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What is Teams?

Microsoft Teams is available for staff and students at the University.

Teams is a collaboration tool from Microsoft, designed to help people work better together. It is an online shared space for teams where members can post messages, pictures and links with the ability to comment and discuss on the things posted. It rivals products such as Slack and Discord with the added bonus of supporting your favourite Microsoft apps.

It also doubles as a place to store shared documentation and makes it easy to collaborate on Word documents, annotate images and chat with team members. All this is published to a team activity feed to be commented on and keeping colleagues in the loop.

Why use Teams?

Teams allows you to easily plan, track and organise projects or team work in a shared online space. Sometimes email is not the quickest way to collaborate on work and many staff have asked for a more modern approach to team collaboration. Rather than endless email chains, create a team space which members can drop in and out of, post content to be commented on, all in a persistent activity feed.

Features include:

• Team Chat - instant message individuals or groups
• Integrated Office 365 apps - Office 365 apps are built in for easy access to SharePoint, OneNote, Power BI, Planner and more.
• Teams Meetings - host text, audio or video team meetings within your team space.
• Teams Live Events - broadcast live events to a wider audience.

If you are unsure whether to use Teams Meetings or Teams Live Events here is a comparison of the two platforms.

Teams for Students

Some online teaching and information sessions are delivered via Microsoft Teams. Follow the link in any calendar invite or open Teams through your Office365 login. There is a Teams app available for your smartphone or tablet, or you can login through your Office365 account.

The Teams Meeting tool is integrated into Blackboard Ultra Courses, allowing staff to schedule course-related sessions from within a Blackboard Ultra Course. There is guidance on the  for staff to help you to use this feature. 

Note: University staff may use different systems to deliver teaching. For specific questions about online course content, please contact your lecturer/tutor.

Help and guidance

How do I get a new Team?

Members of University Staff can request new Teams be created via a quick  by logging in to our  and going to Place a DTS Request - Service Catalogue - Office 365-Teams.

Training

The most up to date information can be found on Microsoft's official for tips and troubleshooting.

Page updated by lm920207 on 20/01/26