Welcome to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams at Mines lets faculty, staff, and students collaborate in a chat-centered environment. It’s part of your school-sponsored Office365 at Mines account.

Teams is offered to faculty, staff, and students on a self-service basis. You can access Teams by signing into office.com with your Mines credentials.

GET STARTED

1. Log into your Mines Office365 account (not into any personal Office365 account you may also have).
2. Under “Apps,” click “Teams.”  (Enable third-party cookies, if necessary, to proceed.) You can use the web-based Teams interface or download software for your Windows or macOS computer, or mobile device.

JOIN A TEAM

Any Teams you belong to will show up on the left-hand pane of the Teams app. To join a new team, enter the code you have received from another team member. Or create your own new team (see below).

CREATE A TEAM GROUP IN MS TEAMS

• When creating a new team, please make the name as descriptive as possible. ITS suggests including:
  • The department or group that will be using the team
  • A brief description
  • “Team” if the group was created in Teams, or “Plan” if it was created in Planner
  • Example names:
    • ITS User Experience & Support Services Team
    • PE Office Renovations 2019 Plan
    • MAC E-Days Team
    • MTGN251 Thermodynamics Fall19 Class Team
• Remember, the name of the Team is public, even if the content is private, so choose your team names carefully … and tastefully. Try to minimize possible confusion with other teams on campus.
• Team infrastructure will automatically append the prefix “GRP – “ to the name to make searching for and managing these groups more efficient.
• ITS may periodically remove any groups that do not conform to the naming policy.

It’s that simple!

HELPFUL TIPS FOR SETTING UP TEAMS

• Organize channels (dedicated sections within a Team used to keep conversations organized) by topic, department, client, or project. Currently, everyone on a Team has access to every channel. Ask about private channels if that would be a useful feature.
• Every channel has its own conversation space, apps, notebook, document library, and so on. These are organized as tabs across the top.
• Use tabs: Tabs, added along the top of a channel, can contain a document from your files area which is especially important to that channel (such as a project charter), or an application like a Planner project plan, a YouTube video, or a polling application like Polly. Learn more about tabs.
• Notify others: Notify your teammates about conversations in Teams. The Teams equivalent of addressing someone on the To: line in an email is @mention. You can @mention an entire team, a channel, or an individual. Teams offers an opportunity to replace email threads with Teams conversations. Learn more about @mention in Teams.
• Integrate apps: Apps, bots, and connectors integrate into a channel. You can get data from your social media accounts like Twitter or Facebook, have a personal assistant schedule meetings and track your packages, or keep your project plans in a channel for all to find. Learn more about using apps with Teams.
• Remember, it is your responsibility to follow all requirements set by the Mines privacy and data policies. Be careful to keep private or protected information out of Teams.