Microsoft Teams is an all-encompassing, robust tool for collaboration and sharing that allows Michigan Medicine employees from multiple locations to work together seamlessly. Security, privacy, and easy access is one of the hallmarks of Microsoft Teams.

One of the most powerful features of Microsoft Teams is its ability to integrate with other Microsoft products including Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and OneNote.

You can use Microsoft Teams to:

• Schedule and keep track of meetings through Outlook
• Conduct video conferences
• Collaborate across multiple divisions and offices
• Share, edit, and find content across your organization and cloud-based storage services through SharePoint, OneDrive & OneNote

Sensitive Data in Teams:

The Michigan Medicine instance of Microsoft 365, including Teams, was designed for high data sensitivity, including Protected Health Information (PHI). Messages within Teams are retained for a period of six months, after this period the messages will be deleted. This message retention policy applies to Chat Messages (Private and Group), Public Channels and Private Channels. See the U-M Safe Computing Sensitive Data Guide for more details.

Creating New Teams:

At Michigan Medicine, teams must also be active directory groups. The active directory group is where members of your team will be managed. If you are the owner of an active directory group, you can use the group management tool to turn it into a team. Follow the link below for information on how to use the Michigan Medicine Group Management Tool (GMT), including how to request a new group, how to enable Teams for an existing group and how to manage members. Team creation can take up to 24 hours.    

Michigan Medicine Group Management Tool (GMT)

*You must first request a group if you do not have one. Once the group is created, then you are able to enable Teams for that group*

*You must also be a member of the group you create, even if you're listed as the owner of the group. A team will not populate for users if they are NOT listed as members*

Invite External Users to a Meeting:

You can now invite users external to Michigan Medicine to join a Teams meeting via the Teams application. Simply add their email to the meeting invite via Teams and/or Outlook or share the meeting link with them. External users will not be admitted to the meeting automatically and will be held in a waiting room until admitted. Limitations of external users are the following:

• External users can only message while the meeting is still active. Once the meeting has ended or the external user has left the meeting, the external users will not be able to use the chat functionality. 
• External users cannot request to control your device.
• External users cannot view the transcript, if transcription was used during the meeting.

To learn more about Teams and how to use it for personal productivity & team collaboration, please visit our M365 Learning Center.

How is Microsoft Teams different from Slack or Zoom? Compare the Tools!

Other Helpful Links:

• Adding a Teams meeting from your Outlook calendar
• Adding an existing SharePoint site to your Teams channel
• Chat History (Persistent Chat)
• Creating a Group Chat
• How to create a team from an existing Michigan Medicine Group
• Meeting Recordings
• Working within channels