Microsoft Teams Service#
Microsoft Teams Pilot: Next Steps
Following the pilot evaluation in December 2024, the IT department decided to support Microsoft Teams in a limited way (no integration with meeting rooms nor with Indico) The pilot will evolve into a production service ready by the end of 2025.
Info
Direct team creation by users is currently deactivated on the service (to avoid conflicts with e-groups), if you need to create your own teams, please contact us!
Info
Teams licences are not granted automatically, please contact us if you need a licence. Active pilot users will keep their licence automatically when the new service provisioning workflow will be ready.
Overview#
The IT department is offering a service based on Microsoft Teams for specific use cases, namely:
- Collaboration with external organisations (when a CERN user is invited to collaborate on Teams by an external partner, or when a CERN user needs to organize a collaboration with an external partner that cannot use Zoom).
- User communities for which having audio/video, group chats and collaborative document editing all within a single application is a critical requirement.
The recommended platforms for all other use cases remain
- Zoom for audio/video calls and meetings
- Mattermost for chat
Microsoft Teams is an integrated collaboration and meeting platform that can help you streamline your projects and team activities. Discover how in the onboarding section.
Scope of the service#
Any eligible CERN user can get a Microsoft Teams licence. These should be requested through our support channels.
Known limitations of the service#
Microsoft Teams is configured for basic collaboration. In particular:
- It isn't possible to invite a CERN meeting room to a Microsoft Teams meeting
- Microsoft Teams is not compatible with the standard-based equipment installed in the CERN meeting rooms.
- The recommended tool for videoconferencing at CERN is Zoom
- It isn't possible to use Microsoft Teams for telephony (i.e. to call a phone number)
- The recommended tool for telephony at CERN is CERNPhone
- It isn't possible to run Live Events
- The recommended platforms for engaging with a large audience are Zoom and the webcast service
- A limited set of Apps is available by default
- They correspond to Microsoft tools which are already supported at CERN
- Teams cannot be directly created by service users. You have to send a mail to use our support channels to request the creation of the team.
- This is to avoid conflicts with e-groups
- Dynamic teams (that is teams which membership directly depends on some AD criteria like the unit of the user) are not supported
- Once the team is created, its membership can be managed by the team's owner (including using existing e-groups)
- If you want to contact another CERN user using Zoom, make sure they have a licence assigned first.
- Microsoft Teams should not be used as a long term document repository
- The recommended solutions for document storage include CERNbox and CDS
- Lightweight accounts will not be able to participate in a Microsoft Teams interaction due to a conflict between CERN lightweight accounts and Microsoft guest management.