A complete admin’s guide to Microsoft Teams permissions

Permissions are important. They determine what you can and cannot do. That much is true in Microsoft Teams, just as it is reality. And much like in society, certain roles offer your better permissions. Fortunately for us, we only have to worry about two key roles within Microsoft Teams. The Owner, and member role. Each with various permissions influencing what actions you may take.

PermissionOwnerMember
Create teamYesNo
Leave teamYesYes
Edit teamYesNo
Delete teamYesN
Add standard channelYesYes
Edit standard channelYesYes
Delete standard channelYesYes
Add private channelYesYes
Edit private channelNo (only for self)No (only for self)
Delete private channelNo (only for self)No (only for self)
Add membersYesNo
Request to add membersN/AYes
Add appsYesYes

In this post, we’ll be discussing in detail the default difference in permissions between team owners and team members, how private and public teams influence permissions regarding new member access and channel information, how Teams manages information access in general, some of the more minor miscellaneous permissions in teams, permissions with the Teams Admin Center and lastly, how your team grants SharePoint site access.

Contents:

  1. Owner and member permissions in Microsoft Teams
  2. Private and Public Teams in Microsoft Teams
  3. Information access in Teams
  4. Miscellaneous permissions in Teams
  5. The Microsoft Teams Admin Center
  6. SharePoint and Microsoft Teams
  7. End note

Owner and member permissions in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams supports two special groups of users, owners who bear the most control over the Team, and members whose permissions are typically determined by owners. Despite this, they have similar capabilities by default. In this section, we’ll be discussing the similarities as well as the differences.

Similarities

By default, much like an owner, regular Team members are able to integrate third-party applications. This does not need to a be source for concern though. While many third-party apps can be added, many other options are Microsoft applications. Despite that, both are still approved for Teams by Microsoft. This supports the idea that all apps are likely safe to use. More concerningly, however, is that both owners and members are able to delete integrated apps. This can be problematic as it causes a greater risk of essential applications being lost- thus delaying work. Members and owners alike additionally possess basic permissions such as standard channel creation, deletion, and editing. Lastly, while both owners and members can create private channels, they cannot edit or delete private channels not created by themselves.

Differences

While owners are not particularly limited within the context of their own Teams, members can be vastly limited at the Team owner’s whim. It should that by default, Team members will lack the ability to directly add new Team members like Owners. Instead, team members use permission (not provided to owners) to request that a person be added to the Team.

Private and public teams in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams supports two types of teams; public and private. While both share traits, they differ in the management of new members and information.

Private teams

  • New members must be directly added by an owner or admin.
  • Join requests must be personally approved by an admin or owner.

Public teams

  • Anyone within your organization can freely access your Team.
  • Relevant chat files and history for channels are accessible to everyone in the Team.
    • This is excluding private channels

Information access permissions in Teams

Whether you’re using a private channel or a standard channel, Microsoft Teams will permit all members within said channel access to its relevant files, links, email, and message content by default. This means any message, link, file, or media posted to the channel can be accessed.

Miscellaneous permissions in Teams

Channel emails

  • Each channel within your Team has an associated email.
  • By default, everyone can be sent or forwarded posts via the channel- thanks to its email.

Enteprise liscence warnings and guidelines

  • Owners and administrators can apply warnings that go against their guidelines on the team’s conduct.
    • Take for instance, sending inappropriate content or harrassing colleagues.

The Microsoft Teams Admin Center

With access to the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, you can exert near-complete control over your organization’s team usage on the tenant level. Thanks to significantly elevated permissions. When using the Admin Center you may find different roles that grant you access to different settings- provided you’re not a global admin. We’ll give a brief generalization of what each role allows you to configure.

RoleManages
Teams communication administratorCalls and meeting features
Teams communication support engineerCall quality, reliability stats, and troubleshooting tools
Teams communication support specialistUser info and full call quality statistics

SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

Being within the Office 365 suite, SharePoint and Teams bear a significant relationship. This is demonstrated within the files channel of your Team. The files channel allows you to access the shared document library within the SharePoint site created for your Team. Whenever a channel receives a file or link, it is added to a folder within the shared document library, associated with said channel.

SharePoint site access permissions

As an owner of the Team, you also gain ownership permissions of the associated SharePoint site. Similarly, members of your team gain basic member access to your SharePoint site. Thus allowing them to view and post new content.

End note

Recap

Owners and administrators generally have more control over the standard members. This allows them to exert a certain level of control over other members to maintain a sense of safety and security. While by default, there are but two roles. Both play a significant part in the ways you can utilize Teams.

Farewell

As usual, this section is dedicated to thanking readers for their support. We’d be pleased to know you found this post useful and/or informative. If you have any more Office 365 related queries, please consult our related articles (listed below). However, if you have other queries, consider looking at the rest of the site. We’re frequently posting new stuff each week and may just have the guide or troubleshooting tips you need. Regardless, we wish you a good day/night. Farewell readers. 

Our related articles:

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  • How to prevent employees downloading the Microsoft Teams app on mobile devices – Communication and accessibility with cloud services comes with a magnitude of benefits, despite this, they also bring a number of risks. One such risk is mobile devices which can easily be lost, compromised or stolen as opposed to company property which is on-site at all times. In this post, we’ll show you how you can meek employees from downloading Microsoft Teams’ mobile app.
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  • How to let users bypass the lobby: Microsoft Teams – Being a communication platform, Microsoft Teams offers a series of useful communication features, such as event planning, chats, groups and what we will be discussing today, meetings. Often times when joining a meeting you may have found yourself stuck within the “lobby” space- forced to wait (potentially unoticed) for another meeting attendant to grant you access to the meeting. We will be helping you permit meeting attendants to bypass this lobby phase of the meeting. As such we request you refer to our guide below, where you will find step-by-step instructions on what to do, as well as a number of images to provide additional support.

Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell has been the Operations manager at telecoms and MSP Optionbox for more than 4 years. He has played a crucial role in the company, from marketing to helpdesk, and ensures that the IT requirements of over 300 clients are continuously met. With his innate passion for technology and troubleshooting and a particular interest in Apple products, Jack now delivers the most comprehensive tech guides to make your life easier. You can connect with Jack on LinkedIn.

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