When you create a staff team in Microsoft Teams, that team will come with its own OneNote Staff Notebook. A Staff Notebook is a digital notebook that helps facilitate educator collaboration at the school and district levels. Staff team creators own the notebook and have administrative permissions that allow them to add other members/co-owners and manage the notebook's settings.

Teams delivers these essential components of the OneNote Staff Notebook experience:

  • Staff Member Notebooks — a private space shared only between staff leaders and individual staff members. Use this space for taking notes on professional development, lesson plans, evaluations, and more.

  • Content Library — a space where read-only documents and files can be uploaded and accessed by staff team members. Use this feature for storing information on policy, procedure, school planning and more.

  • Collaboration Space — where all members of a staff team can share, organize, and collaborate. Work together on anything from lesson plans to department-wide initiatives.

  • Leader-only Section - a private space that only staff team owners and co-owners can see. This section is great for private initiatives such as drafting meeting agendas, pre-planning materials, and keeping confidential information.

Set up Staff Notebook in Teams

If you have created a staff team but haven't set up its Staff Notebook yet, you’ll be guided through the right steps the first time you visit the Staff Notebook tab.

To get started:

  1. Navigate to the staff team you would like to set up a Staff Notebook for and select the Staff Notebook tab.

  2. Select Set up a OneNote Staff Notebook.

  3. From the dropdown menu, select Blank notebook to set up a new Notebook with no existing content, or From existing notebook content to copy over content from another Notebook. 

  4. Set up sections in each member's private space and select Create.

Add or delete Staff Notebook pages and sections.

  1. Navigate to a staff team you created or co-own and select the General channel.

  2. Select the Staff Notebook tab.

    Staff Notebook tab
  3. Select the Navigation button  Icon in Staff Notebook tab of Microsoft Teams where users can expand menu options. at the left side of your notebook.

    1. To add a new section, select Add section. Enter the section name and select OK.

    2. To add a new page, select Add page and enter a name for the page.

    3. To delete a page, right click on the page name in the navigation bar and select Delete page.

Use Staff Notebook in a channel

Each time you create a new channel in the class, a new section is automatically created in the Staff Notebook’s Collaboration Space. Staff leaders and members can edit and work on OneNote pages within a channel.

  1. Navigate to a class team, then select a channel.

  2. Select the Notes tab.

Expand Staff Notebook view

Expand the Staff Notebook tab to a bigger size by selecting the dropdown arrow next to the Staff Notebook tab. Then select Expand tab  Expand icon for Class Notebook in Teams.

Manage Staff Notebook settings in OneNote

If you are a Staff Team owner, you can access and manage all your Staff Notebook's settings by navigating to the Staff Notebook app in OneNote.

Notes: 

  • When using a Staff Notebook created via Microsoft Teams, you cannot add/remove members using the Staff Notebook Wizard online.

  • Notebook members must be added/removed via Microsoft Teams.

  1. Select the App launcher  App launcher button in Teams and select Staff Notebook. If it does not appear in first menu, select Microsoft 365 > App launcher  App launcher button > Staff Notebook.

  2. Select Manage notebooks. Screenshot of staff notebook management options in Staff Notebook app.

  3. Choose the Staff Notebook you would like to manage settings for. You can only manage settings for Staff Notebooks you created.

  4. Manage settings.Screenshot of Staff Notebook setting management page in OneNote.

Learn more

Learn more about Staff Notebook

Using OneNote for the web

Additional resources for educators

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