Microsoft Teams - Setting up your Team/Group - Three Steps and Notifications

Overview

Before creating your Team, you will need to decide on a Team name, who to invite and what channels to add.

Submit a Support Request and include:

1. Team Name (the name will be prefaced by RPI_)
2. Email addresses of individuals who should have rights to add/remove members in the group

Help Desk will reply when your Team/Group is ready.

Procedures

Setting up your Team/Group

STEP 1 - Creating your Team/Group

1. Click the Teams icon located on the left navigation pane.
2. Hover over the Create team button and then click Create team.
3. Select Staff or Other team type.
4. Type the Name of your Team/Group and a Description (optional).

[Create your team dialog box with Name, Description and Privacy lines]

     5. Choose if this will be a Private or Public Team/Group.

6. Click Next.

STEP 2 - Invite your Team/Group members

NOTE: You can also add people outside your organization as a guest to your team by typing their email address and click Add.

1. The Add people to “your team” dialog box appears.
2. Start typing Students/Fac/Staffs name (should appear below if they have an active RCS account), group or type an outside email address for a guest.
3. Choose Add. 

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all the members have been added.

[Add people to screen start typing a name or group on the Add line]

      5. Click Close.

The Team is created. 

[Team name on the left highlighted]

STEP 3 - Adding Channels

Channels can be used for collaboration on projects, reports, and to share files.

1. For additional channels, click the more options (3 dots) to the right of your team name and then click Add Channel.
2. Type a new Channel name, a description and check “Automatically show this channel in everyone’s channel list”

[Create a channel fields with Channel name, description, privacy and Automatically show this channel in everyone's channel list checked]

3. Click Add.

Using the @mentions to Get Attention

The posts tab is included in all channels to post your messages as well as keeps a history of all the discussions.

Use @mentions to get someone’s attention in a channel. Type the @ symbol followed by the person’s name and this person will receive a notification they were mentioned in the post.

[Posts windows showing an arrow pointing to an @mentions post]

When someone mentions you in a post, you will receive a notification in your Activity feed letting you know who it was and in what channel.

Those mentions appear in a red circle to the right of the channel name with a number of how many times you were mentioned.

[Posts windows showing an arrow pointing to two red circles showing how many times @mentions were posted]

Customizing your Notifications

You can use notifications to only get notified on important matters.

1. Click the three dots . . . to the left of your profile picture and choose Settings.
   
   [Three dots to the left of the profile picture selected and Settings option selected]
   
   

2. Click Notifications from the left side bar.

3. Go through and choose your customizations like:

• • • How many times you want to be notified.

[Notifications screen with Missed activity emails selected and their options on the right]

References/Links 

Manage notifications in Teams

Last Reviewed:   23-Feb-2023