Chapter 9: Managing Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a single pane of glass that allows users and their frequent collaborators to access all the resources they need to work, whether they are Office 365 (O365)-based or an integrated service. In this chapter, we'll create teams and configure policies and settings for live events, meetings, teams, external access, guests, and messaging.

The Teams recipes included in this chapter are as follows:

• Creating a team
• Creating a Teams policy
• Creating a meeting policy
• Configuring meeting settings
• Creating a live event policy
• Configuring live event settings
• Creating a messaging policy
• Configuring Teams setup policies
• Configuring external access
• Configuring guest access
• Reviewing teams and their owners
• Using PowerShell to export a list of all the teams' owners and members

Technical requirements

Most recipes in this chapter will require you to be either a global or a Teams administrator. You should also have the Microsoft Teams client installed on your machine if not already (it can be downloaded from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=869426).

Some of the configurations for the following recipes will take place in the browser (the Teams admin center) and some in the client application. Changes made via either location will be reflected in both the web and desktop versions of Teams, although there can sometimes be a small delay between policy/permissions adjustments and the time they take effect.

Creating a team

One of the most common functions that users and/or admins will utilize is creating new teams within Microsoft Teams. This recipe covers this fundamental process of creating a new team.

Getting ready

Depending on your organizational settings, most users will be able to create new teams without needing any admin roles. If you've restricted O365 group creation (see the Restricting users from creating new O365 groups recipe from Chapter 2, Office 365 Identity and Roles, only admins and members of the approved security group will be able to create teams.

How to do it…

1. Open the Teams desktop application (or follow the exact same steps in the web app if you are unable to access the desktop app).
2. Choose Join or create a team from the lower left-hand portion of the main Teams view:

   Figure 9.1 – The Join or create a team option in the Teams client application

3. Click Create team:

   Figure 9.2 – The Create team button in the Teams client...

Creating a Teams policy

Teams policies provide the ability to assign certain users a variant of the default/global policy applied to most users. For example, you may adjust the default policy to disallow private channel creation and then create a custom Teams policy to allow only certain members to create private channels. In this recipe, we're going to prevent a certain user (or several) from creating private channels in Teams.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Select Teams | Teams policies:

   Figure 9.8 – The Teams policies link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Click + Add.
4. Name and describe the policy and choose whether users to whom this policy applies should be permitted to discover private teams and create private channels:

   Figure 9.9 – The...

Creating a meeting policy

There are six default meeting policies in Teams. You can create additional, custom policies to help control user experiences and abilities when joining Microsoft Teams meetings, such as the ability to schedule channel meetings, share the screen, and bypass the lobby when joining. In this recipe, we'll create a meeting policy in which you can specify your own preferred configurations.

Getting ready

You should be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
2. Select Meetings | Meeting policies:

   Figure 9.13 – The Meeting policies link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Click + Add.
4. Name and describe your new meeting policy:

   Figure 9.14 – A name and description for the new policy

5. Configure the settings beneath the General, Audio & video, Content sharing,...

Configuring meeting settings

Meeting settings can be configured via the Teams admin center that enable users in your organization to create and run meetings that use your organization's branding, resources, and custom traffic preferences. In this recipe, we'll go over those steps.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Select Meetings | Meeting settings from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 9.17 – The Meeting settings link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Choose whether anonymous users should be able to join Teams meetings in your organization:

   Figure 9.18 – The Anonymous users can join a meeting toggle option

4. Customize the URLs to your logo and legal and help pages. You can also include a footer message. All of this is included in every...

Creating a live event policy

Live event policies let you change how certain users can host live events. This includes the ability to restrict who can attend their live events and lets you provide options to the host, such as recording, scheduling, and transcription. In this recipe, we'll create a Teams live event policy to restrict a couple of users' abilities when hosting live events.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Select Meetings | Live events policies:

   Figure 9.21 – The Live events policies link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Click Add:

   Figure 9.22 – The Add button on the Live events policies page

4. Configure each of the settings (scheduling, transcription, who can join, and who can record) as you see fit for the specific group of individuals...

Configuring live event settings

You can configure a couple of settings that will apply to every live event hosted by your organization. In this recipe, we'll look at configuring them.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe. For the second setting, you need a third-party video service. If you don't have one, just skip that setting.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Select Meetings | Live events settings:

   Figure 9.26 – The Live events settings link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. For Support URL, type the URL you want users to access if they need support during a live event. For Third party video distribution providers, only toggle it to the On position if you have a third-party distribution provider. Currently, only Hive and Kollective are supported in this setting and you'll be asked...

Creating a messaging policy

As with other Teams policies, there's a default/global policy that applies to all users. You can create a custom messaging policy that applies to specific users instead, while still leaving the remaining (unassigned) users to the default policy. In this recipe, we'll create a custom messaging policy to apply to specific users, restricting their abilities when it comes to messaging in channels and in chats.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Choose Messaging policies from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 9.28 – The Messaging policies link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Click Add:

   Figure 9.29 – The Add button on the Messaging policies page of the Microsoft Teams admin center

4. Go down through the list of settings...

Configuring Teams setup policies

You can have different apps display by default in the left-side navigation menu of Teams for different users. This includes adding additional apps for those users and hiding others. An example of the usefulness of this here would be if only some of your users use the Shifts app, you can have it permanently appear for those users without them having to click on the ellipsis first, as seen here:

Figure 9.33 – Additional apps available in the Teams client application's left-hand menu's ellipsis menu

In this recipe, we'll create a Teams setup policy that places Shifts above Calls in the menu for certain users.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/.
2. Select Teams apps | Setup policies from the left-hand navigation menu:

   Figure 9.34 –...

Configuring external access

By default, users in your organization can communicate with people from any domain in or outside your organization. You can choose to add or block domains and change whether your Teams users can communicate with Skype for Business and Skype users by utilizing the External access settings in the Microsoft Teams admin center. In this recipe, we'll choose to block specific domains so that our Teams users cannot communicate via Teams with users in those domains.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to configure the settings in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
2. Select Org-wide settings | External access:

   Figure 9.41 – The External access link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. Click + Add a domain.
4. Type a domain from which you'll block your users from communicating, select Blocked, and...

Configuring guest access

As a Teams administrator, you can choose whether to allow guests in your organization's Microsoft Teams environment at all, and if so, how those guest users can utilize Teams. For example, you may wish to allow/disallow making private calls or chatting. In this recipe, we'll configure the Guest access settings in the Microsoft Teams admin center.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to configure the settings in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
2. Select Org-wide settings | Guest access:

   Figure 9.44 – The Guest access link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. If you disable Allow guest access in Teams, none of the other options on this page will be available. We'll leave it as On for this recipe:

   Figure 9.45 – The toggle option for allowing guest access in Teams

4. In the Calling...

Reviewing teams and their owners

Especially as you begin to think about governance and content strategy, you'll want to regularly review all existing teams and perhaps contact their owners. In this recipe, we'll do just that, utilizing the Microsoft Teams admin center.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it…

1. Go to the Microsoft Teams admin center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com.
2. Select Teams | Manage teams:

   Figure 9.48 – The Manage teams link in the left-hand navigation menu of the Microsoft Teams admin center

3. At this level, we can see how many channels, team members, owners, and guests each Team has. Search for and/or select a specific team:

   Figure 9.49 – A selected team with counts

4. Once a team is selected, we're able to see more information, including its owners. Select the Role column header twice to sort so that owners appear together at the...

Using PowerShell to export a list of all the teams' owners and members

Sometimes, the click-intensive web experience of reviewing teams, owners, and members may not be ideal when working on analyzing and reporting Teams data for hundreds of teams simultaneously. While the previous recipe is great for looking into a few teams occasionally, this method of exporting all the teams' info is best for creating a snapshot in time for all teams. In this recipe, we'll export a CSV file with all the teams' data.

Getting ready

You must be a global or Teams administrator to complete the steps in this recipe. This script includes code to prompt you for credentials, as well as auto-install and a connection to the appropriate PowerShell modules, so no additional changes or configuration are needed to the script. You'll simply run the script as is, then sign in using modern authentication with your global admin or Teams admin credentials.

Note that this script is from...