[updated February 26, 2021] Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage (including collaboration on files), and application integration. Teams are made up of channels. Each channel is typically built around a faculty/department name or topic. Channels are where you hold meetings, have conversations, and work on files together.
To request a new MS Team, go to the Microsoft Team Request Form and submit the required information.
Contact the IT Service Desk to request a new Team if:
You will need to provide the Service Desk with the following information:
You can reach the IT Service Desk at servicedesk@sheridancollege.ca or call 905-845-9430 ext. 2150.
Go to Sheridan's AppsAnywhere page to download and install the MS Teams desktop app.
Guest access allows teams in Sheridan to collaborate with people outside of the organization by granting them access to existing teams and channels in Teams. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook or Gmail, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings, and files.
See Teams Channel Calendar App Makes Channel Meetings Easier to Access for more info.
Team members can now use the SharePoint tab experience to pin any page, news, list or document library as a separate tab in their Teams channel.
Live Captions display the text version of the audio in the call. This can be enabled via the control bar within the Call window.
Meeting organizers can now turn off the chat functionality during a meeting, which is turned on by default.
Breakout rooms allow meeting organizers to divide and move meeting participants into smaller private meetings to facilitate activities such as discussions and brainstorming sessions.
No additional installations are required to start using the Breakout Rooms in Teams. Please note the following:
All staff, faculty, and students* who have been assigned a Microsoft Teams license.
*Only approved students in FAST and FAAD that are participating in the M365 Virtual Classroom Pilot Project have been assigned a Microsoft Teams license at Sheridan.
You can create up to 50 breakout rooms.
No. Unfortunately at this time that option is not available to the meeting participants. The meeting organizer can only automatically assign or manually assign which rooms participants will go into.
Yes, as the meeting organizer you can view all participants in all rooms and then reassign any individuals into other rooms.
Yes, the meeting organizer has the option to manually assign any meeting participants to a breakout room.
The Tasks app in Microsoft Teams brings together your individual tasks from To Do and Outlook with your team tasks from Planner so you can more efficiently cross them off your lists.
Keep important information easily accessible and top of mind. Users can pin any message in a channel to the channel information pane for all members of the channel to see.
A new feature added to Microsoft 365 brings a consistent file sharing experience across services like OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, and now Teams.
When your mic is turned on in a Teams meeting or call, background noise around you can distract others. Teams now offers three levels of noise suppression to help keep meeting participants focused.
This feature gives meeting organizers the ability to mute one to many meeting participants while removing the muted participants' ability to unmute themselves.
Meeting presenters now have the ability to lock on to an individual video feed for all attendees to see during a Teams meeting. Once selected, the individual identified as the spotlight will be the main video shown to all participants.
The Tasks app in MS Teams brings together your individual tasks from To Do and Outlook with your team tasks from Planner so you can more efficiently cross them off your lists. More details are available from Microsoft’s Teams support pages via the links below:
Suggested Replies functionality offers an option of three different responses for a user to choose from for select messages. Users can quickly reply to a given message by tapping on one of the suggested replies.
Improvements have been made to the browser-based meetings experience for those who join meetings with the Safari browser. Users can now use their device to speak and listen and will no longer be required to dial into the meeting for audio. As was the case previously, participants can still view meeting content being shared in the browser.
Once enabled, only the organizer will be able to join the meeting directly. Everyone else, including people from within the same organization, will be sent to the lobby. Learn more
Multi-window experiences have come to Teams meetings and calling. Users now have the ability to pop out meetings and calls into separate windows to help them optimize their workflow. Learn more
To make collaborating on Visio diagrams within Teams an even better experience, Visio as a tab helps you easily access and manage the Visio files you need or interact with the most, allowing team members to access services and content in a dedicated space within a channel or a chat. Learn more
To help customers meet rapidly changing communication and meeting needs, Microsoft has increased the maximum number of participants allowed in a Teams meeting from 250 to 300. Learn more
Find information faster with contextual search in Microsoft Teams. Users now have the ability to search for content in a specific channel or chat by pressing CTRL + F. Search results will only contain messages and files found in the selected chat or channel.
You Teams profile picture appears at top-right corner of the Teams app is also shared throughout all Office 365 services like Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online. Users now have the ability to upload a profile picture directly from Teams, among the other methods noted previously. Learn more about adding a profile image
This new feature allows muted meeting attendees to indicate that they wish to speak by toggling the hand icon in the meeting control bar. When a meeting participant has raised their hand, an icon will appear next to their name in the roster view as well as their profile picture or video on the main meeting stage.
This new experience is optimized for attendees who have enabled video; audio-only participants are listed below the meeting stage. The new layout logic considers user bandwidth to provide the highest quality audio/video experience for your meetings.
Guest access allows teams in Sheridan to collaborate with people outside of the organization by granting them access to existing teams and channels in Teams. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings, and files. Learn more
By default at Sheridan, each person that is invited to a Teams Meeting is given the presenter role unless otherwise changed during or prior to the meeting. It is important to learn about the permissions that each role has during a meeting so that you don't have any unexpected surprises. See Roles in a Teams Meeting to learn more.
By now most people have had a Teams Meeting where they needed to share a PowerPoint but sharing the desktop screen just doesn't cut it. Watch the following videos to learn some additional methods on how to share PowerPoint presentations in Teams.
How to use Presenter View in Microsoft Teams
How to properly present PowerPoint Slides in Microsoft Teams
Our default permissions for file sharing in a Teams chat is set to "People in your organization with the link", allowing anyone with that sharing link in Sheridan to view and download that document. However, you have other options you can employ that include giving access to anyone, people with existing access, or specific people.
Turn on the new meeting features in your Teams desktop app for an improved user experience. Enjoy focused pop-out windows for calls and meetings, new meeting controls, and other cool features. Learn more
This definitive guide covers some everyday etiquette and best practices for using MS Teams to help keep things clean, organized, and productive (yet still fun and enjoyable). Learn more
With common features such as file sharing, chat, and planning connectors, many users wonder when they should use Teams Group Chat versus Team Collaboration. This AvePoint blog article will go over both and offers reasons when each should be used. Learn more
Here's some handy tips for using Teams. The links below will direct you to resources from Microsoft.
If you want to send an email to a channel in Teams, use the channel email address. Once an email is part of a channel, anyone can reply to it to start a conversation. Learn more
This is the who, what, where, and shh! of notification settings in Microsoft Teams. Visit Manage notifications in Teams for more details about how to adjust your notification settings. Learn more
Microsoft has implemented a way to further individualize your channel names in Microsoft Teams by adding images in the form of emoji icons to the name. Learn more
Do you often wonder if your teammates saw your message in Teams? Read receipts in private chats allow senders to know when a message was read by the recipients. Learn more
A meeting organizer may want to change the default participant settings for a specific meeting. Organizers can make these changes on the Meeting Options web page. Learn more
* Note: changing meetings options is browser-based and not currently available for Safari. You can use Google Chrome, Firefox, or MS Edge.
Stay connected with channels in Microsoft Teams. Channels in Teams are where team conversations and collaboration happen, and this tutorial will give you some tips on how to use them.
You can sync your SharePoint or Teams files to a folder on your computer where you can work directly in File Explorer and access the files even when you're offline. Whenever you're online, any changes that you or others make will sync automatically. Learn more
Do you have information or an announcement that needs to be shared across multiple teams and channels? Learn how to post messages to multiple channels at once. Learn more
You can instantly pop out your one-on-one or group chat into a separate window. and then, resize, reposition, or close the window as you wish. It’s a great way to get a lot done when you’re in a meeting or in a call. FYI: You can pop out multiple conversations, but not the same chat twice. Learn more
Visit the links below for more details about using Teams.
Microsoft is offering a few different instructor-led online courses that you can register to attend. Demand is high, so be sure to book your training session early.
Several video tutorials regarding MS Teams are available from LinkedIn Learning. Follow the instructions below to access the courses:
Join the Microsoft Teams Community
With over 200 members (and growing) Sheridan’s MS Team’s community is a place to learn, share ideas, and ask questions about the Teams service. We’d love to have you as a member of our Teams community.