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Introduction to Microsoft Teams for admins

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams

If you're the admin for Microsoft Teams in your organization, you're in the right place. When you're ready to get going with Teams, start with How to roll out Teams and Set up secure collaboration with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.

If you're looking for end user Teams Help, click Help on the left side of the app, or go to the Microsoft Teams help center. For training, go to Microsoft Teams Training.

Important

For details about Teams feature availability and licensing, see Teams add-on licensing options.

Teams architecture

Teams is built on Microsoft 365 groups, Microsoft Graph, and the same enterprise-level security, compliance, and manageability as the rest of Microsoft 365. Teams leverages identities stored in Microsoft Entra ID.

When you create a team, here's what gets created:

  • A new Microsoft 365 group.
  • A SharePoint site and document library to store team files.
  • An Exchange Online shared mailbox and calendar.
  • A OneNote notebook.
  • Ties into other Microsoft 365 apps such as Planner and Power BI.

When you create a team from an existing group, that group's membership, site, mailbox, and notebook are surfaced in Teams.

To customize and extend Teams, add third-party apps using app management tasks. With Teams, you can include people from outside your organization by adding them as a guest or an external user, depending on what you need. Teams offers a robust development platform so you can build the teamwork hub you need for your organization.

Tip

For a deep dive into Teams architecture, watch the videos on the Teams Platform Academy.

Managing Teams

As the admin, you'll manage Teams through the Teams admin center.

To learn how to manage Teams in the Teams admin center, see:

To stay on top of what's coming for Teams and all other Microsoft 365 products and services in your organization, be sure to check Message center and the Teams roadmap. You'll get announcements about new and updated features, planned changes, and issues to help keep you informed and prepared.

Teamwork

Every team is different; there's no one-size-fits-all approach to collaboration. When deciding which apps and services to use, think about the work your organization does and the types of conversations your teams need to have:

  • Teams, as the hub for teamwork, is where people--including people outside your organization--can actively connect and collaborate in real time to get things done. Have a conversation right where the work is happening, whether coauthoring a document, having a meeting, or working together in other apps and services. Teams is the place to have informal chats, iterate quickly on a project, work with team files, and collaborate on shared deliverables.

  • Outlook for collaborating in the familiar environment of email and in a more formal, structured manner or when targeted and direct communication is required.

  • SharePoint for sites, portals, intelligent content services, business process automation, and enterprise search. SharePoint keeps content at the center of teamwork, making all types of content easily shareable and accessible across teams. Tight integration with Outlook, Viva Engage, and Teams enables seamless content collaboration across conversation experiences.

  • OneDrive for storing files and sharing them with people that a user invites. Content that a user saves to OneDrive is private until the user shares it with others, making it the best option for storing personal and draft documents that are not intended to be shared or not ready to be shared.

  • Viva Engage to connect people across the organization. Drive company-wide initiatives, share best practices, and build communities around common topics of interest or areas of practice. Crowd source ideas to foster open discussions with people across the company.

  • Office apps are all the familiar tools that people know and use regularly, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.