Some super cool tips for you pick up your skills whether you are a beginner or wanting to make sure you’re getting the most out of Microsoft Teams.
Increase your focus time
Your activity feed keeps you up-to-date on the latest conversations and updates. But it can be overwhelming at times. So it is handy to use @mentions when you want to get someone’s attention in a channel conversation or a chat.
But did you know that you can filter by @mentions? This lets you separate your personal To-Dos from the FYIs so you can focus on the key conversations.
How to do this: Click on Activity, then click the filter button and choose @mentions.
Bookmark a message for later
This is a really useful piece of functionality that allows you to save a particular message, or more accurately a position in a conversation or chat, just by clicking on the sash icon at the top of the message. Great for bookmarking later reading or finding frequently used information.
How to do this: In a chat, click the bookmark icon in chat. To recall all your saved messages click on your profile picture top right and selecting ‘Saved’ or possibly quicker would be to type in the command bar /saved. This gives you a list of all your saved points and clicking on them takes you back to the point in the conversation you saved from.
Create your own GIFs
Adding animated GIFs into chats can be motivational or just plain fun for your team. You can pick from the animated GIFs included with Teams or use the Giphy app to create your own, which adds an extra layer of personalization. Note that although Giphy is built into Teams, the Teams administrator needs to activate it.
How to do this: in both chat and conversation just click the GIF icon and browse.
Keyboard shortcuts
To speed up your workflow in Teams there is the option of several keyboard shortcuts. We have added a couple of favorites below. For the full list see all the keyboard shortcuts available in Teams.
How to do this:
- press the R key on your keyboard to reply to a thread
- press Alt-A in Windows (Option-A on a Mac) to quickly attach a file to a message
- press Ctrl-E to start a new search
Record your Teams meetings
You can record your Microsoft Teams meetings. The recording captures everything – even screen sharing activities. The meeting is recorded in the cloud and saved to Stream, meaning you can manage, download, and share along with all your organization’s other Video content.
How to do this: Join or start the meeting. Click on the ellipse “…” and then select “Start Recording”.
Extra cool tip: Microsoft Teams has a feature where you can blur your background, putting you in the focus, and concealing everything behind you. To activate Background Blur during meetings simply click select ‘Blur My Background’ from the same menu.