Remove "Staff Notebook" from Microsoft Teams for Education
I am not sure if this is a bug or not but we are using Microsoft Teams educational licenses. We want to use the Teams for our internal staff departments first. For some reason the setup of teams includes extra educational features like it force creates a OneNote tab called "Staff Notebook" in the General channel of each team. the OneNote includes a lot of classroom type customization that we do not want/need. Our departments have their own OneNotes. I cannot delete Staff Notebook tab or even rename it. I can add and delete other OneNotes but we want a clean set of tabs. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting rid of this? Thanks.
Robert Derby
shared this idea
Hi everyone! If you do not want to use the OneNote Staff Notebook or any of the other default tabs across the various team types, we suggest creating an ‘Anyone’ team instead.
The ‘Anyone’ team will not include any add-ons by default and gives you the flexibility to use Teams however you would like. We understand that there are so many other ways you can use Teams that does not fit the Class/PLC/Staff team template. So ‘Anyone’ will be your best option!
More information on the different team types in Teams for Education can be found here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/choose-a-team-type-to-collaborate-in-microsoft-teams-0a971053-d640-4555-9fd7-f785c2b99e67
Feel free to reply back here if you have additional feedback.
Thank you!
Justin
41 comments
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Philip
commented
@ justin Chando,
Unfortunately I learned of the "anyone" workaround too late and have several teams already in use with the "staff notebook" tab. Is it possible to remove the tab, or perhaps port the team into a new template setup? We can't really generate an entirely new team site at this point and the staff notebook tab is completely unused, a constant question from new team members, and a constant irritation to longterm users.
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Radu Negoescu
commented
An extra vote for an easier tab management (with particular focus on Staff Notebook) - once the team decides this is irrelevant, they should be able to hide if not completely remove the "Staff Notebook" tab.
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Anonymous
commented
We really need a way to control what Team types are available to which users. Ideally I'd like to only publish the "Class" and "PLC" to teachers while the only option everyone else has is "Other". Also calling it something other then "Other" would be really helpful. Standard, or General maybe?
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Chad V Kealey
commented
Justin, I completely understand your suggestion, but let's be honest about who will see it here. Mostly IT folks like me. Not the end-users who are creating Teams without seeking guidance. Try as we might to provide them the necessary guidance, most just don't listen. So, there are two things that your team could provide to help us address this issue as appropriate for our institutions:
1) Give us a way to disable certain types of Teams so that they simply don't appear as options when a user creates a Team. Alternately (but probably much more complicated), restrict Team type by security group (e.g.: if we have an AD group of "Faculty", only let members of that group create a "Class" Team).
2) Give us a way to "convert" a Staff Team to a regular ("Anyone" or "Other") Team, or at least just delete the accursed Staff Notebook (including the link in the General channel) and replace it with a regular old OneNote Notebook.
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kbcatnap
commented
There is no option for an "Anyone" team under Create a team. Maybe there was in the past but it's not there now. And suddenly I have Staff Notebooks being forced upon us, too, even though I selected "Other" for my teams. I have never used Class, PLC nor Staff. **Microsoft:** Just because an organization is "educational" doesn't necessarily mean they will be using it solely with students.
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kbcatnap
commented
There is no option for an "Anyone" team under Create a team. Maybe there was in the past but it's not there now. And suddenly I have Staff Notebooks being forced upon us, too. I did not choose the Staff team type. I chose "Other" but Staff Notebooks have started appearing in my Other teams despite my best efforts.
Microsoft: Just because an organization is "educational" doesn't necessarily mean they will be using it solely with students.
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Christophe B
commented
Don't let people choose between "Staff", "PLC", etc. Let them choose/select functionalities instead. Now it is very confusing. Nobody knows what type to choose and once you have chosen a type, you can't change it anymore.
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Jessica Archambault
commented
Hi, I have the same issue also (switching from Staff to Anyone Team type after it's been created). Any updates or how-to?
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Adriana
commented
Hi - is there anyway to change any existing team from a 'staff' type to an 'anyone' type? This advice is helpful for before you create, but how do you change after its been created?
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Heather E
commented
Chiming in to add how disappointed I am that I can't delete the Staff Notebook. The team types need to have much better descriptions up front if selecting one is going to lock us into certain features forever. I selected 'Staff' because my team is made up of staff members (not faculty members) at a university. It definitely seemed like the more correct choice than 'Other - clubs, study groups, after school activities' (which has replaced the 'Anyone' type). I'm not going to delete and recreate our team at this point, but the Staff Notebook tab is distracting and confusing for team members.
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Colin.
commented
This still isn't a thing? Wow. We really need to be able to remove superfluous items on the channel menus post-creation. On a tenant that includes Staff and Students one is not inclined to choose "anyone" if the intended team is only faculty and support staff.
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Anonymous
commented
There is a similar issue with the Class Team template which is used because it offers the Class Materials private folder, but you cannot delete the Class Notebook.
There are definitely use cases for the non-Anyone teams, but we still need to get rid of the bits that are not needed or are distracting.
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Josh Purcell
commented
Hey Justin,
Your most recent update with the suggestion to create an "Anyone" Team is superb and we're happy with this idea for the future. This does not however resolve the issue for teams that have already been created.
It is simply not plausible to expect administrators to delete and recreate each individual Team that they do not wish to have the Staff Notebook on. There must be a suitable method created to simply remove the Staff Notebook with no further disruption.
Please listen to the community here...
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Stéphane Chandonnet
commented
Thank you for the workaround but we need a solution for existing teams. It could be a way to get rid of he Staff Notebook tab or a way to move all existing conversations to a new team based on "Anyone".
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Ann D'Albergaria
commented
Thank you for the work around; your suggestion affects things created in the future. However, we need a way to get rid of the Staff Notebook tab that has already been created and in use for a year. We cannot simply create a new notebook and have two hanging around to confuse our users.
The larger your organization, the more important it is to minimize clutter. We would like to be able to delete the existing notebook. Please add this function soon! I've been hoping for this option for over a year!
Thank you. -
Richard
commented
How do we change one that was created incorrectly to "Anyone"?
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Iris zhu
commented
We've already created teams using "staff" and it is troublesome to delete them and create new ones using "anyone". Is it possible that we can have the option to delete "staff notebook" in existing teams.
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Jon Buhagiar
commented
Please allow for the option to remove Staff Notebook. Our staff do not teach and it has no value to certain departments at the college!
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Mikael L
commented
I also want to get rid of the Staff Notebook. This is basic functionality...
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Rik Holmes
commented
Agreed. Not all staff in Universities teach. It would be most useful to be able to keep or remove Staff Notebook as part of a policy to be applied to subsets of users - academics and/or support staff.
We also operate two tenancies, staff and student, so the Staff Notebook function is not much use in the staff tenancy, even for the academic staff.