Office of Information Technology

Meet, Chat, Call, and Collaborate

Microsoft Teams provides a chat-based workspace that enables you to easily have conversations, host meetings, share files, and collaborate on documents in real time from any device.

Set up your team’s space so everything you need to work together is available any time, all in one place.

Teams are made up of two types of channels — standard (available and visible to everyone) and private (focused, private conversations with a specific audience). Visit this Microsoft page for an overview of teams and channels: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/overview-of-teams-and-channels-c3d63c10-77d5-4204-a566-53ddcf723b46

For people new to Microsoft Teams, we suggest the interactive Teams Demonstration and the Teams video training provided by Microsoft.

Before requesting a Team

Please consider the functions available within Microsoft Teams, OneNote and OneDrive platforms before requesting the creation of a new team.

Microsoft Teams provides one-to-one chats, group chats and recurring meetings without the need of creating or being part of a specific team. OneNote allows you to organize notebooks, sections and pages and share them with TAMIU Staff and faculty for collaboration. In addition, OneDrive can be used for content collaboration within TAMIU coworkers.

Limitations of Microsoft Teams

• A Team must be used for university related business. For instructional purposes use Blackboard, the University's official Learning Management System.
• People external to the University cannot join a Team, channel or chat.
• A Team must be for groups of 5 people or more. No Teams for just one or two people. You could use a 1:1 or group chat instead.
• Created Teams are private by default and membership is managed by team owners. If you change a Team to public, OIT will reset it to private.
• Teams will be deleted after 180 days of inactivity/no access. After 30 days, team and content will be permanently deleted.
• Do not use a Team to process sensitive personal data or other highly restricted data.
• The content of Teams, chats, recorded meetings and more may need to be obtained in order to respond to information requests, so the same level of care regarding the content should be taken as with other University records and correspondence.
• Use of Teams must not contravene the Acceptable Use Standard Administrative Procedure (SAP). Please refer to 29.01.99.L1 TAMIU Rule at https://www.tamiu.edu/compliance/documents/Rules%20and%20SAPs/29.01.99.l1informationresources.pdf
• Additional limitations and other specifications for Microsoft Teams can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/limits-specifications-teams

Responsibilities of Team owners

• Team owners are the information store owners for the site.
• Ensuring that access is only provided where necessary and access must be removed promptly when no longer required. Owners can add/remove members as necessary.
• Ensuring that all data stored or processed within a Team adheres to the Acceptable Use Standard Administrative Procedure (SAP). < class="cf0">Please refer to 29.01.99.L1 TAMIU Rule at https://www.tamiu.edu/compliance/documents/Rules%20and%20SAPs/29.01.99.l1informationresources.pdf
• Ensuring that the Team has a minimum of two owners at all times.
• Transfer the ownership to another team member prior to leaving employment with the University.

Naming convention

Teams, Sites and Groups will be created using a naming convention to help the University easily understand where a Team/Site/Group fits within the organization. Team Owners are not authorized to change the name of the team.

For readability it's best to keep the names short and use the description field for context. Names should have no more than 60 characters.

Team-[college/division]-[deptcode]-[function]

• The word "Team-" is fixed and will automatically be inserted at the front (you do not need to add the word "Team-")
• [college/division-] for our Division should be "VPFO-" (note the hyphen on the end)
• [deptcode-] should be the FAMIS code for your unit (note the hyphen on the end)
• [function] should be something meaningful to describe the team function

Name examples:

• Team-COAS-[famiscode]-Leadership team (A team for COAS Leadership team)
• Team-FA-OIT-Help Desk (A team for Help Desk Staff in the OIT)
• Team-SS-STU-Student Orientation Committee (A committee group in charge of Student Orientation)
• Team-AA-RES-TAMIU SANE program (A collaboration group to write the TAMIU SANE program)

Request a new Microsoft Team