage Team > Settings > Team expiration and then clicking Renew now.
Auto-renewal of the team is also enabled to prevent an accidental team deletion when an owner is unavailable to renew it. A team that has at least one visit from any team member before its expiration date is automatically renewed without intervention from the team owner.
For access/authentication issues, contact the IT Service Desk.