Add Microsoft Teams to your Course site

You can add a class team (Microsoft Teams) to your Canvas course and allow students to access it directly from Canvas. A Class team provides a rich discussion and collaboration space for students. They are helpful for asynchronous learning since they allow students to post, reply, react and ask questions to the instructor and their peers. Instructors can organize the Team into channels, share files, and utilize the shared class notebook.

This set up process will ensure that instructors and students can easily navigate between Canvas and Teams, and that student membership in your Team is kept up to date with enrollment in your Canvas course. Although instructors can create Class teams without using this set up process, it is preferred that you set up this integration to make it easier for students to find Teams, and to ensure your Canvas course and Class team stay in sync.

Please note that St. Thomas does not have "Assignments" enabled in Teams. Class teams are meant to complement, not replace Canvas courses. Assignments and grades should take place in Canvas.

Adding Class Team Integration to Your Course

1. Go into a course
2. Go to Settings > Integrations
3. Note “Microsoft Sync” and click the slider to turn it on
   (The above set of steps connects Canvas to Teams but doesn’t yet make anything visible to students.)
4. Go to Settings > Apps
5. Click “View App Configurations”
6. Click “+ App”
7. In “Configuration Type” choose “By Client ID”
8. In the Client ID field, enter: 170000000000570
   1. (That’s “17, ten zeros, 570”)
9. Click “Submit”
10. Refresh your Canvas screen to observe a new “Microsoft Teams classes” item on your nav menu

For rare instances you may need to manually sync your student roster. To do this, follow the directions below. 

1. Go into a course where Microsoft Sync is enabled
2. Go to Settings > Integrations
3. If not already expanded, click the arrow to the immediate left of “Microsoft Sync” to expand its options
4. Read the information there and click “Sync Now” if available

Once the tool is enabled for a course and synced up, our Microsoft Teams environment will make a Teams site with every Teacher enrolled. To make the Teams site known/available to the students follow the instructions below. 

Allow Students to View your Site

After configuring the integration per the instructions above, you have to activate your Team so students can access it. First, select Microsoft Teams to launch the app from Canvas. Teams will open, and you'll notice a banner at the top of all your new class teams that shows you how many students are waiting to join the class. Select Activate again to confirm that you'd like your students to access the team.

After that, you and your student should be able to get to the Class team anytime from your Canvas course navigation.

Set up your Class Team

There are some things you may wish to configure in Teams once it's set up. You can do this before or after activating your team for students. Optional things to set up:

• Change your Team picture
• Create Channels to separate discussions into separate threads. For example, you could have a channel for each unit of your course, or you could just stick with the default general channel.
  • Note, that St. Thomas does not have assignments enabled in Teams.
• Create a "welcome" post in Teams to introduce students to your Class team.
• Explore Teams training (below) to learn about @mentions, notifications, adding apps, and more.

Sync between Canvas and Teams

After configuring the integration per the instructions above, your course enrollment from Canvas should sync directly to your Class team. However, there may be a slight delay between the two systems. You can force the sync every 90 minutes if needed.

Please note, enrollment should always be managed in .... ?

If you have issues with your enrollment syncing into your Class Team, please submit a ticket to Collaboration and File Sharing (Microsoft 365).

Teams Training from Microsoft

Microsoft offers Teams training for faculty in a variety of formats. Please review the resources below, and if you want additional information, please contact submit a ticket to Collaboration and File Sharing (Microsoft 365).

First Steps for Teams Training

Introduction to Microsoft Teams for Educators

Downloadable Guides to Teams

Transform Learning with Microsoft Teams Course