User Best practices and guidelines for Microsoft Teams Sites

by Administrator Comments

MS Teams will allow you to create a MS Team with the same name as an existing team. To avoid confusion, search your Team’s name before creating your MS Team.

      • Use your department name and your Team functional area as part of your MS Team name.
      • Add Prefix Public or Private to identify if the Team will allow external guest access.
      • names can’t contain the following characters ~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ‘ ” .. and Characters in these ranges 0 to 1F, 80 to 9F
      • Words forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_ can’t be part of the your MS Team name.
      • Channel names also can’t start with an underscore (_) or period (.), or end with a period (.).
    1. Site Owners Your Team Must always have at least two owners to minimize data loss in case one of the owners leaves the company.
    2. Try to use channels when appropriate instead of Individual Teams.
    3. If your company policies allow guest access, be mindful that your guest users can download shared files.
    4. Chose the correct classification when creating your MS Teams.
      • Public – This group is open to all your associates. No sensitive data is stored here.
      • Internal Confidential – This group is closed to just a subset of your associates. Sensitive data is stored and communicated within.
    • Internal Only – This group is designed for Your associates only.
      1. The data here cannot be shared externally.
      2. External – This group is intended to invite non- associates from whitelisted domains. Data here will be specific to the needs of sharing with these external guests.
      3. The team owner needs to be an associate part of your Azure AD; external individuals are not supposed to be site owners.
      4. Site owners are responsible for the following.
    • Managing members
    • Managing channels
    • Managing Teams settings
    • Teams’ expiration and renewals

     

    1. Team owners will be required to verify the Team is valid and active every 90 days, starting from day of creation. If no action to renew, 30 days after owner notification, the Team will be soft deleted. Owners can RESTORE 30 days after soft deletion, the Team will be permanently deleted – it cannot be recovered.
    2. Users can install 3rd party applications; however, we recommend installing only Microsoft signed applications, and for any 3rd party app, seek IT approval. 3rd Party apps might have a hidden cost associated or a grace period. 3rd party apps also can expose the company’s data.
    3. Do not try to change the General default channel, you can’t remove, rename, or unfavorite the General channel.
    4. Do not change, modify, or store files on the default Document Library using Sharepoint direct access.
    5. Don’t change the “Documents” folder structure, which is maintained by Teams.
    6. Don’t change the Documents security, which is managed by Teams.
    7. Add navigation tabs for resources within your SharePoint Teams site.
    8. Use Private Chat for one-to-one conversations.
    9. Use the channel conversation to share knowledge and information with the Team.
    10. Use the Private option under the Privacy dropdown when creating a new channel for channels that need different permission than the parent Teams site.
    11. Use notifications on MS Teams carefully to avoid notification fatigue; turn notifications only on the most important channels for you.
    12. Use channels for collaboration on a specific project or topic within the Team.
    13. Files posted in Teams Channel chat are saved on your Teams SP site.
    14. Files posted on a one-to-one chat (private chat) are saved on your own One Drive.
    15. Collaborate on Office documents using the web client. When you open a document in teams, you can either open it on the default web client or your desktop client. The web client will allow multiple users to work on the document simultaneously.