Microsoft Teams for Faculty and Staff

Created by Kimberly Adkins
Last updated: Jun 22, 2022 by Jessica Marshall

Overview

The below page contains critical resources and training suggestions for our Faculty and Staff to facilitate remote instruction and general productivity.

Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's new enterprise communication tool. Teams combines persistent chat rooms, video/voice, file sharing, meetings, and many other features into one application. Teams is beneficial for meetings, class sessions, and remote communications. We recommend using it for any conversational or video conferencing application.

Table of Content


Ensure that you are setting roles correctly in your meetings. Refer to this link for more information on meeting roles and modifications. This topic is also covered in the instructional video below "Creating and Configuring Meetings". 

You may also experience attendees being placed in a lobby. This will occur for anyone outside of USF entering a meeting. To allow a guest into a meeting, just click admit on the lobby notice that appears on your screen.

Microsoft Teams Videos

Microsoft Teams Meeting Safety and Best Practices

Click here to download the guide for Microsoft Teams meetings.

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How do I access Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is accessible via your web browser, Android or iOS device, or desktop client available on both Windows and Mac operating systems. We recommend testing out all available options to determine the method that best suits your productivity requirements.

Essential links for quick set-up

  1. Quick Start Guide
  2. Education Help and Learning
  3. Microsoft Teams Help Center

Notifications

Notifications in Teams are off by default. To set them up, click here.

Training for Microsoft Teams

You have several options for self-paced training available for Microsoft Teams.

Accessing Teams

Login using your netid@usf.edu.

Help for Teams


 Why am I being placed in a lobby?

We automatically admit anyone in our usf.edu environment to a meeting. If you are being redirected to a lobby, please be sure you are logged into Microsoft Teams via a web browser, or via the Microsoft Teams App. To admit someone from the lobby, just click admit after verifying who they are.

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What can I do with Teams?

Teams allows diverse and remote groups for collaborate for a variety of reasons. We heavily encourage utilizing this to ease your transition to a remote learning environment. Read further for capabilities and documentation.

 Chat and channel communication.

Teams, at it's core, is a persistent chat service. You can create channels for specific conversations or projects within your team. Chat records will stay there for review later, or to allow people to respond without requiring an immediate reply. You can break off into one-on-one conversations with co-workers and people within other groups and teams.

You can enhance your chat with emojis and visual responses, as well as subject formatting.

Click here for more information on chat.

For more information on channel messages, review this article.

Access and Productivity

 Tabs for quick access

Microsoft Teams uses tabs at the top of each Team to display your apps and other integrations. This makes Microsoft Teams an effective workspace - integrating applications like Excel, Word, Planner, PowerBI, and others into one space.

Visit this link for more information. 

 File Sharing and Collaboration

Microsoft Teams comes with a group OneDrive to store, share, and edit your files. You can also post documents and files to the channel like a Word document, and the entire team can edit it in real time within the Teams app, creating a much more collaborative and interactive workspace.

Click here for more information on File Collaboration.

You can also add other cloud storage providers, like Box, to Teams. Click here for more information.

Scheduling and hosting meetings

 Meetings

You can create ad-hoc meetings with your Team, or even schedule them all within the Teams app. Starting a meeting is easy. You just open the channel you want to meet with, and select the meeting notification icon at the bottom of your screen. It opens up to a video chat where you and your team can collaborate, share files, present your desktop, and meet no matter where your team is. 

To schedule a meeting, select the Calendar icon on the left and click the New Meeting button in the upper right.

For more information on the Meet Now feature, click here. 

For meeting scheduling assistance, click here.

 Dial-in Conferencing

USF IT offers Audio Conferencing for your Teams meetings. With audio conferencing, a phone number and meeting pin is attached to your meeting invites. This allows remote and external personnel to connect with just a phone call and work within the meeting. The phone number is attached automatically to your meetings - no need for you to take any action.

You are also able to dial out from a meeting to invite a participant or conference phone number.

3rd party integrations and applications

 Apps, bots, and other integrations

Microsoft Teams supports a wealth of external applications, bots, and other integrations to enable you to be more productive.

Some examples include Asana, Box, PagerDuty, and others. Additionally, there are bots that can automate repeat tasks or alerts that your team depends on.

Review the full list of integration instructions here.


Note: USF IT does not have every app enabled. For a list of every available application, click here.

If you have an application you want, please submit a ticket to help@usf.edu

Security and Compliance within Teams

 Storing sensitive data in Teams

If you are planning on storing data considered highly sensitive or restricted, contact the Security Operations Team so that additional protective measures can be placed around the data.

Review USF ISSP-0001 here for more information.

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If you are unable to solve your issue with this knowledge base article, please contact the USF IT Service Desk by calling (813) 974-HELP (4357) or emailing help@usf.edu. 

If you find any errors or omissions in any knowledge base article, please contact and inform the USF IT Service Desk by calling (813) 974-HELP (4357) or emailing help@usf.edu.