Board staff trains members to use Microsoft Teams for agenda files and school-visit signups

Davis County School District staff led a hands-on Microsoft Teams training for the school board, showing members how the district will use a single Teams workspace to distribute meeting materials, post committee files and manage board-member signups for school visits and graduation assignments.

Staff said the district created a “Davis School District School Board Team” in Teams to centralize documents and notifications for board members, with folder access aligned to committee membership so files are visible only to relevant members. The training showed how staff will pin Teams to a desktop task bar, upload and move files into folders, and use “@mentions” to trigger email notifications for board members who may not check Teams regularly.

The district owners (administration and the superintendent’s office) will keep Teams posts and file posting rights, and the presenters said the post discussion feature is turned off for board-wide channels to avoid creating a quorum through online dialog. For routine operations such as school-visit signups or graduation speaker lists, staff described a hybrid workflow: board members will respond by email or text to the administrative assistant, who will then enter the confirmed assignments into Teams so the calendar and folders stay synchronized.

Presenters demonstrated uploading a meeting schedule into a committee folder, moving files between folders and deleting items; they also showed how the chat function differs from posts and that private chats (the side Chat feature) remain available for direct messages between members and staff. The training emphasized that owners can post and notify the group and that folders will retain a committee’s historical documents as committee membership rotates over time.

District staff told members they will continue to send some email notices for time-sensitive signups and that Teams will be used as a repository once a scheduling item is confirmed. They also asked members to notify staff when they plan a school visit so staff can send calendar invites; this procedure is intended to ensure staff are alerted to take follow-up tasks (for example, to contact a school principal or prepare materials) and to avoid missed coordination when multiple members attempt to edit a shared document.

The training closed with an invitation for board members to request other documents or folders be added to Teams and with staff offering one-on-one help for members who have multiple Microsoft accounts or need the Teams app pinned to a taskbar.