Our teams regularly review our processes to help you keep our systems and your data safe. It’s easy to forget that giving access to all company means you’re giving our students access, as well as staff. That’s why if you create a "Public" team, it will be automatically set to "Private" unless you've submitted a Microsoft Teams and Groups public access request form.
Public means anyone in your organisation can see your data, including all staff and students
We recommend that you select “Private” when you create a new Team. This means that people need permission to join. You can add new members easily and update access as needed.
Never add highly sensitive, personal or confidential information to a public group
Our secure, university governed cloud storage can be used to store highly sensitive, personal or confidential information if appropriate access permissions are assigned. Only non-sensitive or open information can be held in a public group. See our policy for Information Security & Privacy Impact Assessments and Secure Data Handling for more information.
Adding members to your Team
You can add an individual or group by adding a name, distribution list, security group, or a Microsoft 365 group. If you're not a team owner, your request will go to the owner to accept or reject.
Team owners can create a link or a code to share, so people can choose to join your team.
Guest access can be provided to specific Teams within Microsoft 365 for external contacts. See our Virtual Meetings page for information on how to request guest access (login required).
Remember:
- Check the privacy status and membership of a Team before you share any sensitive information in the Team.
- Make sure you’re adding the right person, double check the identity of individuals before adding them to a Team.
- Manage membership of teams for student members of staff carefully, use their student account for teaching and student support related teams, and their staff account for staff Teams.
Information Security and Governance for Teams
As with all our IT systems, you must consider Information Security and Governance when sharing information in Microsoft Teams. Our policies on Information Security and Data Protection are available here.
