If you're the admin for Microsoft Teams in your organisation, you're in the right place. When you're ready to get going with Teams, start with How to roll out Teams.

If you're new to Teams and want to learn more, check out Microsoft's short Welcome to Teams video (55 seconds).

If you're looking for end user Teams Help, click Help on the left side of the app, or go to the Microsoft Teams help center. For training, go to Microsoft Teams Training.

Teams architecture

Teams is built on Office 365 groups, Microsoft Graph, and the same enterprise-level security, compliance, and manageability as the rest of Office 365. Teams leverages identities stored in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Teams keeps working even when you're offline or experiencing spotty network conditions.

To see where Teams fits in the context of Microsoft 365, check out this architecture poster: Teams as part of Microsoft 365

When you create a team, here's what gets created:

When you create a team from an existing group, that group's membership, site, mailbox, and notebook are surfaced in Teams. To learn more, check out this poster: Groups in Microsoft 365 for IT Architects

To customise and extend Teams, add third-party apps through apps, bots, and connectors. With Teams, you can include people from outside your organization by adding them as a guest to a team or channel. As part of Office 365, Teams offers a robust development platform so you can build the teamwork hub you need for your organisation.

Tip

For a deep dive into Teams architecture, watch the videos on the Teams Platform Academy.


Managing Teams

As the admin, you'll manage Teams through the Microsoft Teams admin center. To learn more:

To stay on top of what’s coming for Teams and all other Office 365 products and services in your organisation, be sure to check Message center and the Teams roadmap. You’ll get announcements about new and updated features, planned changes, and issues to help keep you informed and prepared.

Upgrade from Skype for Business to Teams

Teams is the primary client for intelligent communications in Office 365, and it'll eventually replace Skype for Business Online. To stay on top of new features coming to Teams, see the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. To complement persistent chat and messaging capabilities, Teams offers a comprehensive meeting and calling experience, with built in, fully integrated voice and video. Check out Teams is now a complete meeting and calling solution in the Microsoft Teams Blog.

If you’re running Skype for Business and are ready to upgrade to Teams, or if you’re running Skype for Business and Teams side-by-side and are ready to fully move to Teams, we have the tools, tips, and guidance to help make your transition successful. To learn more, see Upgrade to Teams.

Teamwork and Office 365

Every team is different; there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to collaboration. Office 365 is designed to meet the unique needs of every team, empowering people to communicate, collaborate, and achieve more with purpose-built, integrated applications.

When deciding which Office 365 apps and services to use, think about the work your organisation does and the types of conversations your teams need to have.

  • Teams, as the hub for teamwork, is where people - including people outside your organisation - can actively connect and collaborate in real time to get things done. Have a conversation right where the work is happening, whether coauthoring a document, having a meeting, or working together in other apps and services. Teams is the place to have informal chats, iterate quickly on a project, work with team files, and collaborate on shared deliverables.

  • Outlook for collaborating in the familiar environment of email and in a more formal, structured manner or when targeted and direct communication is required.

  • SharePoint for sites, portals, intelligent content services, business process automation, and enterprise search. SharePoint keeps content at the center of teamwork, making all types of content easily shareable and accessible across teams. Tight integration with Outlook, Yammer, and Teams enables seamless content collaboration across conversation experiences.

  • OneDrive for Business for storing files and sharing them with people that a user invites. Content that a user saves to OneDrive for Business is private until the user shares it with others, making it the best option for storing personal and draft documents that are not intended to be shared or not ready to be shared.

  • Yammer to connect people across the organisation. Drive company-wide initiatives, share best practices, and build communities around common topics of interest or areas of practice. Crowdsource ideas to foster open discussions with people across the company.

  • Office apps are all the familiar tools that people know and use regularly, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Teams content updates

See a weekly list of Teams topics that have been updated.

Teams known issues

See Known issues for Teams.

Teams client release notes

See What's new in Teams.


Start here - How to Roll Out Teams

Whether you're a small business or a multi-national enterprise, the place to start for rolling out Teams is Get started. It walks you through a small-scale Teams rollout, which may be all you need if you're a small business. If you're a larger organisation, use Get started to pilot Teams with a small group of early adopters so you can learn about Teams and start planning your org-wide deployment.

We recommend rolling out Teams in stages, workload by workload, as your organisation is ready. You don’t have to wait until you've completed one step before you move to the next. Some orgs may want to roll out all Teams features at once, while others may prefer a phased approach. Here are the Teams workloads, in the order we recommend rolling them out:

Adoption hub: Throughout your Teams rollout, be sure to take advantage of these resources to help drive Teams adoption.

If you're starting from Skype for Business, on-premises, or hybrid deployments

If you're coming to Teams from Skype for Business (online or on premises), or if you need a hybrid configuration, you still want to follow the recommended path above for rolling out Teams, but first you need to do some extra planning. Start by reviewing the guidance in the table below that applies to your organisation's profile.

Your organisation's profile Guidance
I'm currently using Skype for Business Online, and I'm ready to move to Teams. Go to Upgrade to Teams.
My organisation is running Skype for Business Server, and I want to roll out Teams. For a full-scale Teams rollout, first you need to configure hybrid connectivity between your on-premises environment and Microsoft 365. Start by reading Plan hybrid connectivity between Skype for Business Server and Office 365.

You should also review Upgrade to Teams.
I don't have Skype for Business Server, but I do have an on-premises PSTN solution. I want to roll out Teams, but I want to keep my on-premises PSTN solution. Roll out Teams following the recommended path above.

Then read Plan Direct Routing to learn about using Phone System Direct Routing to hook up your on-premises PSTN solution with Teams.
Ref. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-overview

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