MS Teams

MS Teams is part of Office 365 and is available to staff and students to enable teams to work on shared projects by sharing files, collaborating, chatting and meeting online.

Teams is for group-based work, for those with a common interest like a project, members of a physical team with a shared goal, or staff and students involved in a course. It is a space to share information and files, to work collaboratively on documents, to chat and meet online, and to plan tasks. It is very much for a focussed group of people as opposed to Yammer which is for wider cross-team collaborations.

The Teams help centre has lots of useful information on Teams.

MS-teams logo

Accessing MS Teams

Accessing Teams

Web browser:

Staff: login to the university portal and click the Office365 orange cloud icon to access your Office 365 home. If prompted enter your University email address - enter it in the format username@stir.ac.uk e.g js35@stir.ac.uk. You will be redirected to a University of Stirling login page - enter your Stirling username and password (as with the portal) and log in. When you're logged in, select Teams from the list of apps. Teams can be used entirely in your web browser oryou can download the desktop version (recommended).

Students: go to your student email via the portal or directly via https://office365.stir.ac.uk, go to the waffle icon on the top left and select Teams from the list of apps.

Desktop app: to have Teams running all the time on your desktop, download the desktop app. You can find it on the web version of Teams, in the bottom left hand section of the purple side bar. Doesn't need admin permissions to install.

Mobile Device: To use Teams on a mobile device, go to the app store and install the Teams app. Enter your full University email address in the format js35@stir.ac.uk and your password and click Sign In. When prompted, enter your network user name (e.g. js35) and password and click Sign In.

Get started with Teams

To get your team up and running in Microsoft Teams, create a team, add people, and add channels. Watch this 2 min video for the headlines.

Overview of Teams and Channels

Learn how teams and channels work together to help you stay organized. Watch the 1 min video summary below. See also the Teams Help Centre page 'Teams and channels'. Teams is constantly evolving, so your live view of Teams may not be exactly the same as the demo.

Start chats and calls

With chat, you can have private one-on-one or group conversations that are not in the public team channel. And with calls, you can make calls or check your call history. See also the Teams Help Centre 'Chat in MS Teams' page.

More about online meetings / video calls

Teams gives you all the functionality of Skype for Business. In time Teams will replace SfB. For the time being, our campus is set to 'islands' mode which means that one person using Teams can interact with someone using SfB.

It is really easy to start a video call/meeting in Teams - from the Chat function, search for the person you want to speak with, then on the top right menu, select the video camera icon to start an online meeting or the telephone icon to initiate a voice call. When your video call is active, you will see additional buttons to allow you to share your screen, mute your background, use a whiteboard to collaborate on.

See the Teams 'Meetings and Calls' help centre page.

Upload and share files

Teams allows all members to upload files to share with the team. Each channel has a files tab which lists all files shared within that channel. Teams users can then access and collaborate on files within Teams. Watch the short video below and see also the Teams Help Centre page on Files.

MS Teams in teaching and learning

Teams can be used by staff groups, student groups and also across the whole institution. It is therefore a fantastic resource for course collaboration and engaging with students.