docs.microsoft.

com /en-us/microsoftteams/assign-roles-permissions

Assign team owners and members in Microsoft Teams

Article
08/26/2021
3 minutes to read

Applies to:
Microsoft Teams

Within Microsoft Teams there are two user roles: owner and member. By default, a user who creates a new
team is granted the owner status. In addition, owners and members can have moderator capabilities for a
channel (provided that moderation has been set up). If a team is created from an existing Microsoft 365
Group, permissions are inherited.

The table below shows the difference in permissions between an owner and a member.

Task Team Owner Team Member

Create team Yes1 No
Leave team Yes Yes
Edit team name/description Yes No

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 Task Team Owner Team Member
Delete team Yes No
Add standard channel Yes Yes2
Edit standard channel name/description Yes Yes2
Delete standard channel Yes Yes2
*Add private channel Yes Yes2
*Edit private channel name/description No N/A
*Delete private channel Yes No
Add members Yes3 No4
Request to add members N/A Yes5
Add apps Yes Yes2

1 Team owners can create teams unless they've been restricted from doing so. Permissions to create teams

below.
2 An owner can turn off these items at the team level, in which case members would not have access to

them.
3 After adding a member to a team, an owner can also promote a member to owner status. It is also possible

for an owner to demote their own status to a member.

4 Team members can add other members to a public team.

5 While a team member can't directly add members to a private team, they can request someone to be

added to a team they're already a member of. When a member requests someone to be added to a team,
team owners receive an alert that they have a pending request that they can accept or deny.

*To learn more about permissions for private channels, see Private channels in Teams.

Note

Owners can make other members owners in the View teams option. A team can have up to 100 owners. We
recommend that you have at least a few owners to help manage the team; this will also prevent orphaned
groups if a sole owner leaves your organization. For more information about orphaned groups, see Assign a
new owner to an orphaned group.

Moderator capabilities
In addition to other capabilities, team owners and members can have moderator capabilities for a channel
(provided that moderation is turned on for a team). Moderators can start new posts in a channel and control
whether team members can reply to existing channel messages. They can also control whether bots and
connectors can submit channel messages.

Moderator capabilities are assigned at the channel level. Team owners have moderator capabilities by
default. Team members have moderator capabilities turned off by default, but a team owner can give

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moderator capabilities for a channel to a team member. Moderators within a channel can add and remove
other moderators within that channel.

For more information about moderator capabilities, see Set up and manage channel moderation in Microsoft
Teams.

Assign a user role

To assign a user role, in Teams, select the team name and click More options > Manage team. On the
Members tab, you can add members and choose owners and moderators (if you have sufficient
permissions). For more information , see Change team settings in Teams.

Permissions to create teams

By default, all users with a mailbox in Exchange Online have permissions to create Microsoft 365 groups and
therefore a team within Microsoft Teams. You can have tighter control and restrict the creation of new teams
and thus the creation of new Microsoft 365 groups by delegating group creation and management rights to a
set of users. For instructions, see Manage who can create Microsoft 365 Groups.

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