How to set up and create a team in Microsoft Teams

Arif Bacchus

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Microsoft Teams can be the central collaboration space for any workplace. Chats happen in a hub known as “teams,” which are groups of people brought together for work, projects, or common interests.

If you’re an Office 365 administrator, in this guide, we’ll show you how you can create your own team within Microsoft Teams. We’ll also touch on how you can create a channel and customize or manage your team.

How to create a team

building a team

If you’re an administrator, to create or find a team within Microsoft Teams, all you need to do is click the link at the bottom of the window which says Join or create a team. After you do that, you’ll see options to Create a team, and join a team with a code. You’ll want to click the option that says Create a team. 

Once you do that, select to Build a team from scratch. You can then choose if you want to make it private, and have people ask permission to join, public, so anyone can join, or organization-wide, so everyone can join. Next, you can name the team, and select create. You’re then free to add people, groups, and entire contact groups by typing out their names, selecting Add and then Close.

How to create a channel

creating a channel

Once you create a team, you’ll get a General channel. This is a great place for announcements and posting information for everyone to see. However, you can always create a new channel for other purposes if need be. You can do this by clicking on the … More options next to the team name. You can then select Add channel and enter in a name and descripion. You’ll also want to select Automatically show this channel in everyone’s channel list if you desire to have everyone see the channel. When done, you can click Add.

It’s also worth noting that while only Admins can create new teams, users can also create their private channels from within an existing team. This setting is turned on by default unless otherwise configured by an Admin from within the Microsoft Teams admin center. You can learn more about that from Microsoft.

How to customize and manage a Team

team options

Now that you’ve created a Team and channel, you’re free to manage it. You always can manage a team by selecting … More options next to the team name. When done, you can select Manage team to find members, channel, settings, and apps. You also can select Settings and click on Team Picture to add a team picture to make things look a bit more personal.

Check out our other Teams content for more

In this guide, we’ve just touched on how you can create a team. There are many other cool things you can do with Microsoft Teams. Some previous topics we’ve touched on include how you can join meetings as a guest, configure read receipts, share your screen, and multitask during meetings. Check out our Microsoft Teams hub for more!