pg. 1

A Guide to Using Microsoft Teams This guide is intended for those with little to no knowledge of online file-sharing, but may

still be useful for anyone unfamiliar with Microsoft Teams – please do just skip to the

relevant sections if you are already familiar with online working.

Accessing MS Teams There are two main ways of accessing MS Teams – through a web browser (e.g. Chrome,

Firefox or Explorer – it is currently not supported by Safari), or by downloading MS Teams.

The following steps explain what to do if you are accessing Teams by either of these means.

Teams in a Web Browser First, if you are not signed in already, go to Microsoft

Office 365 log in page: https://www.office.com/

Click Sign In – you will need to enter your Oxford

email address, which should then take you to the

Webauth sign in page – sign in using your SSO and

password.

You will then be asked whether you wish to stay

signed in (you may wish to do so if you will be using

your device regularly).

You should now have access to your MS Office home page – from here you can access all files that

are saved in your OneDrive (ie online storage), as well as online versions of PowerPoint, Forms,

Excel, Word and Outlook.

If it’s not immediately visible, click on All Apps to bring up Teams, however it is normally on the main

list.

Click on Teams and it will open in a new tab on your browser – you should be automatically signed in

and it will take you to your home teams page – ie all Teams of which you are a member:

pg. 2

Teams in the App If you would like to use the desktop version of MS Teams, which

offers slightly more functionality, you will need to download this

from https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads

Click on ‘Download Teams’. Click the downloaded file to launch it

– this should bring up the desktop app.

Click ‘continue’ and sign in using your Oxford email address.

This will take you to the Webauth login page – log in using your

SSO and password.

Once you have signed in, you can then access the full desktop

version of Teams.

It will automatically open to your Teams tab ie a list of all Team

groups of which you are currently a member.

pg. 3

Using MS Teams MS Teams is particularly useful for small group classes, tutorial teaching, supervision meetings and

smaller department meetings. With Teams you can:

• Set up video/audio meetings with people in and outside of your organisation – both group

meetings and single participant meetings

• Share files quickly during meetings

• Message colleagues in your organisation – individual or group messages

• Make your own contact lists

• Set up your own ‘teams’ – currently need to request this through IT

services

All of these can be done through the web browser version of Teams and the

desktop app. The screenshots below will be of the desktop app.

Setting up a Meeting There are two main ways of setting up a meeting:

• Putting a meeting in the calendar and inviting participants to it

• Calling someone directly

Calendar Meeting From the sidebar in Teams, click Calendar.

This will bring up all items in your personal calendar (the same as what you would

see when using the calendar associated with Outlook.

To schedule a meeting, you can click on the specific date and time when you

would like this to take place, or you can click on New Meeting in the top right

hand corner.

pg. 4

This will bring up a calendar meeting, which you can use in the same way as you would for

scheduling appointments through Outlook:

If the people you are inviting to the meeting are not using a University of Oxford email address, you

will need to copy and paste their email address into the Add Required Attendees box. Otherwise,

you should be able to add anyone by searching for their name.

Click Save (top right) to add this meeting to your calendar. Anyone who has been invited to the

Teams meeting should receive an invite to their email address.

This will then appear on your Calendar – you can left click to edit it, or right click to delete it.

Direct Calling If you want to contact someone directly, you can also start typing their name into the search bar at

the top of the page:

pg. 5

Clicking on your chosen contact will bring up a chat page with them. You can then take one of the

following actions:

Joining a Meeting If you have been invited to a meeting, you should

receive an email. You can click the link in the email to

join it – Join Microsoft Teams Meeting – this will

prompt you to join on the web browser, or launch the

Teams app, if you have it. This will then bring you into

the meeting.

You will not be fully in the meeting until you click

Which should appear in the middle of your webcam image.

If you are viewing the meeting through your Teams

Calendar, the meeting will turn dark purple (rather than

light purple) if other people are already in it.

Click on the active video icon to join – you will need to click

JOIN NOW again to enter the meeting fully.

If you are using the desktop app, you will be able to see a maximum of four video images of

colleagues in the meeting (no matter how many are in the meeting) – these will rotate round

depending on who is speaking, or who has their camera on. (The web browser version of Teams will

only show the person who is speaking). If your camera is on, your image should appear in the

bottom right corner of the screen. Anyone else who is present in the meeting will have their initials

at the bottom of the screen, even if their picture is not visible:

Video call, audio call, share files or

add person to the conversation See files that have

been shared

between you

previously

Send a message

Send a file

pg. 6

If you move your mouse over the video images whilst you are in a meeting, a control panel will

appear:

We recommend that if you are not speaking then your microphone

is turned off in order to Teams from focusing on you, instead of the

person speaking. You may also wish to turn off your webcam.

Show conversation allows you to send typed messaged to

everyone in the meeting or attach files during the meeting (using

OneDrive, or uploading directly from your computer).

Show participants means you can check if anyone is missing – you

can also start typing in the Invite someone bar to add them to the

meeting manually.

Use the three dots in the control panel for more actions, such as

blurring your background, or adding (unreliable) captions.

Sharing Files During A Meeting There are two ways of sharing files during a meeting – one is by clicking on the Show Conversation

option. Click the paperclip to attach a file from OneDrive or from your computer.

Alternatively, you can use the Share option during a meeting. This will bring up the following panel

at the bottom of your screen:

Duration of meeting

Turn webcam on/off

Turn microphone

on/off

Share:

desktop/window

/files/whiteboard

Show conversation

Show participants

Hang up

pg. 7

If you choose to share any of these things, the meeting will continue in the background, but the

image that they see is what you are choosing to share.

If you are sharing anything that has a video, click the box that says include system audio.

Sharing your desktop means that the meeting can see anything that you are doing – the call is

immediately minimised and a red line appears around the outside of your screen to show that it is

being shared.

If you just want to share a specific item that you are currently using/editing e.g. a document or a

single website, click Window instead. You can then select a single file or folder that you can show or

scroll through, but if you click off this and onto another item, they will only continue to see the

original item you shared.

If you want to talk through a presentation or something similar, you can also select PowerPoint,

which means that you can present a PowerPoint or show slides whilst continuing your call.

The Whiteboard option is a useful drawing tool but is not easy to use with just a mouse.

If you want to stop share an item, then click the icon below with the cross through it:

Sending Messages Through Teams You can send messages as part of a normal Teams meeting.

You can also message individuals directly by going to Chat on the left hand menu.

pg. 8

This will automatically bring up a conversation from your most recent meeting, but you can also

access conversations and file shares from previous meetings.

Setting Up Contact Groups - Messaging Under Chat and Contacts you can make your own contact

group – this is useful if you want to organise people that

you might talk with regularly into specific groups.

To do this, click on Create New Contact Group, make a

name for your group and click the three dots to the right of

the group name to Add Contacts.

This however does not make a Team group – it is just useful

for organising your contacts, particularly if you need to

contact the same people regularly.

Setting Up Contact Groups – Calls You can set up Contact Groups for calls in the same way by

going to Calls in the menu on the left.

Any existing contact groups will already be there, which

means that you can quickly select individuals for video or

audio calls.

Or you can set up a new group by selecting New Group

from the top right options.

Setting Up Your Own Team and Adding Channels A team is a collection of peoples, files, discussions and tools all in one place.

A channel is a discussion in a team, dedicated to a particular project or topic.

A personal team is particularly useful if you have a tutorial group,

working group or colleagues that you want to meet and chat with

regularly. Clicking the meet now button in a private team also

starts up a new video call.

You can also quickly invite your team to a scheduled meeting

through the Channels option on the schedule a meeting form or invite additional people to a

specific Channel meeting.

In your own Team you can also @ someone – this will alert a specific person to what you are saying.

In order to set up your own Team, you will need to request it through IT services and nominate two

people who will be the owners of the group, however, you can add as many people and owners as

you want once the group is set up. Members of staff can request a new Team by completing the

online form in our self service portal (SSO required) Link to Request Form

pg. 9

For more information about how you can use Channels to assign project work and streamline this,

the Office 365 Guide to Teams is particularly useful. All quick start guides can be found here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/enduser-training and the basic guide is under

Quick Starts – Download this quick start guide (PDF) to learn the basics.

From the quick start Guide:

Contact This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to using MS Teams, but will hopefully be useful in

organising meetings, arranging tutorials and preparing small seminars.

If you have any questions that this guide has not covered, or are having any specific issues using it,

you are welcome to email: hannah.snell@st-annes.ox.ac.uk and can attempt to troubleshoot it with

you.