How to create teams and channels in Microsoft Teams (Video)

Learn how to create a new team and channels for that team in this lesson.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

Create a team whenever you have a reason to bring a new or existing group of people together to communicate and/or collaborate. You can create private or public teams (aka private or public Microsoft 365 groups). Private groups require membership management and requests (when applicable) whereas public groups can be discovered by anyone in your organization.

Create a channel whenever you need to separate a specific topic, client, subject, discipline, etc. from the main conversation and contents (General channel) to its own channel. This helps keep the General channel clear for small talk, truly general conversations and contents, etc. while your more focused subject-specific conversations, files, meetings, apps, and more are in the channel you’ve created.

Your channels can be standard (same permissions as team) or private (unique permissions from team). If you choose private channels, they’ll each have their own entire SharePoint site as opposed to sharing one like all of your standard channels will. Private channels are also owned by the channel creator (not necessarily the parent team’s owner).

Additional resources

Teams vs channels in Microsoft Teams (Video)

Learn the differences between a team and a channel when collaborating in Microsoft Teams. This video shows that teams are groups of people who need shared access and space to collaborate and communicate on a shared initiative. Channels are how that group organizes their content and work.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

Teams are a group of a people along with all of the resources, apps, conversations, meetings, and more they share. Channels are how team members keep their content organized by particular topics, subjects, projects, etc. Channels can be thought of as a way to “folderize” your team’s content.

Teams have team settings, and each channel has it own settings as well. Each member of your team has equal access to the team’s standard channels – this only differs if you utilize private channels (which have separate membership management).

Additional resources

How to use chat in Microsoft Teams (Video)

Learn the ins and outs of individual (1:1) and group chats using Microsoft Teams.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

Chats can be 1:1 or group. These chats can include external participants as well.

You can rename group chats, and you can also remove or add members to those group chats over time.

Any files you attach or receive via chat are stored in and shared from OneDrive.

You can integrate additional apps in your chats by adding tabs to the top (such as embedding a frequently used document or website) or by using the apps in individual messages (such as Forms for a quick poll).

Additional Resources

What is Microsoft Teams? Intro and navigation (Video)

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to find and navigate Microsoft Teams. There are 11 more lessons in this chapter on Microsoft Teams.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

Microsoft Teams is where you and your colleagues can chat, meet, and collaborate.

Every team is built on a Microsoft 365 group. When a new team is created, a Microsoft 365 with the same name is created. This supports membership, but also creates a SharePoint site, OneNote notebook, and allows Forms workspaces, Power BI workspaces, and Planner usage.

The desktop and web versions of Teams are quite similar but you’ll notice significant differences when using the web version to attend or run meetings especially. 

You can chat 1:1 or in a group. These chats can be internal and/or external depending on the recipient’s and your organizational policies.

team is essentially the Microsoft 365 group (a group of people). Those teams have channels which they use to separate their conversations, files, and apps by topic, subject, priority, etc. Think of it as a way to “folderize” your team’s collaborative tools and content.

The Teams Calendar is your Outlook calendar. Invites are still exchanged through Outlook.

Additional resources

How to change a SharePoint site theme and navigation (Video)

You can change your SharePoint site’s navigation menus and overall theme. This lesson demonstrates how to get started.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

How to roll up content across SharePoint Online sites (Video)

You can roll up and display content from across multiple sites in SharePoint Online using the news, documents, and events web parts. This video will demonstrate that process.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

The News, Highlighted content, and Events web parts allow you to pull in content from sites other than your current site. So, for example, if you’re building a home page for your site and add a news web part, you can choose to pull in a partner department’s site’s news to your site as well to provide a variety of relevant content to your members. 

Additional resources

How to open a webpage in Internet Explorer mode using Edge (2022)

Internet Explorer had a good run, but in June 2022 its latest and last version (11) will no longer be supported. Instead of IE, users are encouraged to use Microsoft Edge. Personally, I love Microsoft Edge. I benefit from using vertical tabs, multiple profiles, and various other features on a regular basis. Plus, the performance has been much better than my experience with IE, waiting for pages to load (or for the browser to stop responding).

Luckily, those of you who still require Internet Explorer (or at least an emulation of it) can use Microsoft Edge’s Open link in new Internet Explorer mode tab feature. Simply right-click the link you need to run in IE, and select it the IE mode tab option seen in the following screenshot.

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Once you’ve opened an IE tab, you’ll get a prompt that allows you to always open that particular URL in IE mode. In the following screenshot, note the ability to toggle on Open this page in Internet Explorer mode next time.

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Alternative methods to launch Internet Explorer mode in Edge

If you don’t have a link to right-click, you can also just visit the webpage in Edge normally. Then use the ellipsis (three dots) in the upper right corner of the Edge browser and select Reload in Internet Explorer mode.

And lastly, you can make some adjustments to Edge’s settings by also using that same ellipsis (three dots) in the upper right corner. Choose Settings, then Default browser.

Click to enlarge

From here, you can:

  • Make Edge your default browser (if not already)
  • Allow IE to automatically open sites in Edge (Never, Incompatible sites only, or Always)
  • Allow sites to be reloaded in IE mode (as I’ve shown in this blog post)
  • Manually add sites to always open in IE mode*

*Note that when you add specific sites to use IE mode, it only stays in affect for 30 days.

How to create news in SharePoint Online (Video)

News in SharePoint Online is a great way to disseminate information to your team and the entire organization. Learn how to create news in this video, then watch the content roll-ups lesson later in this course to see how your news can be pulled into other sites across your organization.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Notes

You can create and share news within and outside your SharePoint. News is highly visible to your members from the SharePoint start page, SharePoint mobile app, any of your pages that have the news web part, and any pages from other sites in your organization that are including news from your site.

Creating news is nearly identical to creating a page –  the main difference is what’s described in the previous paragraph – how it’s distributed, used in web parts, and consumed. The very nature of news is to be temporary – announcements, articles, write-ups, etc. Pages, on the other hand, are meant to be more permanent/evergreen as core resources/landing pages in your site’s navigation.

Additional resources

How to create pages in SharePoint Online (Video)

Learn how to create additional pages for your SharePoint site. We’ll cover creating a page as well as adding section layouts and web parts.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

How to use calculated columns in SharePoint Online lists and libraries (Video)

Learn how to create and use calculated columns in SharePoint lists and libraries. Not all calculated columns are mathematical – you could extract text or combine column values as well, for example. See the additional column reference handout for this lesson in the full course at www.NateTheTrainer.com.

This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.

You can also watch the entire course as a YouTube playlist as well (just without the course discussions, quizzes, exam, and certificate). Be sure to subscribe to support my channel and for easy access to future content.

Additional resources