Teams is an App within Microsoft 365, a service provided by Queen’s for all Students and Staff. Microsoft 365 is managed and governed by Information Services.

Any Student or Staff member can create a Team. The person who creates the Team becomes the default Team Owner and has full control of the Team. It is recommended to add at least one additional Team Owner who can administer the Team.

25TB per Team in SharePoint Online.

In the Cloud in either SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business or Stream.

• When a Team is created, an associated SharePoint Online site is also created. Files created or uploaded in Team Channels are stored in this SharePoint Online site.
• Files that you share in a private or group chat in Teams are stored in your OneDrive for Business "Microsoft Teams Chat Files" folder and are only shared with the people in that conversation.
• If you record a Teams Meeting, when the meeting ends the recording of the meeting is stored in your Stream App in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft has multiple datacentres within Europe offering resilience through a hosted redundant network architecture. Queen’s data is currently held in Dublin (live) and the Netherlands with one acting as a backup for the other; typically, failover is seamless between centres on a data level.

With the advent of Brexit, the location of Queen's data is under review. 

As part of Queen’s Microsoft 365 service, Teams has a Microsoft guaranteed 99.9% scheduled uptime.

All the Channel files stored in SharePoint Online for a Team are available to everyone who is an Owner, Member or Guest of the Team, but you can also share specific files or folders with people who don't otherwise have access to the Team.

Files that you share in a private or group chat in Teams are stored in your OneDrive for Business 'Microsoft Teams Chat Files' folder and are only shared with the people in that conversation.

• Files / Folders stored in Teams can be accessed via the Web from anywhere and from any device. Simply logon to your Queen's Microsoft 365 account and open the Teams App.
• You can also sync some or all of your Teams folders to your other devices - desktop PC, laptop or mobile - so when you logon to these devices, your Teams folders will appear as a destination in File Explorer. When you work on a file in a Teams folder in the Cloud or on any of your sync’d devices, changes are updated across all your sync’d devices if they are connected to the Internet and, if not, when Internet connectivity is restored.

If you are syncing Teams folders to a personal device please ensure that your device is secured (with a pin, passcode or fingerprint) and any files containing sensitive information are appropriately encrypted.

Teams is not backed up by Information Services.

Files deleted from SharePoint Online go into a Recycle Bin and can be recovered locally for up to 93 days and by Microsoft for a further 14 days.

If a lot of your SharePoint or Microsoft Teams files get deleted, overwritten, corrupted, or infected by malware, you can restore an entire shared document library to a previous time within the last 30 days. The restore will undo all the actions that occurred on both files and folders.

With online version history, you can see and restore older versions of your files stored in SharePoint Online.

As part of the leaving process, your access to Teams of which you are a Member will be revoked by the Team Owner. You can also choose to leave Teams of which you are a Member voluntarily.

If you are a Team Owner, you should identify a replacement Team Owner before you leave Queen's.

Very secure. SharePoint Online is certified against the internationally recognised ISO/IEC 27001:2013 standard for managing information security and is approved by Queen’s for all data.

With Microsoft 365, your data is encrypted at rest and in transit, using several strong encryption protocols, and technologies that include Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer (TLS/SSL), Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

For more information see SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 security.

Not recommended. Because the files stored in a Team are available to everyone who is an Owner, Member or Guest of the Team.

It is possible to create a Private Channel within a Team which has restricted membership and this may be suitable for storing sensitive or protected data.

Always remember to encrypt sensitive data regardless of where it is stored.

Yes. Teams is fully supported by the IS ServiceDesk and by School Computing Officers.

Should the IS ServiceDesk or School Computing Officers be unable to resolve an issue, they will raise a support request with Microsoft who are available 24x365.