One Note Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams To add a new or existing OneNote notebook to a channel in Microsoft Teams, select Add a tab at the top of the channel and select OneNote. From there, choose an option: To start from scratch, select Create a new notebook, add a name to the Notebook name field, and click Save.
Meeting notes are a great place to capture and share notes before, during, and after a Teams meeting. A few things to keep in mind: Only people in the same org as the meeting organizer will be able to start or access meeting notes. Meeting notes are available in meetings with up to 100 people.

In this post, I would like to explain the difference between Teams Wiki and OneNote. Both apps are highly visible from SharePoint and Teams and seem to serve the same purpose, so I would like to explain what they are and whether you should use one or another.

OneNote

OneNote is an application that allows you to take all kinds of notes. It is part of the MS Office suite, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint. What makes OneNote unique is that it allows you to capture all types of notes from text to images to audio. I highlighted the OneNote app extensively in this post.

OneNote has a very similar structure to that of a physical notebook with sections and pages, making the organization of notes very intuitive.

Where does OneNote reside?

When you create a new Team Site in SharePoint Online, your OneNote notebook is created automatically. The link to OneNote is always prominently placed on the SharePoint Site navigation.

Physically, it lives in the Site Assets library on a given site. If you click Gear Icon > Site contents > Site Assets, you will see it there.

Teams Wiki

Teams Wiki is a tab that appears in Microsoft Teams when you create a new team. Right next to Posts and Files tabs is the Teams Wiki tab. The tab can be removed if necessary. The idea behind Teams Wiki is that you can use it to take notes.

Just like OneNote, it has a section/page structure as well, though it does it in reverse as compared to OneNote. OneNote has Sections, and for each Section, you can create multiple Pages, and Wiki has Pages where you can add Sections to. Unlike OneNote, it does not have any other features, think of it as a “very lite version” of OneNote where you can only capture text notes in Page/Section layout.

You can create new Pages by clicking New page button.

Where does Teams Wiki reside?

Perhaps it is no surprise at all that Teams Wiki resides in… SharePoint (where else!). All the data resides in a special Document library called Teams Wiki Data. It does not exist initially on the site, but gets created automatically the very first time someone accesses the Wiki tab on a Teams channel (even if the user does not add any content to it).

To access Teams Wiki Data, on the connected SharePoint Site, click on Gear Icon > Site contents.

All the Wiki Pages are organized by Channel folders
For each of the pages created in Teams Wiki, you get a file with .mht extension
Once downloaded, you can open these files with either a Word or browser app (not that you really need to)

Integration with Teams Meeting

Perhaps the “coolest” feature of Wiki is its integration with Teams Meetings. When you are in a meeting, and click on Show meeting notes, it allows you to capture notes.

When you start using Meeting Notes feature in Teams, it automatically creates another tab in a Team’s channel called Meeting Notes, where you can access all the meeting notes from all the meetings. Each meeting becomes a Page in that tab with respective sections underneath.

Teams Wiki Limitations

Teams Wiki is not searchable from MS Teams. Ironically, it does search and find keywords within the Wiki if you execute your search from the SharePoint site (it does search the contents of those .mht files). But that is not useful, in my opinion.
When you delete a Wiki Tab or Meeting Notes Tab (that gets created automatically when you capture notes from Teams Meetings), all the files get deleted from that Team Wiki Data document library and are not recoverable (they do not go to SharePoint Recycle Bin like regular deleted files)
Teams Wiki has very limited capabilities when compared to OneNote

Recommendation

I usually advocate for the use and adoption of various tools and features we have in Teams, SharePoint, and Office 365, but in this case, I recommend that you use OneNote over Wiki. I personally find it a bit frustrating to use, and due to its several limitations above, it does not make much sense to me.

As an alternative, I, of course, recommend OneNote. Most users are already familiar with it, and it is very simple, yet powerful. You do get a link to OneNote notebook in SharePoint already by default + you can add a tab to it from any channel as well with MS Teams.

How to remove Teams Wiki

Navigate to the channel where you want to remove Wiki from, then hover over the Wiki Tab and choose Remove
On the confirmation pop-up, click Remove
Please note that the above action is not recoverable!
Repeat for all the other channels within your Team (Wiki Tabs are unique per channel!)

How to add OneNote Tab instead of the Wiki tab

Click the “+” sign next to add a new Tab
Choose OneNote
By default, it shows the OneNote notebook that is tied to the related Team/Site. However, you can add any Notebook from any other site as well. Click Save.
You are all set!

When a staff creates a Staff Team for all the staff, on Teams, a Notebook for only the staff is also created.

People also search for:

How to use the Staff Notebook on Teams:

Click on the Staff Notebook on the top bar.
The staff notebook contains three main sections.
It contains the Collaboration space, Content library, and Personal space for each staff.
Each section has unique permissions depending on the owner’s rights of the staff in the team.
The collaboration space is for everyone to collaborate in the team.
Content added to the Content Library is read-only for the other staff members.
That means you can create content for Content Library and other staff can only view it.
Each notebook has some pre-populated pages.
These pages can guide you to work with your staff.
This is an example for pre-populated pages.
Each staff member will get a private section in the staff notebook.
The team owner can view all the private sections of all the staff.
The staff member cannot see each other’s personal section.
All member staff can document Parent Communication and Professional Development goals.
Team owners have access to Class Observations, Lesson Plan Feedback and Evaluation.
Therefore the team owners can provide valuable information on them.

What is staff notebook on teams:

When a new team is created by a staff a Staff Notebook is also created on the OneNote. This staff notebook is very useful for all the staff in a class or school. It has three important sections which are given above. These sections can be very useful for organizing and collaborating with other staff members.

Microsoft teams have many options for student collaborations as well as staff collaboration. One of the most important features for staff collaboration is the OneNote notebook. Detailed instructions on staff collaboration on OneNote is given above.

Verdict:

There is an increase in the usage of online classrooms recently. Microsoft Teams is the main solution for online collaboration for schools and companies alike.