Learn how to use Microsoft Teams
Get started
Learn how to create and manage teams and channels, schedule a meeting, turn on language translations, and share files.
Meetings
Learn how to transition from a chat to a call for deeper collaboration, manage calendar invites, join a meeting directly in Teams, and use background effects.
Tips and tricks
Learn how to set your availability status, stay up to date with the activity feed, and create group chats and coauthor shared files for real-time collaboration.
Microsoft Teams for Education
Help drive the transition to inclusive online or hybrid learning, build confidence with remote learning tools, and maintain student engagement.
Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) is a secure collaboration hub allowing both internal and external users to host 1:1 or group audio/video meetings, with up to 300 interactive participants. With webinars participants rise to 1000 interactive and 10,000 view-only. Teams also allows inline co-authoring of documents, private chat, and easily integrates features from other apps.
The following shows features or updates coming soon to Teams or being released now.
Co-organiser meeting role | Teams meeting organisers can assign the co-organiser meeting role to up to 10 people. Co-organisers will be granted many of the capabilities of the organiser in the meeting, including being able to:
Co-organisers will not be able to do the following:
| Q1 2022 | 81391 |
Retiring Teams mobile support for Android 5,6 and 7 | Microsoft are retiring support for the teams mobile device on devices running Android versions 5, 6 and 7. Users who have Android devices running these versions, should update their Android device to a newer version. | Android 5 - March 2022 Android 6 - July 2022 Android 7 - September 2022 | N/A |
Teams meeting recording retention policy | Microsoft are adding the requirement that we have a retention policy for our Teams meeting recordings. This means that any new Teams meeting recordings created after January 2022, will only be held for 2 years before being automatically deleted. You can still download your Teams meeting recordings and store them elsewhere within these 2 years. This will not apply to Teams meeting recordings made before January 2022. | Q1 2022 | N/A |
To see more features recently added or coming soon to Teams, including more in-depth information on these new features, please see:
New features in Teams
All Product Updates, including those in development, rolling out or launched can be found on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap
Teaching Remotely
We recommend using Teams to hold meetings or for group chat, but if you are looking to teach remotely then you should refer to guidance about Teaching Continuity Preparation
Teams for Teaching is now also available.
If you are unsure which tool best fits your needs for your meetings or events, you may find the Online and Digital Events Service helpful. Here you will find advice and guidance about safely and securely hosting your meetings and events online, supported tools and and a selector to help you choose the right tool right tool for your type of meeting or event:
Online and Digital Events Service
Connecting People with Teams
Have a look at our blog article giving some insights and reflection about how Teams is being used to support people working from home: Connecting People with Microsoft Teams
We stream tweets on a regular basis with handy hints led by #TeamsTips aimed at helping people to more easily connect with each other using Teams, choosing the right tool for the task in hand, encouraging good practice, etiquette and safety online. Please re-tweet through your own feeds to help our reach out to as many people as possible. Follow @UoE_ISApps //twitter.com/UoE_ISApps
Bonus Teams Tip
- If you only wish to start a conversation with someone, use the "Meet now" feature to call them using Teams, it's quick a free phone call and you don't need to create a teams channel or group chat. It's great that Teams allows us to see immediately when someone is available to talk, helping us to practice good work etiquette.
Limits and Specifications
Microsoft Teams has various limits, specifications and requirements that apply to it.
Microsoft provide up-to-date information on these limits and specifications on their website. This gives information on how many people can be in a Team, how many Teams you can create, how many attendees can join a meeting and other information.
Limits and Specifications for Microsoft Teams
For helpful hints & tips about using Teams and discover new features, follow us on Twitter (@UoE_TeamsTips) and have a look at our previous #TeamsTips tweets:
@UoE_TeamsTips
An example of one of our #TeamsTips:
#TeamsTips For Teams meeting organisers - By default, all your invitees will be added as presenters (meaning they can share content and record). To set your invitees as attendees instead, follow our guidance under "Teams meetings FAQs
Guidance and videos introducing Microsoft Teams to help you get started using Teams.
On this page you will find frequently asked questions about Microsoft Teams.
On this page, we list key new features that have been added to Teams recently, and some which are coming soon to Teams.
Good practice guidance about Course-based Teams for Teaching.
Guidance on how Teams meetings work, features available in Teams meetings, and etiquette and privacy help.
Breakout Rooms have now been implemented in Microsoft Teams. These allow meeting organisers to create and name separate rooms during a meeting, and assign attendees to these rooms.
Webinar introduces webinar features to Teams including attendee registration, 1000 interactive and live-streaming to 10,000 view-only attendees.
On this page you will find information about Live Events in Teams.
Guidance and videos about using chat, teams channels and connecting apps.
Teams meeting recordings have changed. Recordings are now saved automatically to either SharePoint or OneDrive.
Guidance and videos about how to initiate an audio or video call using Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams use cases have been gathered from staff and students across the University of Edinburgh. These give insight into how different groups use Teams, which may help you to understand why you should use it.