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The MU International Office is the first point of contact for international students applying for full-degree, Erasmus, Study Abroad, and Summer School programmes, and supports MU students who wish to study abroad.
Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace and a digital hub for teamwork and collaboration. It brings people, conversations and content together in one space.
To get you up to speed quickly, a Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide is available. To get an overview of Teams, view these training videos from Microsoft. To get started creating your Teams and associated channels, view the following video.
Benefits of using Teams
Secure access and storage of your data, anywhere in the world
Collaborate like never before - organize teams, have real-time conversations, share files, plan projects, schedule tasks and much, much more.
Present material via video/audio, applications, e.g., Powerpoint, via screenshare
When should I use Teams?
If you need a shared project or workspace, storage location, or any shared space between one or more people, consider creating a Team. Save files in a Team if you want to share ownership and permissions with a wider group, section or department.
Before creating a Team
Consider creating a channel within a Team instead of creating a new team - is a new team required or is there a more suitable team available to create a channel within instead? For users to collaborate effectively, they need to set-up the right collaboration space. Channels being the main hub of collaboration, Microsoft has made it easier for users to create channels. End-users will now be able to go to + button in the teams and channels list to create a channel, which they can host in a channel of their choice. With the channel creation option elevated to the top, you can now create the appropriate collab space by picking between team or channel.
Choose a departmental naming convention, implement and enforce it. For example, [Dept] – Admin, [Dept]– all-staff, [Dept/Section] – [project title] etc.
Appoint two owners to each Team, in case one is unavailable. Owners have full administrative rights for a Team.
Agree a structure for the Team, reflective of your departmental work practises/work flow. As a recommendation, create a single, department wide Team, and create channels within teams per project and/or collaboration topic. It is also possible to create Teams per section/research group, or any time you require a shared collaborative space, for one or more people.
Uploading Files to Teams
If you have a large number of files to upload, we recommend uploading 100 or fewer at a time if using drag and drop into the Teams 'Files' window. (Chrome is the recommended broswer for this purpose.) Filenames may have to be revised for invalid characters if present : “*:<>?/\|. The maximum filesize for Teams is 15GB for an individual file.
A guest is anyone outside of Maynooth University with an email address. If you wish to share documents and/or collaborate with someone outside of MU, consider setting up a team and inviting the external user as a guest to that team. Guests can be added by a Team owner (the person who created the Team or someone they delegate to) simply by adding their email address. Guests will have access to all Team content - files and conversations. A guest can:
Create a channel (if enabled by the team owner)
Participate in a private chat
Participate in a channel conversation
Post, delete and edit messages
Share a channel file
Upload, edit and collaborate on documents
Review the following Microsoft guides for more information:
Microsoft Teams can be used for all of the above. Whether you wish to make a quick call to a colleague, arrange a more formal meeting, schedule a class or meet for a virtual coffee - Teams meetings are the way to go. Review the following Microsoft guides for further information:
You can schedule an interview using the Microsoft Teams app or using your O365 Calendar. The Teams app will be used in this example.
Open Microsoft Teams and select Calendar from the navigation panel on the left.
Select 'New meeting' on the upper right of the screen.
Enter the title, date and time of the interview. Include a message in the text box provided, as you would an email. Invite the panel members and one interview candidate per meeting invite. Send the invite.
Managing Interviews
Once the invite has been sent, you may wish to amend the meeting options so that external guests to the meeting, i.e. the interview candidate, cannot enter the meeting without first being admitted. To do this:
Open Teams > Calendar. Browse to the scheduled date and time of the interview and double-click on the event to open the invite.
Once the invite is open, select Meeting Options.
This will open a browser window with the below meeting options. It is advisable, specifically for interviews, to amend the option for 'Who can bypass the lobby?' to 'Only me' so that everyone aside from the meeting organiser, including other panel members will be required to be admitted entry from the lobby. Once you have amended these settings, click Save.
Best practice
Schedule a new invite for each interview candidate and do not use the one invite for all candidates.
Use the Microsoft Teams desktop app to take part in all interviews.
Use the lobby function so that only the meeting organiser can enter the meeting and all others, including the other panel members and the interview candidate, will be required to enter the meeting via the lobby.
Make a test call before joining the first interview of the day, to ensure everything is working as expected.
Review the 'Working from home' information here for tips on working with poor network connectivity.
Moodle course spaces are automatically created in Moodle for all subjects and modules offered by the university in a given academic year. There's one space created for each subject, but to facilitate multiple teaching, there may be multiple spaces created for a given module. Each instance of a module runs over a given period (Semester 1, Semester 2, Summer, or Year-Long), and some instances are sub-divided into class groups. A Moodle course space is created for each unique combination of module code, semester, and group.
Students are automatically enrolled into their appropriate Moodle course spaces. Lecturers are assigned to Moodle course spaces by their departments. Different departments choose to manage this process in different ways, your departmental administrator will be able to advise you on your department’s practices.
Class Teams
A special academic-type Team is automatically created in Microsoft Teams for each course space in Moodle. The membership of these Teams is synchronised with Moodle. Each user enrolled into a Moodle Course Space with the role Lecturer will be added to the matching Team as an owner. Users enrolled in the Moodle Course Space with any other role will be added to the matching Team as Members.
The following video describes the process of how to share video content with read-only permissions to a Microsoft Teams class team.
The following video describes the process of how share video content with read and edit permissions to a Microsoft Teams class team.
If you wish to keep your videos in OneDrive but share them to a class team or Moodle course space, you must first open OneDrive and locate the file. Apply the relevant permissions with the class team and then you may add this video to a playlist or share on Moodle as required. Watch the following video for guidance:
If the expected audience involves up to 1,000 attendees, a Teams Webinar is the recommended delivery format for an informational style event. It is possible to specify presenters and to configure audience interaction.
The difference between meetings and webinars is that the webinar setup supports attendee registration before the event is due to take place.
A Microsoft Teams Live Event enables the user to broadcast video and other content to a large audience of up to 10,000 attendees for a maximum duraiton of four hours. The live event can be recorded for viewing, sharing, and archiving after the event has taken place. A Live Event is a one-to-many communication format; the host of the event broadcasts the communication and the audience primarily views the content being broadcast.
There are various event group roles involved in a live event:
Organiser – schedules the event, assigns roles to event team members, selects a production method, configures event options and invites the attendees
Producer – responsible for the video input, queueing the content and overall, ensuring the event runs to plan against the expected timeline
Presenter – presents audio, video and/or screen shares to the intended audience (only available in Live Events produced in Microsoft Teams)
Attendee – views the video output live or via a media player after the event has been recorded and published, and can participate in Q&A once the organiser has configured this option
Can I broadcast to a public audience?
A Live Event can be broadcast to specific people/groups, organisation-wide or publicly to those outside of the University. The ability to broadcast to a public audience is not automatically available to all those with a MU account. If you wish to broadcast to a public audience, the organiser of the event will require additional permissions; please make a request to the Dean of your faculty for permission to broadcast to a public/external audience. Once permission is granted, we ask the Dean of said office to email [email protected] requesting the permission for the user in question. We will confirm by return of mail once the relevant policy has been applied to your account.
When you record a Microsoft Teams meeting, the recording will automatically expire in 60 days after it is recorded. This means that, if no action is taken to amend the default expiration, your meeting recording will be deleted and will no longer be accessible. If you wish to amend this expiration, review the following:
Alter or remove the meeting recording expiration
Open Microsoft Teams and select Calendar from the navigation panel on the left.
Navigate to the relevant meeting and select Chat from top menu bar. Hover over 'Set to expire' under the recording and select 'View or change'.
Select 'Expires in 60 days' under the recording.
Choose your preferred expiration or select 'Remove expiration'.
