Templates in Microsoft Teams is a new useful capability for administrators to quickly deploy Teams in their organization effectively. Users are given the choice to choose templates that best suit the team type they want to create with a variety of pre-defined and customizable. These templates come with pre-defined channels, tabs and pre-installed apps. If you find that none of the pre-created templates fit your needs, you can easily create your template, modify existing templates or apply existing templates to new teams.
There are many pre-defined templates available when you create your Team from the Template:
All of these templates have pre-defined Channels, Tabs and Apps which can visually be seen and customized during the creation process:
Normal Team settings can still be customized during the creation process:
Once the Team is created, users received guidance on how to best use and customize the Team:
Template Options for Teams Administrators
Through the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, Teams administrators in organizations can create their own custom templates from scratch, start from an existing template or even templatize an existing Team in your tenant:
Walk-through of Team from Template Creation Process
1. At the bottom left of your Microsoft Teams experience (browser or client), click “Join or create a team”. Once there, there is an option to create a team.
2. Clicking on “Create a team” brings up a window with options to create a template from scratch, select from an existing template (details of each template are in the below sections), or you can apply a template you’re already using for an existing team towards a new team.
3. If you decide to select a template, it will show you what channels and apps come with this template. Below shows the channels and apps for the Adopt Office 365 template.
4. After you click “Start”, it will ask you what sensitivity levels you want to set for your team which are configured in the Security & Compliance Center. For example, in our organization, the options are:
- Public: Business data for public consumption
- General: Business data that is not intended for public consumption but can be shared with external partners. This includes a company internal telephone directory, organizations charts, etc.
- Confidential– private team only: Sensitive business data such as contracts, security reports, sales account data, forecast summaries.
- Highly confidential– private team only: Very sensitive business data such as employee and customer information, passwords, source code, pre-announced financial reports.
- Top secret– private team only: Top secret documents only for executives
- Personal– private team only: Non-business data, for personal use only
5. Before you create the team you can name your team, input a description and customize the channels by modifying the channel names or adding or removing channels depending on your needs.
6. Once you’ve created the team, it would look something like this. *Note that the apps pre-installed with the template will show up in the header.
Screenshots and Descriptions of the new Teams Templates in Microsoft Teams
For your convenience, consult our table below which lists the templates available, its designated use and the pre-defined channels and apps that it comes with to see which one would is best suited towards your organization.
For all of the Templates listed below, general default elements that come with every team and every channel include:
- Posts – This is where you can have conversations with your team members
- Files – This is where you can store and share files that are relevant to your channel topic
- Default apps – These are additional tools added to the channel that you can customize to fit your needs
Adopt Office 365 – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps | More Info |
| Use this template to create a Champion community to drive Microsoft adoption. Help build, grow, and sustain your Champions community rollout by evangelizing and helping your peers with the new technology. |
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Learn about the Microsoft Champions Program |
Manage a Project – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to coordinate your projects. Manage tasks, share documents, conduct project meetings and document risks and decisions with this template for general project management. |
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Manage an Event – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to improve your event management and collaboration. Manage tasks, documents and collaborate on everthing you need to deliver a compelling event. Invite guest users to have secure collaboration inside and outside of your company. |
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Onboard Employees – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to create a central experience to onboard new employees. Improve your culture and streamline your employee onboarding with this central team for resources, questions, and a bit of fun. |
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Organize Help Desk – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to bring resources together to build your Help Desk. Collaborate on documentation, policy and processes that support your helpdesk. Integrate your existing ticketing system or use our template to manage requests. |
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Collaborate on Patient Care (Healthcare) – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to collaborate on protocols and facilitate patient management. Streamline healthcare communication and collaboration within a ward, pod or department. |
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Collaborate on a Global Crisis or Event (Financial services) – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to centralize collaboration for your crisis team across business units and help create business continuity plans, share remote working tips, track customer comms., and keep everyone in the loop with announcements, and news. |
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Collaborate within a Bank Branch (Financial Services) – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to centralize collaboration for your bank branch employees across Huddles, Customer Meetings, Business Processes such as Mortgage Collaboration, and keep everyone in the loop with Announcements and Kudos. |
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Coordinate Incident Response – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to centralize communication and critical resources for your crisis management or incident response team. Within this team you can include many different types of files to help create a central place for all your documents. Use online meetings to improve information flow and situational awareness. |
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Hospital – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to streamline communication and collaboration between multiple wards, pods, and departments within a hospital. This template includes a set of base channels for hospital operations, and can be self extended to include specialties, ad-hoc. |
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Organize a Store – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps | More Info |
| Use this template to bring your retail employees together in one central experience to manage tasks, share documents and resolve customer issues. Integrate additional applications to streamline shift start & end processes. |
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Member permissions:
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Quality and Safety – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default apps |
| Use this template to centralize communication, access to resources, and plant operations with a Manufacturing Plant team. Include policy and procedure documents, training videos, safety notices, shift handover processes. |
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Retail- Manager Collaboration – Teams Template
| Purpose | Template Channels | Default Apps | More Info |
| The Manager Collaboration template is ideal for creating a team for a set of managers to collaborate across stores/regions, etc. For example, if your organization has regions, you might create a Manager Collaboration team for the California Region and include all the store managers in that region, as well as the regional manager for that region. |
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Member permissions:
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Posted by: Noorez Khamis & Linda Chen
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