Create a Staff Members or Anyone team

  • 5 minutes

There are two types of teams that are perfect for college faculty and staff: Staff Members and Anyone. It is important to note that a Staff Members Team should only be created if a Staff Notebook with private sections is needed. Otherwise, it is recommended that an Anyone Team is created. Most often, staff collaboration is better done in an Anyone Team, as it provides a more flexible notebook for higher education.

For example, the Computer Science head of department can create a Staff Members Team to keep faculty and staff in sync as they develop a new course of study. They chose this team type since faculty grant writing efforts need to be mentored/monitored individually along with new industry certifications that individual members are working towards.

Steps to create a Staff Members team

  1. Create a Team by signing in at https://portal.office.com using faculty sign in credentials. Select the Teams icon.
  2. Once the Teams page opens, select Join or create Team in the upper right corner. Select Create a New Team.
  3. Choose Staff Members or Anyone. Staff Members Teams come include a Staff Notebook containing a content, collaboration, and individual faculty member sections. Anyone Teams have all the same features as Staff Members Teams, but no Staff Notebook. A OneNote Notebook is always available as an added app in the "We Space" (the tabs across the top within a channel where one works with others) with an Anyone Team.
  4. Once a Team type is selected, there will be a prompt to name the team. A team name can be used only once, so give careful consideration when selecting the name.
  5. Next, add members to the team using their university email address, a distribution list, or a join code.
  6. When selecting a Staff Members Team, the next step is to provision the Staff Notebook. The content section is provisioned for the owner to have read/write access and for the members to only have read access. The collaboration section is read/write for ALL. Then, each member has their own section where the Team owner and that member only has read/write access.

Which type of Team do you believe would work best for you: Staff Members or Anyone? Why?