Microsoft Teams - General Use

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Summary

Microsoft Teams is the University solution for team collaboration, communication, and daily-use telephony.

Adding Files

Open a channel that you want to add files to.
Click Files in the top bar.
Click the Upload dropdown.
Select whether you're adding a file, folder, or template from your local storage to the team.
A file explorer upload window will open. Navigate to and select your file(s)/folder(s)/template(s) that you want to upload to the team files (hold Ctrl to select multiple items at a time), and click Open to add them to your team.
It may take a while to upload the files, depending on their size. You will see a loading symbol at the top of your screen.
- Click this loading symbol to open a progress panel. From here, you can monitor the state of the file uploads and see how close they are to completing.
Once the uploads complete, the files will be accessible to all members of that channel from the Files tab.

Creating a Channel

Select the three dots next to your team's name.
Click Add channel.
Enter a name and description for the new channel.
Select your desired privacy type for this channel. Standard makes the channel public to all members of the team, Private lets you specify who will be able to access the channel, and Shared lets you choose people from your organization or elsewhere to have access to it.
Select Automatically show this channel in everyone's channel list if you want this channel to be visible to the members. Leaving this unchecked will make the channel accessible to the members through a folder named "hidden channels."
- The "testi1" channel was made with the "Automatically show..." checked, while the "testi2" channel has the "Automatically show..." unchecked. This is how they'll appear to the members of the team.
- Members must click "See all channels" to see the hidden channels, such as "test 2" in this case.
Click Create to create the channel.

Creating a Team

Note: For instructions on creating a Team for a course, refer to this article: https://canvas.ku.edu/courses/385/pages/microsoft-teams

Click Teams on the left side.
Click Join or create a team or the plus icon depending on your app layout settings.
- For Grid layout, click this in the top right:
- For List layout, click this plus icon at the top of the list:
Click Create team.
Click Basic team or select from another team's template using the "From another team" tab on the left.
Click Use this template.
Select your desired privacy type for this channel. If you select Private, you will have to add the people or groups you want on the team. If you select Public, anyone at the university will be able to find and join your MS Teams channel. This is only recommended for users who will not be sharing private, sensitive, or confidential information via chat or stored files.
Enter a name and description for the new team.
Click Create to create the team.
The team is now created.

Generating Team Code

Click the three dots to the right of your Team.
Click Manage team.
Click Settings.
Scroll down and click the Team code dropdown.
Click Generate to generate the sharable Team Code.
Once it generates, you can copy it and share it to whoever you want to have join the Team.

Limitations of Private Channels

Limitations:

private channels support connectors and tabs (except Stream, Planner, and Forms), but they currently lack full app support for messaging extensions (Poll, Praise, Updates, etc) and bots.
max of 30 private channels in a single Team
channel deletion takes 30 days
- If you've created 30 private channels and you delete one channel, you will not be able to create more channels until the 30-day deletion process has completed.
max of 250 members within each private channel
private channels are not copied over when creating a new Team from an existing Team
private channels cannot be converted to any other channel type
notifications from private channels are not included in missed activity email reports
channel Meetings cannot be scheduled
A private channel owner can't be removed through the Teams client if they are the last owner of one or more private channels.
If a private channel owner leaves your organization or if they are removed from the Microsoft 365 group associated with the team, a member of the private channel is automatically promoted to be the private channel owner.
If a team member leaves or is removed from a team, that user will also leave or be removed from all private channels in the team. If the user is added back to the team, they must be added back to the private channels in the team.
For more details on private channels, see this Microsoft documentation

Managing Access to MS Teams Channels

Adding Users/Members

Click the three dots to the right of your team.
Click Add member.
Type in the user's name or group that you want to add to your team, and press Enter or click on their name as it comes up. You can add multiple members at once.
- If the user you are wanting to add to the Team is from outside the university, and doesn't have a KU account, they can still be added to the team. This external user will need to have a personal Microsoft Account setup. We recommend that Microsoft account be linked to a Gmail address. Once that is setup, you can type in that user's personal gmail address to add them to the user field in the screenshot above.
If you want to set the new Team member as an Owner, click the drop down to the right of their name and select Owner. Otherwise, you can leave it as Member.
Click Add to add these members to your team.

Removing Users/Members

Click the three dots to the right of your team.
Click Manage team.
Click the Members and guests dropdown, or search for the member you want to remove in the search box.
Click the X to the right of the member(s) you want to remove. This will remove them from your team.

Viewing SharePoint

Open the channel with the Sharepoint you are interested in viewing.
Click the Files tab on the top navigation bar.
Click Open in SharePoint. It may be nested under a three-dot dropdown depending on your app scaling and monitor width, as visible in the screenshot below.

Voicemail & Out of Office (OOO)

Greeting

After your email account has been migrated to the cloud, you'll see some changes to how you manage your voicemail. After migration, you will have to log in to Skype for Business to change the voicemail greeting for any phone number. Other details are managed at voicemail.ku.edu.

Open Microsoft Teams using the desktop application or the online version at office365.ku.edu.
Click the three dots next to your profile picture in the top right. Then, select the Settings option.
Select Calls on the left side and the Configure voicemail button will take you to your voicemail and greeting options.
Select Record a greeting to update your new greeting.

Out of Office Settings

Go to https://voicemail.ku.edu and login using your KU credentials. You should then see the settings page shown below.
To change the Voicemail greeting settings, click the dropdown under Call Answer Rules. By default, it is set to "Play greeting, then allow the caller to record a message," but you can change the rule here from the dropdown to just hang-up, greet and then hang-up, greet and then transfer the caller, or greet and then allow the caller to choose whether to leave a message or get transferred.
Under the Configure Out of Office greeting section, you can select when you want the voicemail greeting to say that you're out of office, or leave them all unchecked to never have it play the out of office greeting.
Under the Text-to-Speech Customized Greeting Option section, you can type out what you want your Voicemail greeting to say. Leave them blank if you just want it to say the default greeting.
Click Save at the top to save your changes.

Customization

Change Team Picture

Click the three dots to the right of the team you want to change the picture for.
Click Manage team.
Click Settings.
Under the Team details drop down, click Change picture.
Click Upload to upload your own image for the Team picture. If you already have an image set for the team, you can upload a different one, or click Remove to have it revert back to the default initials.
Click Save.

Change Teams View

Click the three dots on the top right, by your profile picture.
Click Settings.
From the Appearance and accessibility tab, you can change your theme between Default (light mode), Dark mode, or High contrast mode; change the chat density between comfy or more compact; and edit the layout of your teams to be a grid or sidebar list.

Changing Status (Available, Busy, etc.)

Method 1: Click your profile picture in the top right corner of the Teams window, and then click the status dropdown menu below your profile information. You can select the desired status from here.

Method 2: The Teams status can also be changed by right-clicking the Teams icon from the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.

Article Changelog

1/24/2026

Article updated to basic visual standard.