It delivers enterprise-grade security and compliance that is extensible and customizable to fit the needs of every school.
If you've already deployed Teams (as a pilot or full deployment) and are looking for pointers on how to use Teams, see Microsoft Teams for Education.
Teams Planning guide
Step 1: Get your people together
Assemble a group of individuals from staff, educators, and the educator community to act as the stakeholder & decision-making group for your Teams deployment.
Step 2: Prioritize your scenarios
Pick the most relevant scenarios for your organization instead of talking about features and functions.
Check out the Microsoft 365 FastTrack Productivity Library for examples to help you define scenarios for your school.
Successful Teams deployments often center around highly collaborative teams that work closely together, such as classrooms, professional learning communities, and extracurricular student groups.
Tip
Plan Teams with Teams Customers who use Teams to plan their deployment ease their key stakeholders into using Teams. Consider creating a team called Microsoft 365 Deployment and creating channels for the various workloads you want to deploy.
Teams channels you may want to create include:
- Exchange.
- Microsoft Teams.
- Pilot Feedback.
- SharePoint.
- Training and Adoption.
Step 3: Conduct pilots and deploy Teams
You’ll want to conduct an initial Teams pilot with your educators, both champions and early adopters. A pilot gives you valuable information about how Microsoft 365 and Teams are received in your school.
Select an interested group of users and a prioritized education scenario to get started.
You can create teams for:
- Classes.
- PLCs.
- Staff members.
- Anyone.
Teams for Education allows admins to create team templates that educators can use to quickly set up teams. For information on how to create team templates, see Get started with team templates in the Teams admin center. To create custom team templates, see Create a custom team template in Microsoft Teams.
Once your pilots are complete, you’ll have the feedback you need to plan your broad Teams deployment.
Be sure your deployment plan accounts for your prioritized scenarios, ensuring your school is getting the most from Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Step 4: Measure usage, manage satisfaction, and drive adoption
To successfully drive adoption of Microsoft 365 and Teams, stay focused on your educators' experience.
Here’s a quick checklist of our best practices to get you started.
Read the Microsoft 365 Adoption Guidance for best practices. Also available to you is our supplemental content for creating a change management strategy for Microsoft Teams to document your approach.
Study Microsoft 365 activity reports to understand usage across your school. If you aren’t a Microsoft 365 admin, ask your admin to give you Reports Reader permissions so you can access activity reports.
Capture feedback from your educators on their experience with Microsoft 365 and Teams. Use a channel in Teams when your school has fewer than 5000 individuals. Use a public group in Viva Engage when your school is larger than the membership limit in Teams.
Nurture your champions and highlight your wins. Reward educators for embracing these new tools and using them in innovative ways. This ensures continued use of Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Turn on or off Teams licenses
Once an educator or student has a valid license and Teams has been enabled, they can run the desktop, web, and mobile Teams clients.
They can install these clients themselves. The IT admin doesn't need to deploy these clients.
You can manage individual user licenses for Microsoft Teams by using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or by using PowerShell. See Microsoft 365 licensing for Teams for information about both methods.
Distribute clients
Teams has clients available for web, desktop, and mobile. These clients all require an active internet connection and don't support an offline mode.
To get the latest details on the functionality and methods of distribution of each client, check out our topic to Get clients for Teams.
Download clients
The setup file for the Teams client is an executable file that can be downloaded by anyone from the Teams downloads page.
Educators and students on desktops can install the application if they have the appropriate privileges. IT Admins can also distribute the installer through their existing client distribution tools.
End users with mobile devices can download the Microsoft Teams app from the mobile platform’s app store.
Operating system requirements
Windows |
macOS |
iOS |
Android |
7 and later |
10.10 and later |
10 or later |
4.4 and later |
Internet browser support
Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.
Browser |
Calling - audio, video, and sharing |
Meetings - audio, video, and sharing1 2 |
Internet Explorer 11 |
Not supported |
Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on IE11 without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client.
Video: Not supported.
Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing).
Microsoft 365 apps and services will not support Internet Explorer 11 starting August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams will not support Internet Explorer 11 earlier, starting November 30, 2020). Learn more. Please note that Internet Explorer 11 will remain a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed. |
Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later |
Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing.3 |
Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing. |
Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), the latest version plus two previous versions |
Fully supported. |
Fully supported. |
Google Chrome, the latest version plus two previous versions |
Fully supported. |
Fully supported. Sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions on Chrome version 72 or later. |
Safari 15+ |
1:1 calls fully supported. |
Classic Teams may experience issues in some circumstances.4 |
Safari 14+ |
1:1 calls not supported. Group calls fully supported.
Video: Fully supported.
Sharing: Fully supported. |
Meetings: Fully supported.
Video: Fully supported.
Sharing: Fully supported.
Classic Teams may experience issues in some circumstances.4 |
Safari 13.1+ |
1:1 calls not supported. Group calls supported with full audio support.
Video: Incoming only.
Sharing: Fully supported. |
Meetings are supported with full audio support.
Video: Incoming only.
Sharing: Fully supported.
Classic Teams may experience issues in some circumstances.4 |
Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versions |
Not supported. |
Meetings: Fully supported.
Video: Fully supported.
Sharing: Fully supported.
Note that users are required to have the OpenH264 plugin in Firefox for full support. Browsers without this plugin may see disruptions in the meeting, including in screen sharing activity. Learn more at Mozilla Firefox Support. |
Safari versions before 13 |
Not supported. |
Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Safari without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client.
Video: Not supported.
Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing).
Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are known issues with Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. |
1 To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.
2 Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single stream; either incoming video feed of the current speaker or screen sharing.
3 Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.
4 Classic Teams users may experience delayed chat messages, including one-on-one chats, group chats, or channel posts while using Safari Browser.
Note
Running Teams in a browser is supported on PCs and Macs that meet the minimum Hardware requirements for Microsoft Teams. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.
On mobile devices we recommend that you use the Teams app. The Teams app is available from the Android and iOS stores.