The end of the year is fast approaching. As you begin to wind down the year, please take a few minutes to work through this checklist and prepare your teams to be archived. Please note that there is an extra step for class teams that you created (rather than the ones created for you.)
Useful Files
Supports for Closing Down Teams
Teams End of Year Wrap Up for Students
District Initiated Archive
On, or about, June 30, the district will run a script that automatically archives every class team that was created for you. These teams will be still be viewable by you and your students but all of the conversations and files will be set to View Only. You will maintain ownership, which allows you to add or remove members, update roles, and you will be able to delete and restore the team if you want.
Completing the following steps will help ensure a smooth transition next year.
Create a back-up of your files in Teams
Your files and the assignments created through the assignments tab will still be available to be copied into other teams. However, it is always a sound idea to have a backup.
The easiest and quickest way to do this is to visit the general channel files tab and then click on the Open in SharePoint button on the menu.
This will open a browser window in an app called SharePoint. When this opens it will show file view of the folders and files in that channel.
Above the file view is a bread crumb menu that says Documents > Name. Click on Documents, which will give a list of each folders for each channel.
On that view, select each channel you want to download and then click the Download button on the menu at the top.
This will download a zipped file to your downloads folder. This zipped file can be copied and moved to OneDrive for future use. Or you can uncompress the files to your computer or OneDrive by following these directions:
- Locate the zipped folder that you want to unzip (extract) files or folders from.
- Do one of the following:
- To unzip a single file or folder, open the zipped folder, then drag the file or folder from the zipped folder to a new location.
- To unzip all the contents of the zipped folder, press and hold (or right-click) the folder, select Extract All, and then follow the instructions.
Create a Master File for Future Teams
Wherever you put the files, you can easily re-upload them into your new teams next year. You will need to make sure they have been uncompressed if they are still zipped files (see above.) Once you are ready, open a browser to Office.com.
In Office.com open OneDrive and then create a folder for each of your preps. When these are all set up, upload your Teams files using the following steps:
- Select Upload > Files or Upload > Folder.
- Select the files or folder you want to upload.
- Select Open or Select Folder.
With other browsers:
- Select Upload, select the files you want to upload, and select Open.
- If you don’t see Upload > Folder, create a folder, and then upload the files to that folder.
If you have OneDrive enabled on your computer (and the client is working), you can use File Explorer to drag and drop the folders into the OneDrive folders you’ve created.
You’re all set. When next school year rolls round, all you have to do is go into those new teams and upload those files back into teams.
Archive Class Teams You Created
There are class teams that were automatically created for you. These teams will be automatically archived. However, if you created other class teams, such as Super Teams or small breakout teams, you will need to archive them (if you want.) Here’s how:
- Select Teams on the left to see the list of your teams.
- At the bottom of the list, select Manage .
- In the Active list, find the name of the team you want to archive, then select More options > Archive team
Remove Co-Teachers
This one is pretty straight forward, but the reasoning may not be. To ensure that one of your co-teachers doesn’t accidentally delete your class as they are cleaning up their stuff, go into Teams and use the following steps to remove them (you can always add them back.)
- If you’re a team owner, you can absolutely remove someone from your team. Go to the team name and then click More options > Manage team > Members.
- From your team member list, click the Xto the far right of the name of the person you’d like to remove. To remove another team owner, first change their role from owner to member, then remove them.
- Once you remove someone from a team, you can always use Add member to add them back to the team later on
Mute Students
Since there will be a decent interval between the end of school and when ISD finishes the archive process, you may want to consider muting your students. This will prevent them from starting new conversations and replying to old ones.
- Select More options on your team’s tile.
- Select Manage team.
- Select the Members tab. You’ll see your students listed. Select the checkmark box under Mute students to prevent students from commenting or select the top checkbox to mute all students at once.
On the other hand, you may want to leave some space for your students to communicate and convene. You can choose to leave them unmuted and use channel maderation instead. Using this method, you could essentially limit students to conversing in one channel (to do so, leave it unmoderated and moderate the rest.) You can then set notifications for that channel to let you know if students are in the space.
Encourage Students to Save Copies of Their Work
Speaking of students, you should let students know the archive process is going to happen and that they should take the opportunity now to go in and create copies of any work they want to save.
To do this, have them open each assignment and then for each item of work, click on the three dots and choose download. This will download a copy to the download folder on their computer.
Additionally, if students have created collaborations in the files tabs of channels in your teams, they can go in, find the file, click the three dots and choose download. This will download a copy to the download folder on their computer.
