Microsoft Teams FAQ

FACULTY AND STAFF

MS Teams is available to current SFU faculty and staff with a Microsoft 365 account.

STUDENTS

MS Teams is available to current graduate students with a Microsoft 365 account.

OTHER

There are no current plans to provide access to SFU alumni, retirees, emeritus and adjunct professors.

1. Access Microsoft Teams

• MS Teams Web: Visit M365 Portal > Select MS Teams icon
• MS Teams Desktop: Launch the software on your desktop

Please refer to Microsoft's page on Limits and Specifications for Microsoft Teams.

The "- SFU Teams" suffix is a naming standard that cannot be changed at this time.

This suffix allows for technical scalability and minimizes any potential technical issues (e.g., naming conflicts) related to Microsoft 365 and other SFU services. In addition, this allows individuals who have in multiple teams across different organizations to differentiate which team is an SFU team.

By default, role accounts do not have access to MS Teams and cannot be added into manually-managed teams (i.e., team owners manually add/remove members via the Teams application).

To provide role account(s) access to MS Teams, the Team Owner will need to take the following the steps:

1. Create a new maillist which will be used to provide role account(s) with the access to Microsoft Teams.
2. On the maillist, include the role account(s) you would like to add to the team.
3. Submit a ticket to IT Service Desk and include the following information:
   • Subject line: "Microsoft Teams - Adding role accounts to a manually-managed team"
   • Message body: “I would like to add role account(s) to my manually-managed team. The maillist name is <your-mailist>.”
4. Ensure that the account(s) have enrolled in SFU's MFA and signed up for a Microsoft 365 account. Once the request is processed, it will take up to 2 hours for MS Teams access to be granted.
5. On MS Teams, you should be able to add the role account(s) as members to your team. The account(s) will also need to remain on the maillist (created in step 1) in order to retain Microsoft Teams access.

Note. Going forward, you may include additional role account(s) to the maillist (created in step 1) to provide access to MS Teams. Please ensure that the account(s) have enrolled in SFU's MFA and signed up for a Microsoft 365 account.

No; The ability to upload and store files within a Teams chat relies on the use of the individual’s OneDrive. As Microsoft does not provide non-SFU users with the access to OneDrive at SFU, they cannot upload a file to a Teams chat.

Guest have the ability to perform the following on MS Teams:

• Guests can preview or open files from a Teams chat,
• Guests can send screenshots to a Teams chat, and
• Guests have access to all the functionalities within channels, including uploading files and sharing files to channels.

The ownership of files uploaded to Teams may vary depending on their location:

• The files uploaded to a team/channel belong to the team/channel and are stored within a Teams connected team site.
• The files uploaded to a chat belong to the file uploader and are stored in the uploader's OneDrive. 

For more information, please visit the File ownership in a team vs. a chat page.

The functionality to manage and store files uploaded to MS Teams is powered by SharePoint Online. When you create a team in MS Teams, a Microsoft 365 connected team site gets automatically created in SharePoint:

• For every public/standard channel you create within your team, a folder is automatically created in SharePoint Online under the Teams connected team site. 
• For every private channel you create within your team, a separate team site is automatically created in SharePoint Online called Teams connected channel sites, or just channel sites.
• When you click on the 'Files' tab within the channels of your team, the files you see are either stored in a Teams connected team site or Teams connected channel sites.

Teams & SharePoint Online

• When you create a team in MS Teams, a Teams connected team/channel site gets automatically created in SharePoint Online. 
• This site is used as a file repository by MS Teams. When you click on the 'Files' tab within team channels, the files you see are either stored in your Teams connected site or Teams connected channel sites. 

When will SharePoint Online be fully supported at SFU?

SFU is looking to fully support SharePoint Online in the future.

If your department already has a SharePoint site at SFU, we recommend that you continuing using SFU's SharePoint on-premises service until SharePoint Online is introduced in the future.

At this time, support for SharePoint Online is limited to MS Teams. This includes the SharePoint Online document library connected to a team, but does not extend to any further customization of a SharePoint Online site.

Yes, premium Microsoft apps, such as Visio and Project, can be used within Teams. You will need to purchase the corresponding license(s) and install the application(s) onto your computer to get the app to work within Teams.

For more information, please contact your department's IT support staff.

At this time, all third-party plugins cannot be used with MS Teams.

All third-party plugins need to be carefully evaluated and reviewed to ensure they are compliant with the SFU's Information Security Guidelines. As a result, we have disabled this functionality and it may be addressed as a future improvement.

If your team membership is being managed automatically with maillists:

• Users will be automatically added to a team if they are part of the maillist, and
• Users that are not part of maillist will be automatically removed.

Team Owners will not be able to add or remove team members through Microsoft Teams in the "Manage Team" settings.

Although certain browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer 11, Safari, and Firefox) support MS Teams web app, there may be some noted exceptions for the calling and meetings features. Our recommendation is to use Teams on the desktop app, supported browsers, or mobile app to get the best user experience.

For more information about the supported browsers for Teams on the web and the potential limitations, see Web clients for Microsoft Teams.

The ability to integrate Outlook calendars or create channel calendar on MS Teams is currently unavailable.

The calendar feature on MS Teams relies on Microsoft Exchange Online at SFU. For accounts not using Exchange Online, we recommend using the calendar available under SFU Mail.

MS Teams at SFU is protected by enterprise-level security from Microsoft. To learn more about Microsoft’s trust and security related information, visit the Microsoft Trust Center.

All data uploaded to MS Teams at SFU are stored within Canada and are protected under the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).

All members of the SFU community are reminded to only share personally identifiable information (PII) as permitted under FIPPA.

All members of the SFU community are reminded to only share personally identifiable information (PII) as permitted under FIPPA. Files that may be personally identifiable should be shared within a private team and/or a private channel that only permits a specific set of individuals to have access.

We do not recommend sharing PII in a public team (i.e., open to all individuals from SFU to join) and/or a channel with a broad audience where the individuals may not have a purpose of accessing that information.

For more information on how to identify, understand, manage, and use university data appropriately, see the SFU Data Security Standard page.