MS Teams Collaboration

Microsoft Teams Overview

Making A Team

The purpose of this article is to outline the available features for collaborating with LSU users and guests using Microsoft Teams. Below you will find a descr8iption of Teams Channels, Permissions, and types of users.

Standard Channels

• They are open to all team members, and anything posted is searchable by others.
• By default, all members of a team can create standard channels.
• You can't convert a standard channel to a private channel and vice versa.

Private Channels

• These are for discussions that should not be open to all team members, so you must be invited to join one to view it within a team.
• By default, any team owner or team member can create a private channel and add members. Guests cannot create them.
• You cannot convert a private channel to a standard channel; when a private channel is created, it's linked to the parent team and can't be moved to a different team
• Guests MUST be invited to the Team to be added to a private channel

Private channel meetings and calls

Microsoft Article for Private Channels

• External guests can join a team's private channel meeting or Meet now call, but there are a few things to know.
• They are only able to participate if a member of the private channel sends them a link to join the meeting or calls them during the meeting to meet now.
• During the meeting or call, they will have temporary access to chat, files, whiteboard, notes, and the participants list (those not in the Outlook invite), but not after.

Shared Channels

• They're for collaborating with people inside and outside your Team. 
• Only team owners can create shared channels, and only shared channel owners can add members or share the channel with a team.
• Only people who are owners or members of a shared channel can access it, so you must be invited to join one. Guests cannot be added to a shared channel.

• You cannot convert a shared channel into a standard or private channel and vice versa.

• If collaborating with users outside our organization (LSU) you may want to create a new Team if you do not want guests having access to all public Team channels and content.

[Image of channel features]

*LSU does not support Class Teams

*Guests and External Users added to a shared channel must be added to the entire Team

Inviting Users Outside of our Organization (LSU)

The guest invitation process works as follows:

1. A team owner adds a guest to a team.

2. The guest receives a welcome email from the team owner, with information about the team and what to expect now that they're added.

3. The guest accepts the invitation. Guests who have a work or school account in Microsoft Entra ID can accept the invitation and authenticate directly. Other users are sent a one-time pass code to validate their identity (One-time passcode authentication required).

4. After accepting the invitation, the guest can participate in teams and channels, receive and respond to channel messages, access files in channels, participate in chats, join meetings, collaborate on documents, and more.

• Guests and External Users
• Guests are users from outside LSU’s Microsoft tenant and are not part of any other organization’s Microsoft Teams environment. They can be added to a Team via an email address.
• Guests will need to have a Microsoft account to utilize Teams after receiving an invite.
• Guests will have access to all public channels and content within that Team even if added to a private channel.
• External users are those who are part of another organization’s Microsoft Teams environment.
• External collaboration capabilities depend on your organization's IT policies and Microsoft 365 tenant settings. Their administrator may need to explicitly enable external sharing features before you can invite external users to any channel type.