What is Microsoft Teams?

Overview

Microsoft Teams is Acadia's Microsoft 365 communication and collaboration platform. It brings together chat, meetings, calling, file sharing, and collaborative Microsoft 365 apps in one place.

Faculty, staff, and students can use Teams to communicate with individuals and groups, participate in online meetings, collaborate on documents, and organize work in teams and channels.

What can you do with Teams?

Chat and communicate

Teams provides persistent one-to-one and group chat for conversations that do not require email.

You can use chat to:

• Send messages to individuals or groups.
• Share files and links.
• Add images and other supported content.
• Continue conversations across your computer, web browser, and mobile devices.
• Keep work-related conversations together with the people involved.

For longer-running projects or groups, teams and channels provide a shared space where conversations and resources can be organized by topic or purpose.

Meet and call

Teams can be used for online meetings and calls.

Depending on the features available to your Acadia account, you can use Teams to:

• Join and organize online meetings.
• Use audio and video during meetings.
• Share your screen or present content.
• Participate in meeting chat.
• Collaborate with people inside or outside Acadia when appropriate.

Meeting features available to you can depend on your Acadia Microsoft 365 licence and the meeting configuration.

Collaborate on documents

Teams integrates with Microsoft 365 applications and services.

Documents shared through Teams can be opened and collaboratively edited using supported Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

This makes it possible for multiple people to work on shared content without repeatedly exchanging separate copies of a document by email.

Important: Files in Teams are connected to Microsoft 365 storage services such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Deleting, moving, or changing access to a file can therefore affect other people who use the shared content.

Organize work with teams and channels

A team provides a shared workspace for a defined group of people.

Within a team, channels can be used to organize conversations, files, meetings, and other resources by project, department, topic, or activity.

For example, a department could use separate channels for:

• General announcements.
• Projects.
• Committees.
• Documentation.
• Events or initiatives.

Use a team or channel when information should remain available to a group over time rather than being limited to a short-lived chat conversation.

Use Microsoft 365 apps

Teams provides access to Microsoft 365 applications and other supported tools from within the Teams interface.

Depending on the configuration and your permissions, this can include applications and content associated with:

• Word.
• Excel.
• PowerPoint.
• OneNote.
• SharePoint.
• OneDrive.
• Other supported Microsoft or third-party applications.

Who can use Teams?

Teams is available to Acadia faculty, staff, and students using their Acadia account.

External participants can also be invited to collaborate in appropriate circumstances. The access available to an external participant may differ from the access available to an Acadia account holder.

When sharing university information with people outside Acadia, consider whether the material is appropriate for external access before adding guests or sharing files.

Cost

Teams is provided through Acadia's Microsoft 365 licensing.

There is no separate purchase required for eligible Acadia users to access the Teams features included with their assigned Microsoft 365 licence.

Some Teams features can vary depending on the licence assigned to an account.

Access Teams

You can use Teams through the desktop application, supported mobile applications, or a web browser.

Use Teams on the web

Go to Microsoft Teams on the web and sign in using your Acadia account. [https://te...ft.com/v2/]

Using Teams in a browser is useful when you do not have the desktop application installed, although some functionality can differ from the desktop application.

Use the desktop application

If Teams is already installed:

1. Open Microsoft Teams.
2. Enter your Acadia email address if prompted.
3. Sign in with your Acadia account.
4. Complete any required authentication prompt.

If you need Microsoft 365 applications, see Install Microsoft 365. [https://hu...Det?ID=241]

Use Teams on a mobile device

Microsoft Teams is also available for supported mobile devices.

After installing the Teams app:

1. Open Microsoft Teams.
2. Sign in using your Acadia email address.
3. Complete the required authentication prompts.
4. Allow notifications, microphone, and camera access as appropriate for how you plan to use Teams.

Confirm your access

After signing in, confirm that you can:

1. Open Teams without receiving an account error.
2. Access Chat.
3. View the teams or channels to which you have been added.
4. Open your Teams calendar or meetings, if available.
5. Open a shared file or Microsoft 365 application from Teams.

Not seeing a particular team or channel does not necessarily indicate a problem with Teams. You may need to be added to that team or given permission to the associated resource.

Troubleshooting

Outcome

You can sign in to Microsoft Teams with your Acadia account and use the communication and collaboration features available through your Microsoft 365 licence.

You also understand the difference between chat, meetings, teams, channels, and shared files, and can choose the appropriate Teams feature for the type of work you are doing.