Team templates built in Microsoft Graph for small and medium businesses

Team templates in Microsoft Teams allow you to quickly and easily create teams by providing a predefined team structure of settings, channels, and pre-installed apps.

For small and medium businesses, templates can be especially powerful, as they help you to quickly deploy Teams across your organization. Templates also help users to get oriented with how to effectively use Teams. This article is for you if you're responsible for planning, deploying, and managing multiple teams across your organization.

We currently offer three pre-built templates for small and medium businesses that you can use for various situations. All templates create private teams. After you create the teams and are ready to roll out to your organization, you can set the privacy to Org-Wide or Public, as appropriate.

Note

You can also use Microsoft Graph to create your own custom templates. To learn more, see teamTemplate resource type.

To learn more about team templates in general, see Get started with team templates using Microsoft Graph.

Company-Wide template

The Company-Wide template is meant for communication and collaboration for the entire company. You can use the General channel for company-wide announcements, industry news or executive posts. The Human Resources channel is a great place to consolidate all HR-related activities like job posts, new employee onboarding, training, and development. The Fun Stuff channel provides a social platform for all random and fun posts.

Template type TemplateId Properties that come with this template
SMB -
Company-wide
https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/
teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessOrgWide')
Channels
  • General*
  • Human Resources*
  • Fun Stuff*

Apps
  • Company Portal (Website pinned to the Human Resources channel)

Team properties
  • Team visibility set to Private

*Auto-favorited channels

To create the Company-Wide team by taking default settings from the pre-defined template, supply the JSON representation of the team object in the request body. To learn more about how to deploy team templates, see the Microsoft Graph article on creating a Team.

Request

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teams 
Content-Type: application/json 
{
    "template@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessOrgWide')",
    "displayName": "Org-wide",
    "description": "All posts that are relevant for entire company (e.g. Company-wide announcements, Exec posts, employee poll/feedback).",
    "visibility": "Private"
}

Executive Team template

The Executive Team template is ideal for creating a team for company executives to communicate and collaborate on company initiatives like annual priorities, fiscal budgets, strategic initiatives, and top clients. This template comes with a private channel to invite select users for specific topics.

Template type TemplateId Properties that come with this template
SMB -
Executives Team
https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/
teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessExecutive')
Channels
  • General*
  • Private *
Apps
  • OneNote (pinned to the Private channel)
  • Planner (pinned to the Private channel)

Team properties
  • Team visibility set to Private

*Auto-favorited channels

To create the Executives team by taking default settings from the pre-defined template, supply the JSON representation of the team object in the request body. To learn more about how to deploy team templates, see the Microsoft Graph article on creating a Team.

Request

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teams 
Content-Type: application/json 
{
    "template@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessExecutive')",
    "displayName": "Executive",
    "description": "All posts, announcements and daily collaboration and communication for the company's leadership team.",
    "visibility": "Private"
}

Departmental Team template

The Departmental team template can be used for creating a team for individual departments or for projects. The Finance team template is ideal for all posts, announcements, and daily collaboration and communication within the Finance team members and executive team members as appropriate. The template comes with a private channel to invite select users for specific topics.

We also provide the script below for the Finance team that can be used to extend the template to additional departments or specific projects by adding, deleting from, or editing to your liking. For example, if you have a Marketing department, then the script can be adapted by renaming the team from Finance to Marketing to create a new Marketing team

Template type TemplateId Properties that come with this template
SMB -
Finance
https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/
teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessFinance')
Channels
  • General*
  • Private *

Apps
  • OneNote (pinned to the Private channel)
  • Planner (pinned to the Private channel)

Team properties
  • Team visibility set to Private

*Auto-favorited channels

To create the Finance team by taking default settings from the pre-defined template, supply the JSON representation of the team object in the request body. To learn more about how to deploy team templates, see the Microsoft Graph article on creating a Team.

Request

POST https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teams 
Content-Type: application/json 
{
    "template@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teamsTemplates('SmallBusinessFinance')",
    "displayName": "Finance",
    "description": "All posts, announcements and daily collaboration and communication within the Finance team members (and exec team members as appropriate).",
    "visibility": "Private"
}

Example: Finance Team template extension script

{
  "template@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/teamsTemplates('standard')",
  "displayName": "Finance",
  "description": "Finance Team",
  "channels": 
   [
        {
            "displayName": "Private",
            "isFavoriteByDefault": true,
            "description": "Invite a more select audience for specific topics.",
             "tabs": 
             [
                {
                    "teamsApp@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/appCatalogs/teamsApps('0d820ecd-def2-4297-adad-78056cde7c78')",
                    "name": "OneNote"
                },
                {
                    "teamsApp@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/appCatalogs/teamsApps('com.microsoft.teamspace.tab.planner')",
                    "name": "Planner"
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "memberSettings": 
    {
        "allowCreateUpdateChannels": true,
        "allowDeleteChannels": true,
       "allowAddRemoveApps": true,
        "allowCreateUpdateRemoveTabs": true,
        "allowCreateUpdateRemoveConnectors": true
    },
    "guestSettings": 
    {
        "allowCreateUpdateChannels": false,
        "allowDeleteChannels": false
    },
    "funSettings": 
    {
        "allowGiphy": true,
        "giphyContentRating": "Moderate",
        "allowStickersAndMemes": true,
        "allowCustomMemes": true
    },
    "messagingSettings": 
    {
        "allowUserEditMessages": true,
        "allowUserDeleteMessages": true,
        "allowOwnerDeleteMessages": true,
        "allowTeamMentions": true,
        "allowChannelMentions": true
    },
    "discoverySettings": 
    {
        "showInTeamsSearchAndSuggestions": true
    },
    "installedApps": 
    [
        {
            "teamsApp@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/appCatalogs/teamsApps('0d820ecd-def2-4297-adad-78056cde7c78')"
        },
        {
            "teamsApp@odata.bind": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/appCatalogs/teamsApps('com.microsoft.teamspace.tab.planner')"
        }
    ]
}