Week 5, Day 1 — Teams Architecture & the M365 Group Link

Week 4 debrief & the M365 stack connection

• Return Week 4 assessments with brief verbal feedback — one common strength, one common gap
• Ask: "In Week 1 you created a Microsoft 365 Group called 'Lakeview Logistics'. In Week 4 you created four department team sites, each of which auto-created an M365 Group. What services does each of those Groups provision automatically?" — surface the Group → SharePoint + mailbox + Teams pipeline
• Ask: "If you open Teams right now and look at your teams list, what do you expect to see there?" — students should predict their M365 Groups appear as teams. Have them open Teams and verify.
• Frame the week: Teams is the collaboration surface that consumes everything built in Weeks 1–4. It is not a separate service — it is an interface layered on top of M365 Groups, SharePoint, and Exchange. Understanding that architecture is the foundation of every admin decision this week.

The Teams architecture — what Teams actually is

Teams is not a standalone product. It is a coordination layer on top of M365 Groups, SharePoint, and Exchange Online. Understanding the underlying architecture is essential for troubleshooting, governance, and lifecycle management.

The M365 Group → Teams stack

• What this means operationally — when you create a team, you are creating an M365 Group with a Teams "face". When you delete a team, the M365 Group and all its associated resources (SharePoint site, mailbox, OneNote) are also deleted after a configurable soft-delete period. When you add a team member, you are adding them to the M365 Group. This is why managing team membership and managing group membership are the same action.
• Channels — standard, private, and shared

• Team roles — three roles: Owner (full admin — can add/remove members, delete team, manage settings), Member (can post, use all tabs, attend meetings — cannot manage team settings), Guest (external user — limited capabilities, configured in Teams Admin Centre). Owners should be limited to 2–3 per team — too many owners creates governance sprawl.
• The Teams Admin Centre — admin.teams.microsoft.com. Key sections: Teams (manage all teams, team templates), Users (per-user policy assignments), Meetings (meeting policies, live events), Messaging policies, Voice (calling policies, phone numbers), Apps (manage apps, app permission policies). Different from the M365 admin centre — Teams-specific settings only.
• Teams lifecycle settings — three key controls: team expiry (teams expire and are soft-deleted after a configurable period unless renewed), naming policies (enforce prefixes/suffixes on team names), and group creation restriction (limit who can create new teams/M365 Groups — prevents ungoverned team sprawl). All configured via Entra ID group settings or Teams Admin Centre.

Lab 5-A: Exploring the Teams Admin Centre and building the Lakeview Logistics team structure

Students explore the Teams Admin Centre, connect existing M365 Groups to teams, create a private channel within the IT team, configure team settings, and explore the SharePoint/Exchange connection from within Teams.

• Step 1 — Explore the Teams Admin Centre (8 min)
  Navigate to admin.teams.microsoft.com. Explore the left navigation — Teams, Users, Meetings, Messaging policies, Voice, Apps, Analytics & reports. In Teams → Manage teams, review what teams already exist. Record the team names, their privacy setting (Public/Private), and member counts. Note whether the Lakeview Logistics team from Week 1 appears here.
• Step 2 — Examine the Week 1 team and its M365 Group connection (10 min)
  Click into the Lakeview Logistics team in the Teams Admin Centre. Review its Members, Channels, Settings, and Analytics tabs. Then open Entra ID → Groups → All groups and find the corresponding M365 Group. Compare: are the Teams members identical to the M365 Group members? Navigate to the SharePoint admin centre and confirm the team's SharePoint site. Navigate to the Exchange admin centre and find the shared mailbox associated with this group. Record what you find across all three surfaces.
• Step 3 — Create teams for each department (15 min)
  For each department that has an M365 Group from Week 4's site creation, verify whether a team already exists. If not, create one from the Teams Admin Centre: Teams → Manage teams → + Add. Use the "Create from existing Microsoft 365 group" option and select the department group. Create teams for: IT Department, Finance Department, HR Department, Sales Department. Each team should be Private.
• Step 4 — Create a private channel in the IT team (12 min)
  Navigate to Teams (the client, teams.microsoft.com). Open the IT Department team. Click the … (More options) → Add channel. Create a channel:
  · Name: IT Management
  · Type: Private
  · Members: Add Sarah Chen only (not all IT members)
  
  After creation, verify in the SharePoint admin centre that a new separate site collection was created for the private channel. Record its URL.
• Step 5 — Configure team settings and lifecycle (15 min)
  In the Teams Admin Centre → Teams → Manage teams → IT Department team → Settings. Review and configure:
  · Member permissions: allow members to create and update channels — Yes
  · Member permissions: allow members to delete sent messages — No
  · Guest permissions: allow guests to create and update channels — No
  · Fun stuff: allow giphy — No (professional environment)
  
  Then navigate to Teams → Teams settings (org-wide) → Team creation. Review whether team creation is currently restricted. Record the current setting.

⭐ Bonus: Teams expiry policy & naming policy via PowerShell

Reflection & preview

• Ask: "You created a private channel called IT Management in the IT Department team. Only Sarah Chen is a member. Tom Bellamy is in the IT team — can he see the IT Management channel in his Teams client?" — answer: no. Private channels are invisible to non-members even in the same team.
• Ask: "You delete the IT Department team from the Teams Admin Centre. What happens to the SharePoint site? The mailbox? The OneNote notebook? When are they permanently deleted?" — surface the soft-delete period and the cascading deletion of Group resources
• Ask: "A user creates a new team called 'Q3 Project'. An M365 Group is created. A SharePoint site is created. A mailbox is created. Six months later the project ends and no one deletes the team. What accumulates?" — prime team sprawl and the expiry policy answer
• Exit ticket: explain the three channel types — for each, describe who can see it, where its files are stored, and give a specific Lakeview Logistics use case for each
• Preview Day 2: the team structure is in place. Day 2 covers Teams policies — the control layer that governs what users can do in meetings, messaging, and apps. The policy cascade model (global → package → user) is the most important concept to understand before configuring anything.