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23/10/2018

End-User Guidance to Microsoft Teams: What Is Included When Creating a Microsoft Team

by Melissa Hubbard and Matthew J. Bailey

This blog post is an excerpt from the book Mastering Microsoft Teams authored by Microsoft MVPs Melissa Hubbard and Matthew J. Bailey and published by Apress.


Microsoft Teams is a combination of different applications rolled into one. However, there are some key ingredients that allow Teams to function. Each time you create a new team, the following items are created in the background on Microsoft’s servers outside of Teams:

  • Office 365 Groups (Modern Groups)—unless you choose an existing group when you add a team
  • SharePoint site collection (with a document library)
  • Exchange Online group mailbox

When you are using Microsoft Teams, it might not be immediately apparent that you are using these other pieces of software because they are “masked” behind the Microsoft Teams interface. One example of this is the Files tab in your team. In the figure, you can see that your documents all appear to be in Teams. However, they are really stored in SharePoint behind the scenes. We have elaborated this in the figure, which is similar to the meetings that are stored in Outlook. As a regular user, this isn’t extremely important to know; however, if you are the administrator of a Microsoft Teams environment, these are key notes you want to be aware of because some of the maintenance and repairs that you perform might be done directly in that software, and not via Microsoft Teams.


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fig. 1. An example of how the Microsoft Teams interface surfaces data from other applications so that it “appears” as though it is all in one place.


About the Author

Melissa Hubbard is a Microsoft MVP and an Office 365 and SharePoint consultant specializing in collaboration solutions and automating business processes. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) experienced in project management and quality assurance as well as implementing SharePoint and Office 365 solutions. She is passionate about user adoption, governance, and training. Melissa regularly blogs and speaks at events and conferences, most recently on the topics of Microsoft Teams and Flow.

Matthew J. Bailey is a Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for Noteworthy Technology Training, specializing in SharePoint, Office 365 (including Teams), Azure, and Power BI. He combines his business expertise and his technical knowledge to resolve corporate challenges. He is a highly regarded presenter, avid blogger, and author, most recently of The SharePoint Business Analyst Guide.


This article was contributed by Melissa Hubbard and Matthew J. Bailey, authors of Mastering Microsoft Teams.