Build large teams with ease using “Refined Microsoft Teams’ extension for Teams web application or Microsoft PowerShell. Windows PowerShell method.
Microsoft Teams is a great Workstream Collaboration application that businesses utilize all over the world to collaborate efficiently. It comes with a variety of amazing features that people love. However, no matter how good it is, there’s always the need to improve. This is the case with Microsoft Teams.
There are some areas that require a little reshaping within Microsoft Teams. For example, Microsoft Teams does not permit bulk addition of members when you create an entirely new team. However, there are a number options to accomplish this with external methods. Let’s get started using each of them!
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Use the ‘Refined Microsoft Teams’ Firefox Extension
There’s a good thing to Microsoft Teams Web app users. There are additional features available like bulk-adding members and much more easily. What do you need to know? By using the “Refined Microsoft Teams’ extension. It adds some additional features to the app , making it more “refined”. Since it’s an extension for the Firefox extension, you will gain the benefits only when you use Teams via the web application rather than the desktop application.
Open Firefox and go to Firefox Browser Add-ons. You can then look up ‘Refined Microsoft Teams’. Click the link within Firefox to download the extension.
Click ‘Add to Firefox Add to Firefox’ to add the extension in your Firefox browser.
A confirmation prompt will be displayed. Click “Add” to continue.
This extension is coming soon. Visit teams.microsoft.com from Firefox. The ‘Refined Microsoft Teams’ extension adds the ability to add bulk users, guests , as and group members when making an entirely new team. It is possible to add up to 100 members in one use by using this extension. The option to bulk add members is automatically activated when you create a new team. Click on the ‘Join or Create an existing team’ button to start a new team.
Enter the email addresses of individuals you wish to include in the textbox above the ‘Bulk import’ option and mark each email address with the semi-colon (;). Instead of manually entering the addresses you can work it using Excel then copy and paste the addresses you want to import from Excel. After that, you can click the ‘Bulk import’ button.
In addition, it offers an extremely creative column view (up to two columns) to help you organize your team channels. If you’re dealing with multiple channels and teams that require organization, the column view is a great option. The channels can be organized in two columns instead of one long list can help you create a more organized appearance of your team.
You can turn on and off the column view according to your requirements by using the extension options.
The “Refined” Microsoft Teams’ extension is an essential extension to have when you frequently create large teams within your company. It’s simple and effective. Users can also utilize the extension to integrate channels from the “General” channel into the team’s name when there’s no channel for the team, which makes your Teams space more compact and tidy.
Use PowerShell on Windows
If you’re an Microsoft Teams desktop user and utilize it on an Windows system then you’re in good shape. With just a bit of scripting using PowerShell it is possible to bulk add members directly from your desktop, without the requirement to install any extensions for your web browser. Owner rights are required for the group you wish to add the members to.
NOTE: To bulk add members to a new team you’d like to form it is first necessary for the creation of your team using Microsoft Teams and then use PowerShell to add members.
Click the search button within Windows and type in Windows PowerShell. After that, select “Run as Administrator” to start PowerShell in the administrator mode. A user account control prompt should pop up. Select ‘Yes’ to continue.
After you have start PowerShell If you’ve never used it to execute Teams commands prior to now, you must execute this command. This command will install Microsoft Teams PowerShell modules. Microsoft Teams PowerShell modules which will allow you to run specific Teams commands. Copy or type the following command exactly as it appears and then hit Enter.
Install-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams
Prior to you can use the Microsoft Teams module is installed it is possible that you need to allow installation of certain repositories or providers. Check the message, then type “A” or “Y” (depending on the message displayed on the display) to install the program.
After all permissions are cleared Once all permissions are cleared, Microsoft Teams will begin installing. Microsoft Teams package will start installing.
If it is installed without issues, there will not be any confirmation messages or any other message. PowerShell will be prepared to run the following command.
You must now log into the Microsoft Teams account from PowerShell to run the commands we require. The following command can be run within PowerShell.
Connect-MicrosoftTeams
An authentication prompt for you to log in will pop up. You must enter the Microsoft Teams credentials to connect PowerShell to Teams. If your account is multi-factor authentication, you’ll be able to login to PowerShell.
After you’ve linked to your Microsoft Teams account, you are now able to proceed with the process of bulk adding people to the team. To begin first, you must have the ID of the Team you wish to join. Use the following command to obtain the Team ID.
Get-Team
PowerShell will show the list of your teams with GroupIds and other information. You’ll need the GroupId of the team you wish to add the members to. Copy the GroupId that corresponds to the name of the team you wish to add.
The next thing you’ll require is the “*.csv” file with the email addresses of the people you wish to include. This could come from an Excel file or an Notepad file that has an “*.csv” extension. If you’re planning to use Notepad files, you’ll have to enter the email addresses of the users, one address per line. When entering email addresses, type ’email at the top of the page to make it appear like an array.
Save the file using then save it with the .csv extension. Select .csv in the search box, and select the option ‘All Files in the File type prior to saving.
Then, execute the following command within PowerShell for import of the emails from .csv file and then add them to the Team.
Import-Csv -Path "YOUR_FILE_PATH" | foreachAdd-TeamUser -GroupId YOUR_TEAM_ID -user $_.email
Replace the variable YOUR_FILE_PATH> from the above command with the actual path of your .csv file, but include the path inside double quotes. Also change the variable YOUR_TEAM_ID> with the GroupID for the team you wish to join which we have obtained previously.
If the command is executed without errors, PowerShell won’t display any message. However, you can visit Microsoft Teams and check that each user has been included in the group.
manually adding people one at a time is a tedious job if you frequently need to build large teams, but the members don’t belong to an organization called a security group in Microsoft from which you could add the users. By using the above methods it is easy to bulk add users to your teams, regardless of the system you’re using.