IT and Library Services

Virtual meetings

Teams provides you with a space to meet and collaborate online; one-to-one, one to many or open to all. But how to connect? That depends on who you want to work with.

Teams is the university approved Virtual Meeting software, it offers the facility to create or join chat, voice or video calls and to share files, making it easy to share and collaborate in your meetings.

Please note that Teams should be installed locally, and logged in using Multi-Factor Authentication. They should NOT be accessed via Remote Desktop.

How to connect with...

Students

Students have access to Microsoft Teams, so colleagues should use Teams for 1-to-1 and 1-to-many voice and video calls with students.

For 1-to-1 and 1-to-many meetings, add the students' university email addresses to the meeting invite.

Using Chat within Teams

Staff can share their personal chat link with students, which will allow them to send messages, or join a voice or video call. Your personal chat link is as follows, where XXXX is replaced with your username:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=XXXX@gre.ac.uk

  1. Open your Outlook calendar.
  2. Add your personal chat link to the meeting information.
  3. Complete the meeting request.

Staff

Colleagues should use Teams for voice and video calls with students, staff, Affiliates and guests.

Affiliates

Office 365, including Teams, is one of the IT services which Affiliates do not get automatic access to. If an Affiliate requires access to Office 365, a request must be submitted before they can work from home.

To request access to additional services, the Affiliate or Line Manager should email IT Service Desk detailing why access is required. The request will be sent to the appropriate Authorised Approver for confirmation before access is granted.

Guests

Guest access can be provided to a specific Team(s) within Office 365 for external contacts. The Microsoft Teams Guest Access Request Form should be completed by a member of staff and submitted for review.

Guest access cannot be provided to Students. Please contact the IT Service Desk if a student is having issues with access to Microsoft Teams.

The requester must confirm that:

For more advice on GDPR and Data Sharing Agreements, please contact the University Secretary's Office.

Externals

Add or invite people from outside the university to a chat in Microsoft Teams. With External Access for Teams, you can add or invite anyone outside the university who uses Teams, Teams for personal use, Skype (for consumers), and Skype for Business for a one-to-one chat.

Contacts from outside the university can add staff or students to a chat by using their university email address username@gre.ac.uk. You will be asked to confirm the contact request before access is granted.

Communicate and Collaborate

Microsoft Teams

Teams

What is Microsoft Teams?

Teams is a cloud based collaborative hub that brings all the best Microsoft tools onto one page, designed to help people work together better. It's an online shared area for a group where members can post messages, pictures and links with the ability to comment and discuss on the things posted. Teams is itself a collection of other Microsoft tools, allowing members to pull in resources from Office standards, such as Word and PowerPoint, but also Planner, OneNote, OneDrive and even connect to external resources (where licensed and permitted).  Team activity can be set to appear on a feed, and with PC, Mac and mobile clients you can keep in touch with your group and the work with ease.

Why use Teams?

Teams allows you to easily plan, track and organise projects or team work in your group's shared online space. Sometimes email is not the most suitable way to collaborate on work, so rather that endless email chains, create a team space which members can drop in and out of, post content to be commented on, and shared on the activity feed.

Features include:

  • Team Chat - instant message individuals or groups (This is soon to be integrated with Skype to include voice and video calls)
  • Standard Office apps - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote.
  • Integrated Office 365 apps - Office 365 apps are built in for easy access to SharePoint, OneNote, Power BI, Planner and more.
How do I access Teams?

Microsoft Teams is available for members of staff on every Windows 10 Managed Desktop PC within the university available to download or use online through the Office 365 portal at login.gre.ac.uk 

Further Help and Guidance

University Documentation & Videos

Good Practice