Teams and channels

The backbone of the Microsoft Teams service are teams and channels, which means participants in communication and places where information and files are exchanged and work is being done on joint projects. This text will describe the theoretical settings and basic principles of working with teams and channels, and in some of the following you will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the practical details.

Teams are sets of people, content and services. They are used to connect members of the organization (users for whom accounts have been created on the MPN or Office.com portal) in order to do some work. They can be created in accordance with the organizational structure (administration, support, introduction), location (Belgrade, Novi Sad), for cooperation on a joint project (Project XXX) or for other, often non-business, purposes (excursions, recreation, hobbies).

They can be private and include only some people in the organization or public that can be accessed by anyone in the organization.

Team members can be:

  • Owners – team creators, mostly system administrators, but they can also be ordinary users if they are granted the appropriate rights.
  • Members – members invited by the owners to the team. They have smaller rights, and the kind granted to them by the owners.
  • Guests – people outside the organization who have been added to the team. They have the least rights within the team.

Other people who are not members of the team can be invited to the meetings. Their rights are kept to a minimum (meetings, chat, etc.).

Each time you create a new team, the following are created:

  • Microsoft 365 group
  • SharePoint Online site and document library for saving team files
  • Exchange Online shared mailbox and calendar
  • OneNote notebook
  • Links to other Microsoft 365 applications such as Planner, Power BI, etc.

Channels are sections within a team in which conversations are held on a topic, e.g. project.

Each team has at least one channel (General). Channels can be open to all team members or private – available only to select. Private channels are recognized by having a padlock-like icon at the end of the name. Whether a channel is public or private is determined when it is created.

Files shared within a channel are stored on the associated SharePoint portal.