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Digital resource library

Copper Contributor

I work in a secondary school in the UK.  We have been using Teams since the beginning of this year.  We are looking to find a way of cataloguing online curriculum resources, eg online publications, youtube, online galleries etc in our own 'digital library' and I'm wondering if there is an app available through Teams that we could use, rather than using a completely separate system.

The idea would be that when any teacher finds a useful resource online they can add it to the school's digital resource library, and teachers and students can then search the library for resources once they've been catalogued.

Thanks in advance of any ideas.

13 Replies
best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution

@LCWis 

Hi Louise,

 

Welcome to the forums.  If you're not wanting anything too glossy, than the native Teams toolset should be adequate.  Teams acts as an aggregator for some other O365 resources, one of which is SharePoint online.  A teams instance will have a SharePoint site created under the bonnet.  The files tab that you can see actually resides within a SharePoint document library.

 

In it's most crude form, you can upload a series of document, images and so on to this SharePoint library.  For pointing to external resources, such as videos and the like there is the "Link" option that acts as a literal pointer to these resources.  Lastly, adding some metadata to this library helps allows you to manage and filter these resources as required.

 

If this is of interest, do let me know and I'll mock up a quick screenshot for you.

 @Steven Andrews 

 

Hi Steven.  Thanks for your reply.  This sounds interesting.  One of the features we are looking for is the ability to search for tagged documents, links etc.  Would this be possible using the suggestion you have given?

 

@LCWis 

 

It would indeed.  You can add specific metadata tags to the library and these are fully searchable.

 

If you can give me a few sample tags you've got in mind, I can whistle up a few screenshots for you so you've an idea of what to expect.

@Steven Andrews 

 

Thanks, that's great!  So we might have 'abstract painting' 'figurative painting' 'abstract expressionism' 'online gallery' for an Art Department, 

'engineering' 'apprenticeship' 'medicine' 'career guide' for a careers department

 

 

Hi @LCWis 

 

Apologies for the delay on responding.  So, that's sort of 2 levels of metadata right there.  I'll whistle something up today and will post back this afternoon for you.

Are you going to share that here - I'd be interested to see what that looks like...

@Steven Andrews 
Hi Steve.  Sorry I've not replied I've been on holiday.  Would you still be willing to show me how this might work?  
Thanks

Louise

@LCWis @Liz Pommer 

 

Hi both, with apologies for the delay, here's some more information.  First some general information.  When you create a Teams Instance, the Files tab is connected to a SharePoint site.  This site has a library and within this library is a folder called general.  This general library is spun up for Teams files.  This tab also has a button that allows you to open up the SharePoint site directly as below

 

Teams_SPO_01.jpg

This should open up the SharePoint site within a new browser window.  When you're in here, look on the right hand side for a column header called "Add Column."  Clicking on this will give you a series of options.  For @LCWis  demo, we'll be looking to use a Choice Column.

 

Teams_SPO_02.jpg

 

Most of this should be fairly simple to follow.  In the choices field remember to give each option its own line. Here's an example of what the Art Department column looks like in my tenancy.

 

Teams_SPO_03.jpg

 

Doing the same with the engineering field will leave you with a SharePoint library that has two additional columns in it.  Any item that you either upload to OR create within this library can now be tagged up with the appropriate labels.

 

You may think that its a good time to get back to Teams.  We'll do that in a second, there's one other aspect here that might be of interest called Views.  But if you checked now (refreshing any open files tabs) you'll see that the additional columns you've created are now visible.  Back to Views, these are very similar to filters on spreadsheets.  You can create filtered views of your documents within SharePoint and then save them as Views, which enables everyone else to view them.

 

Teams_SPO_04.jpg 

These views are also made available within Teams, but you may need to refresh the view on the tab.

 

I'll leave it at that for now but hopefully this is a good start for you both.  Do let me know if you've any questions and I'll make sure to get back to you quicker this time.

 

Thanks
Steven

Awesome, thanks @Steven Andrews - I'll give this a go and let you know if I need anything else. Your notes look pretty clear and easy to follow, so hopefully, I'll just get it done! Good timing as we'll be working on this over the next few days. Thanks again!!

@Steven Andrews 

Thanks so much for this Steven.  I've just started to put some files in and it's working well.  I'm very grateful!

Louise

@Steven Andrews @LCWis @Liz Pommer 

 

Hello Steve, 

 

Thanks for this very useful guidelines. I tried following it and got as far as creating the columns. But I could not follow the next step "Any item that you either upload to OR create within this library can now be tagged up with the appropriate labels". I uploaded a file but did not know how to tag it using the column choices I had successfully created. 

 

Also when I succeed in tagging the files, can I please ask how I can search for a particular file I need. Sorry to bother you with these seemingly simple questions. 

 

Thanks for your help. 

 

 

No problem.

Have you tried quick edit on the library or the Edit Properties on a file by file basis? That'll allow you to apply the labels.

I will aim to come back tomorrow with a fuller response. A handset is a little restricting for a fuller explanation.
Hello Steve,
thanks for your help. I am now able to tag the files.

The next step will be how to search for files that have ben tagged.

Kind regards,
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by ThereseSolimeno (Microsoft)
Solution

@LCWis 

Hi Louise,

 

Welcome to the forums.  If you're not wanting anything too glossy, than the native Teams toolset should be adequate.  Teams acts as an aggregator for some other O365 resources, one of which is SharePoint online.  A teams instance will have a SharePoint site created under the bonnet.  The files tab that you can see actually resides within a SharePoint document library.

 

In it's most crude form, you can upload a series of document, images and so on to this SharePoint library.  For pointing to external resources, such as videos and the like there is the "Link" option that acts as a literal pointer to these resources.  Lastly, adding some metadata to this library helps allows you to manage and filter these resources as required.

 

If this is of interest, do let me know and I'll mock up a quick screenshot for you.

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