Teams FAQs

Content (messages, files, posts etc)

The University of Edinburgh does not have any retention policies currently in place for Teams content like messages or files. We recommend you set your own retention policies for your content and delete it when it is no longer needed.

However, we recommend that for content related to teaching you do not store your files in Teams, but instead follow your usual process for uploading these onto Learn. 

Recordings

There is a retention policy in place for Teams recordings. Teams recordings saved to OneDrive or SharePoint will be deleted after 2 years. You can still download the recording and upload it elsewhere if needed. 

We recommend that you set your own retention policy before you record a meeting, and let your participants know about this. You should then delete your recording when this retention period ends.

Information on how to delete your recordings is available on our:

Teams meeting page under the "Features after your recording" drop-down

For further guidance on setting retention policies and what to do before recording your meeting see:

Guiding Principles - recording of online and digital events

Recording Privacy Statement (External Collaborators) (Word)

Recording Privacy Statement (Internal - Staff and Students) (Word)

Yes, you can do this. 

Note - currently you must open the meeting and set up the breakout rooms before you can assign presenters to manage breakout rooms. 

To assign presenters to manage breakout rooms:

1. Open your meeting and set up your breakout rooms as normal
2. Then, open the breakout rooms tab, to open breakout rooms on the right side
3. Click "Settings" (icon of a cog)
4. Then, click the toggle beside "assign presenters to manage rooms"
5. Then, type the presenter's name that you want to assign to manage your breakout rooms

Yes, you can use the new Teams for Teaching process to request a class Team be set up for your course. Guidance on requesting a Teams for Teaching class team and on how to use them is available from the link below:

Guidance on Teams for Teaching

Yes - Before conducting the interview, make sure to consider the usual process involved in hosting interviews.

There are a few things that we recommend with interviews in Teams:

• We recommend that you set up separate meetings with each candidate to ensure the interview is private
• We recommend you schedule these as private meetings. To do this set them up in your Teams calendar, or through Outlook. and do not set them up in a Teams Channel.
• We also strongly recommend that you review our "Privacy and your meetings" information on our Meetings guidance page before hosting interviews: Teams Meetings  

Yes, deleted channels are retained on Teams for 30 days after deletion.

if you are the Team owner you can recover the deleted Channel for up to 30 days after it was deleted. 

To do this:

1. Locate your Team with the deleted Channel
2. Next, click "More options" (icon with 3 dots) beside the Team and a list will appear
3. Then, click "Manage Team" and a new page will appear
4. Then, select "Channels" from the top bar
5. Next, click the "Deleted" drop down and your deleted Channel will show
6. Then, click "Restore" beside the Channel and a box will appear asking if you want to restore the Channel, click "Restore"
7. The Channel should now appear in your Channels list 

Chats

When you add files to a Chat, your file is stored in your OneDrive for Business document library.

To access your Chat files in OneDrive:

1. Open OneDrive in your browser
2. Then, sign in with your University log in details (UUN@ed.ac.uk and password)
3. Open the "Microsoft Teams Chat Files" folder

Note - You can also access your Chat files from within Teams, by clicking the "Files" tab along the top bar of the Chat that you added the file to. 

Channels

When you add files to a Channel, your file is stored in the Team SharePoint site.

To access your Channel files in SharePoint:

1. Open SharePoint in your browser
2. Next, locate the Team you added the file to in SharePoint (the SharePoint site will have the same name as your Team). This may be listed under "Recent"
3. Then, from the navigation list on the left of the SharePoint window select "Documents"
4. Next, click the Channel that the file was added to
5. Your file will appear in the list 

Note - You can also access your Channel Files in the "Files" tab along the top bar of the Channel that you added the file to.

It is possible that you are trying to name the Channel with a character or word that Channels cannot be named with:

• Channel names can't contain certain "special" characters, such as: ~ # % & * { } + / \ : < > ? | ' " ..
• Channel names also cannot contain the following words: forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_
• Channel names cannot start with: an underscore (_) or a period (.)
• Channel names cannot end with: a period (.)

Resolution 1

Users can only be added to private channels if they are already members of the Team that you are adding the private channel to. 

If the users you are trying to add to the private channel are not members of the Team, you should:

1. Navigate to the Team you want to add the users to
2. Click the More options ellipsis (3 dots) beside the Team name
3. Click "Add member"
4. Type the names of the users you want to add
5. Click "Add"

Now you should be able to add them to your private channel

Resolution 2

If the users are already members of the Team, you can try removing the users from the team and adding them back again. Then trying to add them to the private channel. 

Help with how to remove and add users to a Team is available through the links below:

Remove users from a Team (Microsoft site)

Add users to a Team (Microsoft site)

​Resolution 3

Alternatively, you can try downloading the Teams mobile app and create the private channel through the mobile app. You should also add the users to the private channel through the Teams mobile app. Help with adding channels to Teams through the Teams mobile app is available through the link below:

Add channels to Teams through the Teams mobile app (Microsoft site)

Yes, this can be done through Outlook (it is available in both the desktop app and browser versions).

Outlook on desktop

1. Click the email message you want to share
2. Click the “See more items” ellipsis (for me this is along a bar at the top of the Outlook window, below the search box)
3. Click the “share to teams” option and a share to teams box will appear
4. Type the Team / Channel name in the “Share to” box (you can only share the email one at a time, so if they wanted to share it with a channel and a individual in a chat, they would have to follow these steps twice).
5. Then, type any message you want to add to the “Type a message” box
6. Click “Share”
7. The email will be shared to Teams
8. The email and message will now show in the Team Channel it was shared with. Members of the Team will be able to open it in Teams to make it bigger and download it

Outlook on web

1. Click the email message you want to share
2. Inside the email message, to the right of the Outlook window there should be a “more actions” ellipsis. Click the “more actions” ellipsis
3. Click “Share to teams”
4. Type the Team / Channel name in the “Share to” box (you can only share the email one at a time, so if they wanted to share it with a channel and an individual in a chat, they would have to follow these steps twice).
5. Then, type any message you want to add to the “Type a message” box
6. Click “Share”
7. The email will be shared to Teams
8. The email and message will now show in the Team Channel it was shared with. Members of the Team will be able to open it in Teams to make it bigger and download it 

Yes, you can. add external users to your chats without adding them as a guest. 

To chat with external users, type the users entire email address into the "To" box. 

Note - This feature has been recently added to Teams, so if you use the desktop or mobile app, you may have to update to use this feature.

Yes, this can be done through Outlook (its available in both the desktop app and browser versions).

Outlook on desktop

1. Click the email message you want to share
2. Click the “See more items” ellipsis (for me this is along a bar at the top of the Outlook window, below the search box)
3. Click the “share to teams” option and a share to teams box will appear
4. Type the name of the individual in your chat or the name of your group chat in the “Share to” box (you can only share the email one at a time, so if they wanted to share it with a channel and a individual in a chat, they would have to follow these steps twice).
5. Then, type any message you want to add to the “Type a message” box
6. Click “Share”
7. The email will be shared to Teams
8. The person / people this was shared with can then see the email, open it in Teams to make it bigger and download it

Outlook on web

1. Click the email message you want to share
2. Inside the email message, to the right of the Outlook window there should be a “more actions” ellipsis. Click the “more actions” ellipsis
3. Click “Share to teams”
4. Type the name of the individual in your chat or the name of your group chat in the “Share to” box (you can only share the email one at a time, so if they wanted to share it with a channel and an individual in a chat, they would have to follow these steps twice).
5. Then, type any message you want to add to the “Type a message” box
6. Click “Share”
7. The email will be shared to Teams
8. The person / people this was shared with can then see the email, open it in Teams to make it bigger and download it

Unfortunately deleting an entire chat is not possible currently. 

You can delete your own messages from the chat one by one, by hovering over the message, clicking the more options button (icon of 3 dots) and clicking delete. You could have the other chat members delete their own chat messages also. This will take some time, espeically for larger chats, so may want to just delete any messages that you feel need to be deleted. 

You can also hide a chat from your recent chat list, by finding the chat in the list, hover of it, then select more options (icon of 3 dots) and click hide. The chat will now be hidden, but will reappear if anyone adds a message to it. 

First, check that your internet connection is working as expected. 

If your internet connection is working as expected, check if you are able to connect to Teams on a different device. If you can connect to Teams on the other device, then there is likely something in the settings of your device or browser blocking your access (for example, Parental Controls or Firewall). Check your device's settings.

If you cannot connect to Teams on any device, check your router configuration. Are you using Parental Controls or a Proxy on your router? - If you are then this may be blocking your access to Teams, try turning off your Parental Controls or Proxy. 

The University needs to go through a procedure to enable access to an App because unlike personal account, some Apps may require subscription on a university scale. If you would like to gain access to an App, please ensure the App is approved by your School or planning unit and complete the Data Protection Impact and Equalities Impact Assessments. 

Re-direct page

Yes, this happens if the version of your Teams desktop app is older than 3 months. Microsoft have introduced this feature to ensure users have the most up to date versions of the desktop app for security reasons. 

If you are taken to this redirect page, click the "Update Teams" button and wait for the app to update. 

Banner notification

If you see a banner notification to update the Teams desktop app you should update the app, as this means your version of the app is 3 months older than the latest version. 

To do update the app you can either:

• Click the link in the banner notification OR
• If the banner notification has disappeared:
  • Click the "settings and more" button (icon of 3 dots) to the left of your profile picture / initials in the upper right of the Teams window
  • Then, click "Check for updates"
  • Then, click the "Refresh" link when this appears as a banner along the top of the Teams window

You are receiving these notifications to update your desktop app because you have not updated the app for 3 months or longer. 

Follow the prompts to update your Teams app or manually update your Teams app by:

1. Clicking "Settings and more" (ellipsis icon) to the left of your profile picture
2. Click check for updates
3. Wait for a banner asking you to refresh teams
4. Teams will restart

This is supposed to happen. The reason you have received this error message is because you are trying to organise a Teams meeting in Outlook with over 750 recipients / invitees. 

You should consider contacting the IT help desk to set you up a mailing list. This will allow you to send the meeting invite to everyone that you want to. See our Mailing list guidance.

Yes, you can add guests to your Team. Please note, that you don't have to add guest users to a Team to add them to your meetings. If you only want the guest user in your meeting, add their email address as an invitee to your meeting.

To do add a guest to a Team:

1. Open Teams and navigate to the Teams section by clicking the Teams icon on the left navigation bar
2. Select the Team you want to add the guest user to
3. Click more options (icon of 3 dots) beside the Team name
4. Click Add member
5. Type the guest user's email address
6. A box should appear below the user's email address asking if you want to "Add X as a guest", click this box
7. Click edit guest information (icon of a pencil), add your guest's name and click the tick
8. Click Add
9. Your guest will receive an email from Microsoft telling them they have been added as a guest. Explain to your guest that they must follow the prompts in this email to be added as a guest to our tenant.

Yes, if another organisation has invited you to be a guest on their Team, you can do this. 

The other organisation should add you to their Team. You will then receive an email asking you to join as a guest to their Teams, you should follow the prompts in this email to accept this.

Then, make sure to switch your organisation from the University of Edinburgh to the other organisation when prompted. You can do this by clicking your profile picture / initials, and changing the selected account to "Other organisation name (guest)".

There are a few different reasons why this might be happening. Check with your guest that they have done the following:

Step 1 

Check your guest has followed the prompts in the email sent to them by Microsoft, to allow them to be a guest on our tenant. If they have not done this, ask them to find the email and follow the prompts.

Step 2 

Make sure your guest user is signed in to Teams with the correct email address. Only the email address you added as a guest will work.

Step 3

Make sure the guest user has changed their tenant to the University of Edinburgh before trying to access the Team / chat / live event. 

You can inform the external user to either:

• Open the Teams desktop app, click their profile picture / initials in the upper right of the Teams desktop window, and change the selected account to "University of Edinburgh (guest)" OR​​​​​​
• Click their organisation name to the left of their profile picture / initials and select "University of Edinburgh (guest)"

If the user does not see the organisation name / cannot change it to University of Edinburgh (guest):

• If the above steps don't sort the issue ask them to:
  1. Click "settings and more" (icon of 3 dots) beside their profile picture / initials in the upper right of the Teams window
  2. Click "Check for updates" from the list
  3. Wait until a banner shows along the top bar of the Teams window, asking the using to "refresh teams"
  4. Click the "Refresh Teams" link
  5. Teams will restart
  6. Have them check if they now see the organisation name beside their profile picture

Yes, PowerPoint users can insert captions to videos in the slides. During the presentation, meeting attendees can turn on closed captions for any video that includes embedded captions. This function helps the attendee to understand the auditory content being shared. 

How to add closed captions in PowerPoint Live – Microsoft Support 

When multiple participants are in a Teams meeting in the same room, a feedback loop is created, causing an echo and this can be disruptive for all meeting attendees. Microsoft is working on this problem by detecting user nearby and automatically mute other microphones that joined when a user's audio is already on and in use. This update is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 92391.

Yes, you can.   Details about the capabilities, limits & how to do this are included in the following guidance provided by Microsoft: Add co-organizers to a meeting in Teams

There are 4 roles in Teams meetings, an organiser, co-organiser, presenters and attendees. For more information about the details, please check Microsoft's guidance on Roles in a Teams meeting. Below are the commonly used features of each role:

By default everyone can present in Teams meetings, with all participants (except the organiser who can access meeting options) having the same roles. This can be changed, however.

There are 4 roles in Teams meetings, an organiser, co-organiser, presenters and attendees. For more information about the details, please check Microsoft's guidance on Roles in a Teams meeting.

By default the participants you invited to your meeting will be added as presenters.

We recommend that you change your participants from presenters to attendees for privacy and security reasons, unless all participants need to have presenter capabilities.

You can do this either before the meeting or during the meeting, however we recommend that you do this before your meeting as it is easier. 

To change participants to attendees, follow these steps:

1. Schedule your meeting and send the invite to your participants (for help with this see this page)
2. Then, click the "Calendar" icon in Teams (on the left navigation bar)
3. Then, find your meeting and click it
4. Next, click "Meeting options" (beside the time zone option)
5. Then, a new window will be opened in your broswer with meeting options
6. Next, click the drop down beside "Who can present?" and select either Specific people (if you want others to have the same permissions as you) or Only me
7. Then, if you selected "Specific people", enter the names of your presenters beside "Select presenters for meeting"
8. Finally, click "Save. You can now close this browser window, and all meeting participants will be added to your meeting as attendees (unless you added them as presenters). 

When trying to add a colleague's University username as a Co-host in your Teams meeting, you may get this error: "One or more people you want to add as alternative hosts are not licensed users or are not members of this account." Please try adding their username in the format  fbloggs1@ed.ac.uk 

Can I prevent certain users being able to record the meeting?

Yes, to do this you must set the meeting's presenter to either just yourself or to specific users. To do this:

To change participants to attendees, follow these steps:

1. Schedule your meeting and send the invite to your participants
2. Then, click the "Calendar" icon in Teams (on the left navigation bar)
3. Then, find your meeting and click it
4. Next, click "Meeting options" (beside the time zone option)
5. Then, a new window will be opened in your broswer with meeting options
6. Next, click the drop down beside "Who can present?" and select either Specific people (if you want others to have the same permissions as you) or Only me
7. Then, if you selected "Specific people", enter the names of your presenters beside "Select presenters for meeting"
8. Finally, click "Save. You can now close this browser window, and all meeting participants will be added to your meeting as attendees (unless you added them as presenters), and they will not be able to record your meeting.

Can I prevent certain users being able to unmute their mics or turn on their cameras?

Yes, if you are a meeting organiser you are able to prevent attendees from unmuting their mics or using their camera through the meeting options. 

First, you must set the meeting participants to attendees as this is not on by default. To do this:

1. Schedule your meeting as normal
2. Click the "Calendar" icon in Teams
3. Then, find your meeting and click it
4. Next, click "Meeting options" (beside the time zone option)
5. Then, a new window will be opened in your broswer with meeting options
6. Next, click the drop down beside "Who can present?" and select either Specific people (if you want others to have the same permissions as you) or Only me
7. Then, if you selected "Specific people", enter the names of your presenters beside "Select presenters for meeting"
8. Keep the meeting options page open

Then, to prevent attendees from unmuting, click the toggle beside "Allow mic for attendees" to change this to "No" 

To prevent attendees from using their cameras, click the toggle beside "Allow camera for attendees" to change this to "No"

Finally, click "Save" 

You will be able to allow attendees to unmute their mics and use their cameras during the meeting. Go into the participants list, find the attendee you want to allow to speak or use video, click the ellipsis beside their name and select "Allow mic" or "allow camera". The attendee must then still turn these on themselves for privacy reasons. 

You may also wish to try out Teams Webinar if you need this feature. Teams Webinar requires that attendees register for the event, and are automatically set as attendees with disabled cameras and mics.

There is no option in Teams which allows you to easily add all members of a Team, however there are some workarounds which may help you. 

Workaround 1

You can add the meeting to a Channel by scheduling your meeting in Teams. To do this:

1. Click the "Calendar" icon in Teams
2. Then, click "New meeting" in the top right of the Teams window
3. Next, add your meeting details. Do not add any attendees and select the Team and Channel you want to have your meeting in from the "Add Channel" box.
4. Finally, click Send

Note - Doing this will not add the meeting into the Team members calendars. 

Workaround 2

Another option, if this is a Team / group of people you work with frequently, is to contact IS Helpline, and ask for a dynamic distribution group email to be set up for all members of that Team. Once that is set up, schedule your Teams meetings in Outlook and add the distribution group email address to the invitees box. 

Yes, you can change who has to wait in the lobby in your meetings. By default everyone with a University of Edinburgh email address can bypass the lobby in your meetings and guests (anyone without a University of Edinburgh email address) will wait in the lobby. We recommend that you always have guests wait in the lobby. However, you can change the setting so that everyone, except you, has to wait in the lobby before the meeting until you admit them. 

Microsoft offers guidance on how to do this:

Change who waits in the lobby before my meetings

Cause

This error most likely relates to the clock changing from GMT to BST, or back from BST to GMT. 

Resolution

Broswer

1. Sign out of Teams on your browser by clicking your profile picture / initials and selecting "Sign out".
2. Then, clear your broswer cache:​​​​​​
   • How to clear your cache in Google Chrome
   • How to clear your cache in Microsoft Edge
3. Finally, sign back into Teams on the browser

Alternatively, if the above does not resolve your issue, you could try scheduling the meeting  through the Teams desktop app.

Desktop

Resolution 1

Uninstall, then reinstall the Teams desktop app

Resolution 2

1. Sign out of the Teams desktop app and quit the app
2. Open the date and time preferences on your computer
3. Change your timezone to another timezone, and save that change
4. Open the Teams desktop app and sign back in
5. Again, sign out of the Teams desktop app and quit the app
6. Switch your timezone back to the correct timezone
7. Again, open the Teams desktop app and sign back in

Unfortunately Microsoft have not yet added the ability to schedule meetings in private channels to Teams. 

Yes, both meeting organisers and presenters can lower all hands in a Teams meeting. This may be useful if you know you have answered all questions and the attendees have not lowered their hands. 

To do this:

1. Click "Show participants" from the meeting bar
2. Then, click "More actions" (ellipsis icon) to the right of the "Participants" heading
3. Then, click "Lower all hands"

Cause

Note - the following only applies to non-channel meetings. 

The reason the user cannot access the meeting chat after the meeting has ended is because of the way they were added to the meeting.

For users to be able to access the meeting chat after the meeting ends, you must invite them to the meeting (add their name / email to the invitees box) or forward them the meeting invite. If the user is added via the participant's pane during the meeting or is just sent a meeting link, they will not have access to the meeting chat after the meeting. 

Resolution

If you are the organiser of the meeting, you can give the user access to the chat after the meeting has ended. To do this:

1. Open the meeting chat in your recent chat list
2. Click "View and add participants" (icon of two people and a plus icon) in the upper right of the teams window
3. Then, click "add people"
4. Then, in the add box, type the name or email of the user who needs access.
5. Then, select "Include all chat history" and click "Add"
6. Finally, type a new message into the chat so that the user will see that chat

Yes, you can set your Teams meeting up in this way. 

We advise, to do this, you first set up the meeting options to set specific people as presenters and everyone else as attendees. Then, when the meeting starts you can spotlight up to 7 presenters to keep them on screen at the same time for your attendees.

To do this:

1. Schedule your meeting in the way you normally would
2. Then, open the Teams calendar and double-click your meeting
3. Then, click "Meeting options". This should be beside the timezone information, or it may be listed under an ellipsis icon beside the timezone information or "Category".
4. In meeting options change "Who can present" to "Specific people" and add the names of your presenters.
5. Then, click "Save"

To spotlight the users during your meeting:

1. Join your meeting and wait until the point in your meeting that you want to have the panel of presenters appear
2. Then, click the participants button in the meeting bar
3. Then, find your presenters and hover over their names
4. Then, click the "More options" ellipsis that shows to the right of their name
5. Click "Spotlight"
6. You can do this for up to 7 presenters

Yes, Microsoft have added a new feature which allows you to press and hold to unmute. This feature is mainly for when users need to stay muted for most of the meeting but need to temporarily unmute to speak. 

To use this feature:

You must be muted to use the feature Press and hold Ctrl +Space (Windows) and Option + Space (macOS) to temporarily unmute Let the buttons go and you will be muted again

Yes, Microsoft have added a new feature which allows you to insert your live camera feed directly on a PowerPoint slide by usin cameo. This function is only available in the desktop app.

How to integrate Teams camera feed into PowerPoint presentation - Microsoft Support

Yes, you can do this. 

Sometimes it is difficult to navigate the important entries from less important entries in your activity feed. To help with this users can now control the type of notifications that appear in their activity feed.

1. Click the activity button in teams (icon of a bell)
2. Right click on the feed item
3. You will be able to turn on/off all reactions or stop specific app notifications from surfacing in the activity feed

Yes, you can. 

To do this:

1. Open the Teams desktop client
2. Then, click "Settings and more" (ellipsis icon) to the left of your profile picture
3. Then, click "Settings"
4. Then, click "Notifications" from the list of settings
5. Then, under "Appearance and sound" click the drop-down beside "Notification style"
6. Select "Windows"/"Mac" to change the style to Windows/Mac native notification style

Yes.

Note you may have to update your Teams app by clicking "Settings and more" (icon of 3 dots) to the left of your profile picture / initials and selecting "check for updates". 

To set your out of office:

1. Click your profile picture / initials
2. Then, click "set status message"
3. Then, click "Schedule out of office". A window should appear, and you can set your out of office.

Certain notification settings not taking effect when a user sets teams and channels notifications to "all activity" is a known issue in Teams.

Microsoft have stated that they are working to resolve this issue. 

Until Microsoft resolve this issue, you will have to configure your notification settings in each of your channels to see notifications for all activity.

Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint will be kept for 2 years before they are automatically deleted. You can still download your recordings and upload them elsewhere (such as to Media Hopper Create or Stream) if you need to.

We recommend that you set your own retention policy before you record a meeting, and let your participants know about this. You should then delete your recording when this retention period ends.

Information on how to delete your recordings is available on our:

Teams meeting page under the "Features after your recording" drop-down

For further guidance on setting retention policies and what to do before recording your meeting see:

Guiding Principles - recording of online and digital events

Recording Privacy Statement (External Collaborators) (Word)

Recording Privacy Statement (Internal - Staff and Students) (Word)

If your peripheral devices, including microphones, headphones, audio pucks, etc., no longer control Teams audio, please check if the selected peripherals is in sync with Teams. To do this, please go to Settings > Devices > Sync device buttons ON

Note: This setting is by default ON, but users can switch the toggle to allow for co-existence scenarios with other HID-enabled or speech-recognition apps.

Yes, you can find a selection of the official University branded backgrounds for download from the Sharepoint site linked below.  Background images have been prepared by Communications & Marketing:

Video backgrounds for teams

Yes, real time noise suppression is currently available for both Windows and Mac devices. Noise suppression will help to lower any background noise during your Teams meetings / audio calls. 

How to turn on noise suppression

1. Select the "Settings and more" button beside your profile picture, in the top right of Teams and then select "Settings".
2. Select Devices on the left and then, under Noise suppression, select an option. 

The options are:

Auto (default) - The Teams app decides on the best level of noise suppression based on local noise

High - Suppresses all background sound that isn't speech. This option may be useful if, for example, you have a window open and there is a lot of noise outside. There are some prerequisites to using this option:

The High option is not available where the meeting is being recorded or live captions is on

High requires that your computer's processor must support Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2).

The high option is currently not available for Mac devices using an M1 ARM processor.

Low - Suppresses low levels of persistent background noise. This option may be best for most users. 

Off - Noise suppression is disabled

Windows

Yes, you can do this. 

• To share sound from your computer, select Share content in your meeting controls and then click the include computer sound toggle to the top left of the share window
• When you share, all audio from your computer, including notifications, will be included in the meeting.

Mac

Note - this feature requires a one-time installation of an audio driver. 

To do this:

• Select Share content in your meeting controls and then click the include computer sound toggle to the top left of the share window
• You will then be prompted to install the audio driver
• Once installed, you can freely toggle to "include computer sound"
• When you share, all audio from your computer, including notifications, will be included in the meeting.

Mobile app

The ability to include device sound while sharing your screen on the teams mobile app is now available.

You may need to manually update the Teams mobile app to see it. To do this, open your device's app store, search for "Microsoft Teams" and click "Update", if this shows up beside the Microsoft Teams entry. 

To use the feature:

1. While in your meeting, click the ellipsis button on the meeting bar (beside the sound button)
2. Then, select "Share" from the list
3. Then, when you select "Share screen" there should be an option to include device sound

Previously, outgoing video was not available in the Safari browser, and users could not use their cameras in meetings or video calls.

Safari users can now use their camera during meetings, enabling other meeting participants to see their video.

Note - this is only available on Safari 14 or higher. 

Yes, you can do this. Get in contact with your local computing officer as they will be able to create an AD security group to allow this. 

Yes, Live Transcription is now available in the Teams desktop app for certain types of meetings / webinars in Teams.

Currently live transcription is available for:

• Non-channel meetings scheduled in the Teams calendar or Outlook
• Webinars

Live transcription is not available for:

• Channel meetings
• Meet now meetings
• Calls
• Live events

To turn on live transcription:

1. While in your meeting, click "More actions" (icon of 3 dots) on the meeting bar
2. Click "Start transcription" or if you also want to record your meeting click "Start recording"

Transcription after the meeting

You can get a meeting transcript of a recorded Teams meeting after the meeting has taken place. Only the recorded parts of the meeting will be transcribed. 

To get a transcription after your recorded meeting, click "Start recording" during your meeting. Note live transcription should start automatically, but if this does not happen, make sure you click "Start transcription" as well. 

To access your transcription after your meeting has ended, double click the meeting in the Teams calendar, and click the box called transcript. 

Captions in your meeting

Yes, live English (US) captions are available in Teams meetings. 

To turn these on click the "More options" ellipsis in the meeting and select "Turn on live captions".

Note - all users who want to see captions much click "Turn on live captions" during the meeting to see them.

Captions in your recording

How to get captions in your recording

For scheduled non-channel meetings

To have captions in your meeting recording when it has been scheduled and does not have a channel added to it, you click "Start recording" and transcription should also be started automatically. However, please note that if this does not happen for you, you must also click "Start transcription" during your meeting to ensure the meeting is transcribed and captioned, as well as recorded.

Note - The captions that will appear on your recording are auto-created, and so have the potential to be inaccurate. You should check and edit these captions following the steps under "Editing captions in your recording" below. 

For all other types of meeting (meet-now and channel meetings, and calls)

Captions will not be automatically generated for your recording.

To generate captions, you must upload your recording to Microsoft Stream. Then, as these captions are auto-generated, you should check and edit them following the steps under "Editing captions in your recording" below.

Turning captions on while watching your recording

To turn on captions while watching your meeting recording:

1. Open the recording
2. Click the captions button (icon with two cs) 

Editing captions in your recording

 You can edit captions by following the steps in the video below:

Or, you can follow the written steps below:

1. Download your Teams meeting recording
2. Go to web.microsoftstream.com and, if prompted, sign in with your University log-in details
3. Click "Create" from the top navigation bar of Stream
4. Then, click "Upload video" from the drop-down
5. Either drag your downloaded recording into the box, or click browse and select the recording
6. Click the "Options" drop-down, and below the "Captions" heading, make sure "Autogenerate captions" is ticked (this should be ticked automatically, but if it is not then tick it)
7. Click "Publish"
8. Wait some time for the captions to be created (Microsoft state this can take 1-2x times the length of the recording)
9. Along the top banner of the Stream window, click "My content" and select "videos" from the list
10. To the right of your video, you should see the Transcript (if this does not appear, you may need to wait longer for this to be generated)
11. Click "Edit transcript" (icon of a ben beside the search box) and select what needs to be edited
12. When you have made your changes, click "Save"
13. Once you have edited and saved your edits, the updated captions will be automatically available with your recording on Stream. To share this updated recording see the steps below under "sharing the recording with updated captions".
14. You may also want to delete the original meeting recording from the meeting details in Teams. Microsoft provide in-depth guidance on deleting your meeting recordings.

Sharing the recording with updated captions

To share the recording with updated captions you must give permission to view the recording to specific people, to a Team or to everyone at the University, depending on who needs to see the recording. Note, to give permissions to a team, you must search for the team under "Groups" not "Channels. 

See the following guidance from microsoft on giving permissions in Stream:

Giving permissions in Stream ​​​

Meeting organiser can deligate co-organiser permission with the shared account. This will allow the shared account create breakout rooms as co-organiser. Unfortunately, for most shared accounts, those who use it will not have access to the password for that account and so will not be able to log in to it directly. If this is the case, we do not recommend scheduling your Teams meetings with your shared account.

Yes, we have a regularly updated webpage which contains information on new features coming to Teams, and when these are expected to arrive:

New features in Teams

Further information on new features is also available from Microsoft:

Suggest new Teams features and see what features are currently planned or in testing

What's new in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams blog

Microsoft regularly trials new features that will not be available to all users on Teams. These features are unsupported by Information Services, though if you would like to try them you can enable these yourself by using the instructions below.

• Make sure you are using the Teams Desktop client.
• Click "Settings and more" (icon of 3 dots) to the left of your profile picture
• Hover over "About"
• Select Developer preview
• A warning box will appear, click switch to developer preview
• Teams will restart

If you experiene any issues with your Teams client after you do this, try turning developer preview off. To do this:

• Click "Settings and more" (icon of 3 dots) to the left of your profile picture
• Hover over "About"
• Select Developer preview
• Teams will restart and developer preview will be off

This P icon is a marker to show that you are in Public Preview mode. The reason you are in Public Preview is because you have clicked "Settings and more" (ellipsis icon beside your profile picture), then About, then enabled "Developer Preview".