Microsoft 365 / Create a Teams team and manage owners, members and guests

To create a team as an administrator, open Teams → Manage teams → Add in the Teams admin center, then assign the appropriate owners and members. Decide the collaboration scope and responsible owners before creating it, and review those roles regularly. Guest invitations also depend on your organization’s external collaboration policies.

Plan before creating a team

• Decide whether the work can be handled in a channel of an existing team or if a separate member list and file site are needed.
• Consider having multiple owners for management responsibility after project completion. Appoint a person in charge of handover to prevent having teams without owners.
• Decide whether the team will be public or private, and whether external collaboration is needed. Public teams may have broader discovery and participation within the organization.
• Decide on team name, description, and classification criteria, and review sharing policies and sensitivity labels if there are sensitive materials.

Distinguish between admin roles and roles within the team

Being a team owner does not mean you become an admin for Teams across the entire organization. Whether members can create channels or add apps is also affected by team and organization policies. Use the team owner permissions or organization administrator role appropriate to the task; do not assign an organization administrator role just to let someone participate. Internal users should also check whether the Teams usage rights are included in the actual purchased configuration.

Create a team and add people

1. In the Teams admin center, search for existing teams under [Teams] → [Manage teams]. There are also organizations that allow users to create them from the Teams app.
2. For a new team, select Add, enter its name and description, and choose public or private access. To reuse an existing Microsoft 365 group, use the Teams app route New items → New team → More create team options → From a group, then select an eligible group you own that does not already have a team. This connects the existing group rather than creating a duplicate team with the same name. Microsoft’s guide to creating a team from an existing group explains the eligibility conditions and client entry points.

3. In [Members] of the team details, add owners and members. Owners handle team settings and member management, while regular members perform allowed collaborative tasks.
4. If external people are needed, check the guest invitation policy and the purpose of that team before adding them within a limited scope. External access (chat/meeting) and participation in a team as a guest are different settings.

5. Ask representative members and guests to sign in with their own accounts and verify the intended channel and file access. Confirm that guests can reach the permitted resources and that the access scope matches the approved purpose. Allow for policy and permission propagation before repeating a failed check.

Microsoft's Teams admin center management guide and owners and members roles document provide guidance on where to find the team list and how to modify members.

Select the team name to open the Members tab in detail, add the person in charge, and assign the role as owner or member. If you plan to have multiple operations managers, ensure the number of owners and account addresses match your plan. Do not leave an employee who is leaving as the sole owner. After creating the team, check its privacy, owners and guest count in the team list or details to differentiate it from similar teams.

External access and guest participation are different

External access is a feature used to find people from other organizations to chat or call. Allowing only this does not provide access to your company's team's channels or files. Guest access is the method of inviting external people to the team to participate in allowed materials and conversations, creating an external collaboration account in the organization's directory. Microsoft's comparison of external and guest access distinguishes between the two scopes.

Inviting someone to a team can affect the scope of team-wide materials, such as standard channels. Decide first whether you only need to show a single file to the partner or if full project participation is necessary. If the team contains sensitive internal materials, consider separate collaboration spaces or restricted file sharing.

1. Check with the admin whether the organization’s Teams guest access, Microsoft 365 group and Microsoft Entra external collaboration, and SharePoint sharing policies allow it.
2. An approved team owner opens the team’s More team options → Add member in the Teams app and enters the guest’s exact email address. Do not confuse the guest with an existing account that has a similar name.
3. Confirm the guest’s email address and name, then send the invitation. Follow Microsoft’s procedure for adding guests and ask the guest to accept the invitation.
4. Guide the guest to switch to the organization that invited them in Teams and open the actual channels and test files. Sending the invitation email and successfully accessing the materials are different outcomes.

Test permissions and check for invitation errors

Check whether regular members can see the team and standard channels, and if they can open and edit the necessary files. For private or shared channels, verify separately with channel members. For external users, make sure that the invited email and login account match and that the correct organization is selected.

If a guest cannot be searched for or added, check the invitation policy and domain restrictions. If the guest can enter the team but cannot open its files, investigate SharePoint external sharing conditions. Microsoft notes that a newly added guest may need a few hours before access is available. Since policy or permission changes can also take time, record the time and message of the error, and do not allow organization-wide external sharing without identifying the cause.

How to check permissions during operation

Regularly check owners, former employees, and long-unused guests, and remove unnecessary access. Removing people from a team may affect access to the associated SharePoint default site, but do not assume that separately granted site permissions or shared links are automatically cleaned up. For sensitive files, also check the sharing status on SharePoint.

For an ownership handover, first assign the new owner and ask them to confirm that they can manage the team. Then demote or remove the previous owner as appropriate. Remove anyone added incorrectly from the affected team or channel, and check whether separate file-sharing permissions remain. If a guest removed from this team still works with other teams, review those dependencies before deleting the guest’s directory account.

Deleting a team is different from removing just one person. It may affect the retention and recovery of the linked Microsoft 365 group and site data, so review the project closure and data retention policy first.