Below is an introduction to Microsoft Teams, its basic features and functions, and how to navigate them.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Teams is a business communication and collaboration tool which keeps your chats, meetings and shared files all in one place.
Navigating Teams
Teams is navigated primarily by using the navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen.
Below is a breakdown of what each tab contains:
Activity
Under Activity is where you will receive notifications for all recent Teams activity including chats, messages you have been tagged in, meetings etc.
Chat
The chat function is ideal for messaging individual people or smaller groups. You can start a new chat by clicking the new chat button circled below and searching the person’s name.
Once in a chat you can start voice and video calls, screen sharing and add more users with the buttons in the top-right of the window.
Teams
This is where you can create new Teams or join current ones using the link at the bottom of the window:
When you click Create a team, you can choose to do so from scratch, or using a template which will include specific sub-channels and apps relevant to that template.
This is also where you can view your current teams and its sub-channels which contain threads and information relevant to specific areas of your organisation. You can click the ellipses next to each Team and Channel to Manage the team and its members, add channels, use the pin function to keep important things on top etc.
Within each channel you can start a new message thread, and use @<user name> or @<subchannel name> to tag individuals or all the members of a channel so that they receive a notification which will be displayed in the Activity feed. You can also use the buttons beneath the chat window to attach items and send praise amongst other things.
Calendar
The calendar section will display any items you have in your Outlook / MS 365 account calendar and will be synchronised with the calendar in the Outlook app if you have the same account configured.
Here you can schedule a meeting for a specific time and date and send the invite to multiple members. You can also start a new meeting and join an existing meeting if you have the meeting ID.
Calls
Here you can make calls to members in your organisations as well as contacts from your MS 365 account contact list, as well as add new contacts.
Files
Under files you can view all files shared between your organisation within Teams, as well as configure external cloud storage that your organisation may use such as Dropbox. Those files will then be viewable and manageable under the Cloud Storage tab in the sidebar.
Other
If you click the ellipses beneath the files button, you can open a Task Planner where you keep on top of things by setting yourself reminders for important tasks with due-by dates.
You can also view external apps such as Excel and browse and edit your current spreadsheets and other projects.
0 Comments