Microsoft Teams

The video below provides a demonstration of basic Teams features and functions.

Teams is an online tool that allows you to chat with individuals or small groups, or within a Team.

Depending on how Teams is being used in your course, you might use Teams to:

• communicate with teaching staff and fellow students
• participate in online classes
• complete group projects

You can use Teams in your browser or download the desktop app (Microsoft Help) to your desktop or mobile.

How to join your Team

You will be added directly to your Team by your convenor, generally about a week before the course officially starts. You will see a notification in Teams, and an email will be sent to your student email.

For information on how to join your online classes and access the class recordings, see Attending live classes and Class recordings respectively.

Managing Teams Notifications

To manage your overall Teams notifications:

1. Click the circle in the top right corner with your initials or profile picture
2. Choose Settings
3. Choose Notifications

You can also customise notifications for individual channels:

1. Put your mouse over the channel title
2. Click the 3 dots (More options) to the right of the channel
3. Choose Channel notifications
4. Choose All activity, Off, or Custom

Find out more about Managing your Teams notifications at Manage notifications in Teams (Microsoft Help).

Be a part of a healthy learning community

Teams allows you to be a part of lively discussions, learning not just from Griffith’s teaching staff but also from your fellow students. You can easily share videos and articles that you come across, contributing to a contemporary bank of knowledge.

As with all communities, we each have a responsibility for contributing to a sense of safety and a place of belonging.

Find out more about Griffith’s community guidelines in the Student Charter and consider how you as a community member do your part to create an online community where all members can participate.

Accessing Teams when you are both a student and staff member

If you are both a student and staff member at Griffith, you will have two Microsoft Teams accounts, one for each email address.

The different email address formats:

• Student email address: jane.doe@griffithuni.edu.au
• Staff email address: j.doe@griffith.edu.au

To switch between the two, you will need to fully logout of your Office365/Microsoft session. You may find it easier to have a dedicated space for each account, such as:

• Opening one account in the Microsoft Teams app (Microsoft Support), and the other in your browser
• Utilising separate browsers for the different accounts
• Setting up dedicated profiles within your browser. For guidance on setting these up, How to Use Browser Profiles (External).

Features that are changing in the new Microsoft Teams

Many new features and enhancements are available exclusively in the new Teams experience. For details on enhancements and new features see, Features that are changing in the new Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Support)

Technical issues with Teams

If you are experiencing issues accessing Teams sites and meetings on your browser, make sure to follow these steps:

• Ensure third party cookies are allowed by your browser and disable any ad-blocking extensions you may have installed. To check and change these settings, see Enable Cookies (External)
• Clear your browser's cache and cookies (External), then completely restart your computer
• Ensure your browser is up to date, see how to update your browser (External)
• Clear the Microsoft Teams  client cache, see Clear the Microsoft Teams cache (Microsoft  Support)

More technical troubleshooting steps can be found here