In the last few months, as more and more organisations implement Office 365, I have been asked one of two questions relating to teams:
- From IT – How do we stop end users creating a new Team in MS Teams
- From end users – Why can’t I create a new Team?
This post is for end-users, to help understand why the ability to create a new Team in MS Teams has been disabled.
A Team is (much) more than it appears
The simple reason is because of the flow-on effect (see below) and the need for IT to maintain control over the environment, especially the creation of SharePoint sites.
The diagram below, an extract of a larger diagram created by Matt Wade (credit below image), visually shows what happens when a new Team is created (and, for that matter, various other elements).
A new Team creates a range of other things (described below) including a SharePoint site. The SharePoint site that is created is visible as the ‘Files’ tab in the Team channel, as you can see below:
A Team is directly linked with an Office 365 Group
The thing that links all these things together is what are called ‘Office 365 Groups’ (O365 Groups).
O365 Groups only exist in Office 365 and are like a cross between: (a) an Active Directory (AD) Security Group (that controls/grants access to IT resources and systems) and (b) usually small Distribution Lists (a list of people you can email) – but with a lot more functionality.
What do you get with every Office 365 Group?
As can be seen in the diagram above, every O365 Group creates a number of other Office 365 elements. Each Group:
- Has at least one owner. This is the person who creates the Group, and becomes the linked SharePoint site owner and the owner of the Team. If there is only one owner, then the owner leaves, there is no-one to manage the group, SharePoint site and Team members. This is one good reason why this should be centralised in IT (who usually create all other AD group types).
- Has members. Members usually belong to a logical and generally smaller (<30 people) business unit or work team, similar to membership of an AD Security Group. Membership of the Group (and Team and SharePoint site) is managed by the Owner.
- Has a dedicated SharePoint site. The URL of the site is the same as the Group. The members of the Group have default add/edit rights to the SharePoint site. Others, and AD Security Groups, can also be added to the SharePoint site directly (for example, as visitors) but that only gives them access to the site, NOT the Team or the mailbox.
- Has an email address/mailbox. The mailbox for the Group appears in the Outlook of every member of the group. You can send and receive mails to/from that Group (similar to a Distribution List).
- Has a Planner and a OneNote notebook.
- Can be linked to a Team in MS Teams when the Group is created.
What happens if you allow end-users to create Teams?
Conversely, if you create a Team in MS Teams, it creates everything in the previous dot points but with no controls for:
- Office 365 Group/Team naming. End-users can create a Team with whatever name they want, which then assigns the same name to the Office 365 Group and SharePoint site.
- Group membership. The person who creates the Team becomes the Owner of the O365 Group and is responsible for managing the Group/Team membership.
- SharePoint site structure including document library/ies and folders. If the Team uses only the default ‘Documents’ library, it is very likely to create multiple folders, including via File Explorer. The likely outcome is the mess that is often found on network file shares.
- Everything else that comes with every Team, including Planner and OneNote.
Some organisations have allowed their employee to create new Teams in MS Teams and then had to retrospectively clean up the mess created by random SharePoint sites, poor Team names, confusion between O365 Group members and AD Security Group membership and quite a bit more.
Should we even use Teams?
Yes. Read this post from CMSWire titled ‘The State of Play with MS Teams‘ to see why it is a very useful application to implement. Three points from that article:
- Chat is the most used function in Teams, making up 70% to 95% of all messages. Chat has 13 times the number of messages than Teams channels. Chat is being used to keep local teams connected in real time.
- Staff, on average, are members of three teams but are mostly active in one. While most employees have a “favored” team, Teams operating as forums or communities were identified to help employees engage beyond their local team.
- The most active team has 25 members, all active and connected to each other, interacting at the rate of 365 channel interactions/per day or 14 interactions/per member/per day. This does not include chat.
Note that the most active team has 25 members. This underlines the point made earlier that Office 365 Groups work best when there are fewer than 30 members.
Where is the data stored?
Finally, where is the data stored?
- One-to-one chats:
- Chats are stored in a hidden folder in the participant’s email mailboxes.
- Documents are stored in the OneDrive of participants.
- Chats in the Team channels
- Chats are stored in a hidden folder in the Office 365 Group’s mailbox.
- Documents stored in these channels are stored in the O365 Group’s linked SharePoint site.
Should we use Teams?
Yes, definitely, but understand what is happening ‘under the hood’ if you allow end-users to create new Teams.
Organisations that are new to Office 365 should consider disabling the ability for end-users to create Teams by disabling the ability for end-users to create Office 365 Groups.
Smaller organisations can leave the option available but ensure that there is a guide for the creation of new Teams, including naming conventions and Group/Team membership management.
It will generally be better to centralise the creation of MS Teams in IT as they will normally be responsible for the creation of Active Directory Security Groups and should therefore be responsible for the creation of the more powerful Office 365 Groups.
Records about the world 