Microsoft Teams is packed full of basic features that make collaboration and communication easier, faster, and more productive. But there are plenty of not-so-basic features that can also improve the user experience and enhance efficiency and productivity.
The Basics of Microsoft Teams
Teams has some excellent basic features that make it the perfect productivity app for virtually any organisation.
- Channels—similar to an email distribution list, channels make sure your communications go to the people who need to see them.
- Tabs—add media, websites, documents, and other content to a channel.
- Connectors—bring in content from third-party apps.
- Bots—access bots, automated mini-apps that perform specific tasks, and pull results right into the chat.
- Mobile—Teams has its own mobile app, of course, allowing team users to stay in the loop no matter where they happen to be.
For every one of Microsoft Teams’ basic features, there are ways to make them even more effective. Encourage users to experiment with filters and other settings to help them make the most of everything that Teams has to offer.
Make the Most of Microsoft Teams with These Easy Tips
Focus your activity
Your activity feed is supposed to keep you up-to-date with recent conversations and activities. However, as you join more teams, your activity feed can start to become a bit unwieldy. Luckily there are simple ways to counteract this. Filters and other simple actions can help you strip away all the superfluous details so that you can focus on your specific tasks.
An effective way to get started is to filter your activity feed by @mentions. When your activity feed is filtered in this way, you only see communications and content that specifically mention you. This allows you to separate out the tasks and conversations on your personal To-Do list, so you can focus more on your workflow without getting distracted by associated messages.
To filter by @mentions, click on Activity then click the filter button and choose @mentions.
Some more ways to narrow your focus include:
- Create bookmarks to save content for later. To set a bookmark, click the Bookmark icon with the relevant chat active. To locate content you’ve bookmarked, type /saved in the search bar.
- Mark messages unread to remind yourself to get back to them later on. With the message active, click on the ellipses in the top-right corner. In the pop-up window click “Mark as Unread”. To check your unread messages, type /unread in the search bar or find them in your activity feed.
- Go /DND: Need to focus on a task without any new outside distractions? Take a second to set your status to “Do Not Disturb” so that other users know you’re busy. To set your status to “Do Not Disturb” just type /dnd in the search bar. Reset your status to normal by typing /available in the search bar.
Get more organised
With Microsoft Teams you have a vast number of options for organising your feed, activities, groups, and other content. For instance:
- Use drag-and-drop to organise your teams in any order. Just click and drag team names to move them around according to your priorities.
- Favourite a channel or team to prioritise your most important teams and activities. To do this make the channel or team active then click the ellipses and choose Favourite.
- Follow a channel to get notifications on any activities and updates. To do this click the ellipses on the active channel and choose “Follow this Channel”.
- Use /goto to move quickly to a new team. Just type /goto in the search bar followed by the team and channel you want to view.
Improve your collaboration skills
Microsoft Teams is all about collaboration, so many of the app’s basic and advanced features focus on making collaboration easier. For instance:
- @mention a user in the search bar to send them a message without leaving your active task.
- In-line chat translation lets you translate messages with a couple of clicks. In a message click the ellipses then choose Translate to see a translated version.
- Start a video call from within a chat by clicking the video or call icon in the top-right corner.
- Share your mobile device screen by swiping up from the bottom once you join a meeting. Choose the share option then choose share screen. From here you can also share multimedia content including files, photos, and video clips.
Learn new commands
There are dozens of different slash commands you can use to navigate through Microsoft Teams more quickly, and use its various features more efficiently.
Just type / into the search bar to instantly get a list of all shortcuts and commands that are usable in Microsoft Teams. Make a point of trying them all out to see which ones can help you get that extra edge in your workflow.
Interested in Microsoft Teams? Contact us today to discuss the right option for your organisation.
