Requesting a new Team

Requesting a new Team in Microsoft Teams

A ‘Team’ refers to a Microsoft Team and can be requested by staff and PGR.

The forms to request a Team are at the bottom of this page. If you have never requested a Team before you should read this page to the end before completing the form. We also have a SharePoint site about Teams and other M365 products available here internal users only.

A 'Team' is the name for an official collaborative group in Microsoft Teams set up for working groups, departments or projects. Each Team has their own SharePoint storage and tools to enable collaboration, communication and coordination.

Within the Team you will have channels for sub-teams, for services the Team is responsible for, or for topics. By default these channels aren’t private so all members of your Team will be able to see the conversation and content of each channel. We also offer the ability to add privacy via a feature called Private Channels.

Before requesting a Team

There's lots of functionality available to you within the Teams platform before you might need a specific Team creating. One-to-one chats, group chats and recurring meetings all work without needing a specific Team. We have a community of Digital Champions available to help you decide if you need a Team:

Limitations of Microsoft Teams

  • Self-service creation of Teams and other M365 Group based objects is disabled. Teams and sites are created by IT upon your request. Staff and PGR owners are asked not to grant Team Owner roles to non staff or UG/PGT.
  • Teams can be used to collaborate with people outside of the university. By default this feature is not turned on and must be requested.
  • A Team should be used for University related business.
  • No Teams of just one or two people. You could use a 1:1 or Group chat instead.
  • Created Teams are private by default and membership is by invitation. If you change a Team to public, IT admin will reset it to private.
  • Do not use a Team to process sensitive personal data or other highly restricted data, as described in the University's Standard Operating Procedure for Information Security Classification, Ownership and Secure Information Handling
  • The content of Teams, chats, recorded meetings and more may need to be obtained in order to respond to information requests, so the same level of care regarding the content should be taken as with other University records and correspondence.
  • You must request permission to create a private channel within a Team. To do so, please read the following page and submit the request form at the bottom of the page: Microsoft Teams Private Channels (sharepoint.com).

Use of Teams must not contravene the Acceptable Use Standard Operating Procedures:

Responsibilities of Team owners

Team owners are the information store owners for the site. Further information regarding the responsibilities of information store owners can be found in the Information Governance Accountability and Assurance Framework(para 3.4.4).

Specifically in relation to Teams this includes:

Naming convention

Teams, Sites and Groups will be created using a naming convention to help the University easily understand where a Team/Site/Group fits within the organisation.

For readability it's best to keep the names short and use the description field for context. Names should have no more than 60 characters.

Name examples:

  • UOM-LIB-C-Library-Executive-Team (a committee site for the Library exec team)
  • IT-PMO-P10001-Campus-Reopening (An IT project for campus reopening)
  • Whitworth-Art-Gallery-Finance (A Team for the Whitworth’s finance team)
  • RG-FSE-Physics-Faster-Than-Light (A FSE research group and their 'Faster than light' project)

After creation, it is possible to change the display name to something shorter; for example:

  • Library Exec committee
  • Campus Reopening
  • WAG Finance
  • Faster than light

Note: it is not possible to rename the underlying Team structure that will appear in URLs. Example if you request Project Red and a week later need it changing to Project Blue, you should request a new Team and move your stuff across and delete the incorrectly named Team.

How to apply

Please complete the following form to request a Team. Teams created outside of this process will be deleted by IT Services.