Teams Manager allows you to streamline Team Creation, Standardize Naming Conventions, and thoroughly manage who gets access to which Teams, Channels, and Templates.
We’ll take you through the entire setup process and ensure that your Teams Manager instance is fully operational by the end of this article.
📋 Prerequisites
In order to properly install Teams Manager, you must occupy the Microsoft Global Teams Admin role within your organization.
If you’re not the Global Teams Admin, please forward this guide to them so they can go through the full setup process.
If you plan to utilize the full feature set of the app, you'll need a Service Account to perform actions that aren't possible through the API.
⚙️ Initial Setup
Start by adding Teams Manager to your Microsoft Teams account.
Opening Teams Manager for the first time will take you straight to the Chat tab, where you get notifications about actions that require your approval.
You'll see a quick-start message that allows you to go through the authorization process. Click Start to begin filling out a brief trial registration form.
If your tenant has an active Teams Manager License in place, this registration form will be skipped.
You can verify your licensing status by contacting your sales manager or by sending us an e-mail at [email protected]
✅ Granting Permissions
In order for the app to function as intended, it will need to communicate with a number of Microsoft Graph API endpoints to pull and rewrite information related to different settings in Teams.
This two-way communication requires you to grant different permissions based on the functionality you intend to use.
Navigate to ≡ > Settings > Setup in Teams Manager to start granting permissions.
1) General Permissions (Mandatory) - This is the most rudimentary permission set required for the app to function.
2) General Access Permissions (Optional) - This permission set is crucial if you plan to manage guest access through the app. It enables you to allow/disallow guest access by default and configure how much information will be visible to guests on SharePoint.
3) SharePoint Permissions (Optional, Enterprise License Required) - This permission set grants the app deeper access to SharePoint and allows you to create/manage communication sites and modern sites through the app.
4) Service Account - This option prompts you to add a service account that will allow the app to perform actions that aren’t possible through the API, like archiving SharePoint sites along with the respective teams. Make sure that it's an M365 Account with a valid Teams License. Officially supported license types are:
Microsoft 365 F3 (with Teams) (recommended, cheapest option)
Microsoft 365 E3 (with Teams)
Microsoft 365 E5 (with Teams)
Microsoft 365 E3/E5 EEA (no Teams) plus Microsoft Teams EEA (Teams Add-on as a standalone license)
💡 Grant permissions as deemed necessary; however, keep in mind that not granting certain permissions will prevent you from fully utilizing some parts of the app.
🔑 Service Account Roles
The role your Service Account needs depends on which features you actually use, and for most setups it's less than you might expect.
1) Regular user role (sufficient for most setups) - A standard user role covers everything Teams Manager does day to day. If you aren't archiving SharePoint sites, there's no need to grant your Service Account anything beyond this.
2) Admin role (only for SharePoint archival) - There's a single exception. If you enable the Set SharePoint site as read only toggle in the Archiving section of a Lifecycle, your Service Account needs an admin role in order to apply it.
💡 If you've restricted your Service Account to a regular user role for security reasons, that's entirely fine unless you use that specific toggle. Everything else in Teams Manager continues to work exactly as it should.
💬 FAQ
Why are all these permissions needed?
Find out more about why you need to grant certain permissions through our trust center.
What kind of role should the service account occupy?
A regular user role is enough for everything except SharePoint archival. See Service Account Roles above for the detail.
👣 Next Steps
Now that you’ve granted all the necessary permissions, you can start configuring your preferences.
We recommend starting here:
⛑️ Need more help?
Get further assistance with Teams Manager through our support chat widget within the app, or reach out to us at [email protected]