Top 15 Microsoft Teams Tips, Tricks, and Shortcuts
MS Teams is a powerful communication and collaboration hub for colleagues that comes with most Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The following tips will help you enhance your Team’s experience by getting your work done more efficiently and in the shortest time possible.
With so many organizations now allowing their employees to operate from home, the demand for reliable online collaboration platforms is at an all-time high. Microsoft Teams helps you and your staff stay connected and work on projects together from anywhere, anytime. It integrates chats, video conferencing, app integration, group messaging, audio calls, and file storage. The platform even gets better if you know the quickest ways to access and use its tools and functionalities.
Check out our latest video on the top tricks and tips that will turn you into an MS Teams expert:
What Are The Top 15 Microsoft Teams Tips & Tricks?
5 Tips To Increase Your Focus Time:
- Activate ‘Do Not Disturb’ Mode: Temporarily block all the pop-up notifications and alerts that may distract you from fully concentrating on your current project. To turn on this mode, type “/dnd/” in the search box. Once you are done, key in “/available/” in the search box to restore notifications.
- Mark Unattended Messages as Unread: Whether you accidentally opened a message or want more time to reply to it, you can always mark it as unread. Open the message, go to the three ellipses in the pop-up window and select “Mark as unread.”
- Add Bookmarks to Important Messages or Content: This feature saves you the hassle of tracing frequently used information or tracking messages and attachments. To bookmark a message, open it, click on the three ellipses, and select Save this message. You can access your bookmarked contents by keying in “/Saved” in the search box.
- Use @Mentions to Filter Your Activity Feed: A fundamental challenge when using Teams is sorting through piles of notifications to find specific conversations. Fortunately, you can filter your feeds using @mention to allow you to focus on messages that mention you directly. To enable this, click on Activity > Filter Button > @mentions. You can also add @mentions to your messages to catch your recipients’ attention. Type “@” and then key in the recipient’s name; this could be an individual, team, or channel. Teams will give you a list of available recipients to choose from.
- Use the Search Box to Launch Commands: Teams’ search box also doubles up as the command bar. Type in “/” in the search box for a full list of all the available commands and navigation shortcuts. Here is a more detailed explanation of Teams’ commands.
4 Tips To Enhance Your Collaboration With Colleagues:
- Message Colleagues Directly from the Search Bar Using @mentions: This feature allows users to chat with colleagues without abandoning the projects they’re working on. Type in @+the recipient’s name in the search box, click enter, write your message, press send, and continue with your task in the current window.
- Easily Switch Between Chats and Video/ Audio Calls: Some information can better be explained in calls than in chats. MS Teams allows you to call colleagues directly from Chats. To do so, open the chat and click on the call/video tab in the top-right corner.
- Translate Your Teams’ Chats: Are you working with people with different languages? Jump the language barrier by using the Teams in-chat translation feature. To translate a message, Open the chat > Ellipses °°° > Translate. Note that you must first activate this feature through the MS Admin Center. Click here to learn more and for a list of all the supported languages.
- Liking a Chat: You can acknowledge that you’ve seen or agree with a message without typing a reply by liking them. Hover the mouse over the conversation and click on the thumbs up icon.
6 Tips To Help You Stay More Organized:
- Rearrange Your Teams in Order of Priorities: Move more frequented and high-priority teams to the top of the list for easy access. Long-click the team you want to move until the screen turns gray and drag it to your preferred location.
- Mark Your Teams/channels As “Favorite”: Again, this helps you prioritize your teams or channels based on relevance. When you mark more relevant teams as “Favorite,” the remaining ones are marked as more. Open the team/channel, go to the three ellipses, and click on Favorite. Teams will prioritize notifications from favorite teams or channels, helping you attend to more important tasks first.
- Follow Important Channels: If you follow a channel, Teams will send its conversations and project updates to your activity feed. Open the channel, go to the three ellipses, and select “Follow this Channel.”
- Add or Remove Team Members: As an admin, you may want to add or remove users based on changing project phases. Open the team, click on the three ellipses, and select “Manage Team.” If you want to invite users for just a limited time, you can assign them guest membership with limited privileges.
- Access Your Teams Directly from the Search Bar Using the /goto Command: Type in “/goto” + the Team’s name in the search bar to quickly jump to it. This also works for Channels.
- Edit Your Messages With Rich Text Formats: Rich text formatting makes your messages appear more organized. You can add headlines, change fonts, use different text colors, mark messages as important, etc. To use rich text formatting, open the Font tab at the interphase’s bottom.
Do you have any questions on Microsoft Teams or want to learn more tech tips and tricks? At Discovery I.T., we will be glad to help you out. We’ve built a solid reputation for providing hyper-professional IT services in Southeast Texas in 1998.
