Overview
Microsoft Teams holds the extension numbers of all individual staff in the University phonebook, this is fed from Outlook. If you need extension numbers not associated with an individual staff member in your Teams phonebook you may want to add them to Outlook this then propagates into Teams i.e. You may want to add the Student Information team on extension 4000.
Creating custom phonebooks in Teams
Creating the spreadsheet
First of all you need to create a .csv file in Excel. Open a blank Excel spreadsheet and and add the three fields visible fields in Teams (see below). The field titles are not important but if you use the naming convention below it makes it much easier when importing into Outlook.
‘First Name’ can be the department name, ‘Business Phone’ can be the extension number and ‘Company’ can be another searchable field in Teams i.e. Section. We recommend you create a small list first so you get used to importing and dont accidently import a large amount of contacts incorrectly
Now you need to save the document as a .csv file into your downloads folder
Close Excel or at least the spreadsheet down afterwards or you will get an error and it will fail to import.
Importing the .csv into Outlook
In Outlook click File
Then choose Open & Export on the left hand side and click Import/Export
This will open up the Import and Export Wizard where you will choose ‘Import from another program or file’ and click next
Choose Comma separated values and click next
On the next screen browse for the .csv file and in Options choose ‘Replace duplicates with items imported’
Now you have to select the destination folder, this will be your ‘Contacts’ folder (see below), then click next. Please make sure you choose your Contacts folder and not another Contacts folder i.e. another email role account.
Now the Import file screen make sure the tick box is ticked
Now Click The ‘Map Custom Fields’ button, and confirm the fields are mapped correctly by checking the three fields you are importing e.g. First name, Business Phone and Company.
Once you are happy with the fields click OK, then Finish
A box will appear showing the import progress then close
Testing your import in Teams
Click on the ‘People’ tab on the left hand side of Teams and type
