Teams & Groups FAQs

KB0012592

Microsoft 365
Teams & Groups FAQs

Creating Microsoft 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams

Determining why you need and how you will use your Team or Group will aid in this decision. While many aspects of Teams and Groups overlap, some features are only available to Groups. See Determine If You Need a Group and/or Team to see what you can do with each.

Keep in mind that you cannot add a Group to an existing Team, but you can add a new Team to an existing Group. If you would like benefits of a Team with the flexibility to use Group features (e.g., shared email and calendar) in the future, we recommend that you create a Group first and then add a new Team to it.

Ready to create a Team or Group?

Yes, you can add a new Team to an existing Group, but you cannot add a new Group to an existing Team. Learn how to create a Team from an existing Group.

Adding & Removing Members

Team and Group owners can add and remove members individually. Users can join public Teams and Groups instantly or request to join private Teams and Groups, in which the owner(s) will receive a notification to approve membership. Members can also choose to leave a Group or Team.

See Add & Remove Team Members and Add & Remove Group Members for more information.

While Darden and Law are in separate Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) environments, ITS issues them a special license for Teams in the Academic Microsoft 365 environment. You can add them like you add any other faculty or staff:

  1. The Team or Group Owner should add the user or send an invitation to the user's "computingID@virginia.edu" email address (not Law or Darden email address).
  2. The user should go to portal.office.com and log in with their "computingID@virginia.edu" email address and UVA password. Forgot Password?

Guest access allows your team to collaborate with people outside of your organization by granting them limited access to existing Teams and Groups. 

  • A guest is someone who isn't a student, faculty, or staff at UVA. Guests could include partners, vendors, suppliers, or consultants. Note: If an employee at UVA Health has no other roles at UVA, they are considered a guest.
  • To participate, guests will need a business (Azure Active Directory) or consumer email account (e.g., Outlook, Gmail, etc.) to get access to Team chats, meetings, and files.
    • All Guests can be managed securely within Azure AD and are covered by the same compliance and auditing protection as the rest of Microsoft 365.
  • When a guest is invited to join a Team or Group, they receive a welcome email message that includes some information about what to expect now that they're a member. 

Guests have the ability to:

  • Create a channel (Team Owners can control this setting)
  • Participate in private chat
  • Participate in a channel conversation
  • Post, delete, and edit messages
  • Share a channel file
  • Access SharePoint files

Guests do not have access to:

  • OneDrive for Business
  • Searching for people outside of Teams
  • Search for files
  • Calendar, Scheduled Meetings, or Meeting Details
  • PSTN conferencing (dialing in to preset conference phone number) 
  • Organizational chart
  • Create or revise a team
  • Browse for a team
  • Upload files to a person-to-person chat

Learn how to add someone as a Guest to a Team.

Guests will receive an email (check spam folder!) with instructions and need to use a one-time passcode for guest users to log in.

See what the guest experience is like in Teams.

Learn how to add someone as a Guest to a Group.

Since Guests will never see the Groups drop-down in Outlook Online, they should follow the links in the email to the site pages. However, Guests will still receive emails to groupname@teams.virginia.edu in their respective inboxes.

An example invitation email that features the links Guests should use to access Group features:

Yes.

Using Teams & Groups

If you were not added to the Team or Group by an owner, you can instantly join public Teams and Groups or request to join private Teams and Groups through your Microsoft 365 account. Learn how to join a Team and join a Group.

As a Microsoft Teams user, you can schedule and host meetings with other Team members and even invite external users to join a meeting. Learn how to schedule virtual meetings and make video calls.

For guidance on making virtual meetings and video conferencing more accessible, visit the Digital Accessibility page for resources from UVA sources, vendors, peer institutions, and subject matter experts.

You can record any Teams meeting or call to capture audio, video, and screen sharing activity. The recording happens in the cloud, and is saved to OneDrive. To determine if the recording is saved on the Caller's OneDrive, or the Callee's, and other scenarios, scroll down to the "Meeting Types" table on the Microsoft Channel meetings page.

Please notify participants that you are recording the session/meeting. For more information about recording, please visit Microsoft's support site.

Here are the UVA policies about recording class sessions and distributing course materials:

All Team members can post and edit files through the Teams interface. Learn how to edit a file in Teams as well as other ways you can collaborate on files in Teams, such as sharing with someone outside of your Team. 

Yes, there are records and data retention policies that you be aware of and abide by while at UVA. 

For questions about these policies, contact Records and Information Management at records@virginia.edu.

All UVA faculty, staff, and students have access to the Assignments tab in Teams. However, in order to create assignments, you must select the "Class" Team type when creating a new Team and then navigate to the Assignments tab. Once you create new assignments, the Grades tab will display graded assignments. Visit Microsoft for more information about Assignments.

Managing Teams & Groups

Any member can leave a Team or Group at anytime. However, if you were added to a Team or Group by a supervisor or teammate, you may want to confirm with them that it is okay to leave. Team and Group owners must select a new owner before leaving if there is not currently another designated owner. (Is this accurate?)

You may find that leaving or hiding a Channel in Teams will work in lieu of leaving a Team or Group. When you are ready, learn how to leave a Team or leave a Group.

All Plans have an underlying Group. When you create a new Plan, you have the option to select an existing Group, or Planner will create a new one for you.

Groups that are not renewed annually will expire. Please keep in mind that if you ignore the Group renewal email as the owner of the Group, everything associated with the Group — including your Plan — will be deleted.

You can delete a Team or Group if it is no longer needed. Be aware that deleting a Team or Group will permanently remove the Team or Group and everything associated with it. If you delete a group in a Microsoft 365 application, such as Microsoft Stream, you also permanently delete the Microsoft 365 Group and all content associated with it.

Groups that are not renewed annually will expire. If you are the owner of a Group that is no longer needed, you can simply ignore the renewal email or delete the Group directly.

When you are ready, follow the instructions for deleting a:

UVA will retain expired or deleted Groups for 30 days by default. This 30-day period is considered a "soft delete" because you can still restore the group. After 30 days, the Group — including all associated contents — are permanently deleted and cannot be restored. If you are the owner of a Microsoft 365 Group, you can restore the group yourself in Outlook Online (OWA) during the 30-day period.

You cannot restore a deleted Team. If you need additional help, contact an administrator or the UVA Help Desk.

Owners can edit the name, description, and settings for their Team or Group. Microsoft's Teams training videos can help you learn more about Teams and how to make it work best for your team.

Learn how to:

Team and Group names are unique. If you delete a Team or Group, the name cannot be reused for 30 days. After 30 days, anyone can create a new Team or Group using the same name.

Short URL for this page: https://in.virginia.edu/teams-groups-faqs

Last Updated: December 16, 2024