Over the last 4 months, we’ve traveled to 9 countries on Microsoft Ignite | The Tour meeting and speaking with users like you about Microsoft Teams. The insights and feedback at every location has been invaluable — Thank you. During our travels, there have been 10 questions that have repeatedly surfaced. Below are all of the questions — including the answers too, of course!

Manageability & Deployment

1) Can you restrict access to a specific channel in a team?

You will be able to later this year – with secure private channels, you will be able to customize which members of the team can see conversations and files associated with a channel. You can restrict channel participation and exposure when needed without having to create separate teams to limit visibility. This is one of our top requested features and we’re excited to be actively testing this internally and with select customers.

2) What are best practices for governance, specifically around team naming and retention?

To assure the best experience for end users, Teams provides IT organizations with a variety of governance controls. If you require strict controls on how teams are named and classified, or whether guests can be added as team members, you can configure each of these areas in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

Team Naming: A group naming policy is used to enforce a consistent naming strategy for Office 365 groups created by users in your organization. The best practice for this is to conduct interactive onboarding with the early adopter project team and allow them to select their own name. This will give you insight into how employees think about their work and will be essential in creating a larger scale naming convention at a later time. You can use Prefix-suffix naming conventions which will allow to add or append fixed strings or supported user attributes to the teams name. Blocked words can avoid (intentional or unintentional) misuse of teams. Configure via Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell. Find details on licensing and configuration here.

Team/Channel/Chat retention: Retention policies can be used to define a range of days after which all content will be deleted or a range of days during which content cannot be deleted – or both. Retention can be set independently for chat messages and channel messages. Channel and chat message policies can be applied globally or per team. Files use retention policies of SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. Configure Team retention in Security & Compliance Center and Office 365 Security & Compliance Center.

Before putting all of the above controls in place, it is important to first determine your organization’s governance requirements.

Ask yourself the right questions to determine your governance requirements and how to meet them

Use this Governance quick-start checklist as you are starting out with Microsoft Teams.

3) Can I add guests to my team? If so, how?

Absolutely! Microsoft Teams secure guest access allows teams in your organization to collaborate with people outside your organization by granting them access to existing teams and channels in one or more of your tenants. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook or Gmail, can participate as a guest in Teams with access to team chats, meetings, and files. Guest access is a tenant-level setting in Microsoft Teams and is turned off by default. Once configured, a team owner in Microsoft Teams can add and manage guests in their teams via the web or desktop.

Use this How-To guide and check-list to help you enable and configure the Guest Access

Learn more about guest access

4) How does external access/federation work? How is this different to guest access?

With Teams external access (federation), users from other domains can participate in your chats and calls. You can also allow external users who are still using Skype for Business to participate. In order to turn on external access, go to the Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center, select Org-wide settings > External access.

External access is different than guest access because guest access gives permission to an individual while external access gives access permission to an entire domain. With guest access, a guest can access resources, such as channel discussions and files, for a specific team, and chat with other users in the team they have been invited to. With external access, the external chat participants have no access to the inviting organization’s teams or team resources. They can only participate in one-on-one federated chat. Tenant admins can choose between the two communication options depending on which level of collaboration is desirable with the external party. Admins can choose either approaches or both, depending on their organizational needs, but we recommend enabling guest access for a fuller, collaborative Teams experience.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to turn on external access

Learn the differences between external access and guest access

5) What functionalities do I get in a hybrid environment? Is Teams available for on-prem environments?

For the full Microsoft Teams experience, every user should be enabled for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office 365 Group creation. Today, Teams is not available for on-prem only environments. If you are in a hybrid environment, you will be able to use Teams, however, you will have limited capabilities.

Hybrid environment capabilities:

If users aren't assigned and enabled with SharePoint Online licenses, they will not have OneDrive for Business storage in Office 365. File sharing will continue to work in Channels, but users are unable to share files in Chats without OneDrive for Business storage in Office 365.

Users hosted on either Exchange Online Dedicated - Legacy, or Exchange on-premises, must be synchronized to Azure Active Directory for Office 365. They can create and join teams and channels, add and configure tabs and bots, and chat and call. Users hosted on Exchange Online or Exchange Dedicated vNext can use all the features of Teams.

6) How do I integrate Teams with PSTN calling?

You can integrate Teams with PSTN either by leveraging Microsoft Calling Plans, Direct Routing, or a mix of the two systems. Microsoft Calling Plans let you integrate with PSTN through subscription without any additional hardware. Direct Routing allows you to connect your own PSTN trunk to Microsoft Phone System (Cloud PBX) via certified Session Border Controller (SBC).

With Direct Routing, you can use Phone System with virtually any telephony carrier. First, you pair the Session Border Controller (SBC) to the Direct Routing capability, configure policies, and then you must enable users for the Direct Routing Service. Lastly, you must set Microsoft Teams as the preferred calling client for users.

Here is your go-to guide to configure Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing

Microsoft Teams Adoption

7) Why should I move from Skype for Business to Teams? How do I make this transition?

As people are collaborating more, we see the opportunity to more seamlessly integrate our communication capabilities into Teams so users can have a single place for their conversations, contacts, and content. With Teams, we can also leverage the modern cloud infrastructure, and create new experiences for meetings and calling, including preparation, delivery, and follow-up.

Here is a simple, intuitive success framework to help optimize your transition to Teams

This tutorial will quickly orient you to the recommended upgrade paths and resources available to support you in your journey

Here is why we think you should move to Teams



8) I have existing SharePoint sites that I would like to bring into Teams. Can I do that?

Yes – you can connect your existing SharePoint team sites and content to your teams in Microsoft Teams! And when we say sites and content, it's the full power of SharePoint -- the same powerful content management experience of working with sites and the content within the context of Teams. Soon, you will be able to create a Team for your Office 365 group-connected SharePoint team site. With one click on the new “Create a Team” button (will appear on the bottom-left corner of your site), you can “Teamify” your SharePoint site.

Today, you can do the following:

Add SharePoint document libraries as tabs in Teams Add SharePoint lists and pages as tabs in Teams Use the SharePoint News connector to have team news flow directly from SharePoint and into the Teams Conversation tab. Add full sites (team sites and communication sites) as tabs in Teams via the Website tab

9) I need to help my company learn how to use Teams. Do you have training available?

Definitely! We have many great tools for driving adoption within your organization. We have done a lot of the work already for you, so please make sure to check out the resources below.

Teams for First Line Workers

10) How can I use Shifts for Firstline Workers in my organization? Do I need another app to access this?

Shifts is your schedule management tool now available in Teams, where managers can easily plan and create shift schedules, and team members can review schedules and make shift requests from their mobile devices, all in real time. The Shifts experience is on by default and accessible via the Teams app. To access Shifts on your desktop, on your left-rail, visit the more option ellipses and select 'Shifts'. And on mobile, access Shifts by expanding your modular tray and pin Shifts to your navigation bar for quick access. Shifts is available in all SKUs with the exception of Government SKUs and Teams for Free.

Check out our Firstline Workers support documentation

Learn more about our recent Firstline Workers announcements

We hope you find these insights and resources useful. Please come see us on Microsoft Ignite | The Tour -- you can register for free! If you are unable to join us, continue to share your feedback via UserVoice or directly through our desktop app.