Top 15 MUST KNOW Microsoft Teams Tips & Tricks That Turn You Into A PRO

Top 15 MUST KNOW Microsoft Teams Tips & Tricks That Turn You Into A PRO

Microsoft Teams is a great collaboration platform, and it even gets better if you know the quickest ways to access and use tools and functionalities within the app.

Ready to get started? Watch our latest video to learn more on the top 15 Microsoft Teams tips & tricks:

What Are the Top 15 Tips and Tricks to Help You Get the Most Out of Teams?

Rearrange Your Teams In Order Of Preference

Most people keep up with their preferred teams by simply following or favoriting them. If you use this approach, you’ll soon realize that sorting through associated channels and teams will continually get challenging as the number of groups grows. The best way to handle this is to move your teams around, a functionality that several users surprisingly do not know exists. To rearrange your teams:

• Select the preferred team on the Teams list on the left side of the interphase.
• Long-click and drag it to the preferred location on the list.

Filter Your Notifications

When you click on the Activity tab, you’ll see a list of your recent activity across all your teams and channels. The more the number of groups you are part of, the more jumbled the list will look like. You can, however, use the Filtering system to define which items are given priority on your Activity list:

• Go to the Activity tab.
• Select the Filter icon (top-right).

You can then filter your activity notifications based on various criteria. Most users find the Mentions filter quite useful because it enables you to first attend to messages where you are directly mentioned.

Use Broad Tags To Send Messages

As an admin, you can assign team members tags depending on their roles. You can use these tags to send direct messages to particular role-based user groups. For instance, a sales manager can use the @manager tag to send direct messages to all the organization managers at once.

Mark Important Or Unattended Messages As Unread

You could have accidentally opened a message or just realized that you may need more time to reply after reading it.  To keep the already opened message as a priority so that you don’t forget, go to Ellipses > Mark as Unread.

Pin The Most Used Apps

Besides being a collaboration space for colleagues, MS Teams also integrates with the most powerful productivity apps to help you work from one place. If you use a lot of apps, the platform allows you to pin your favorite or most essential ones for easy access:

• Navigate to the Apps section.
• Select the app you want and right-click.
• Choose Pin, and it will appear on the side of your Teams’ window.
• To control the order in which your pinned apps appear, go to App Setup Policies on your dashboard.

Add/Remove Team Members

As your projects go through different phases, you may occasionally need to add or remove some users:

• Go to the Teams bar and hover over your team’s name.
• Expand the menu by clicking the Ellipses
• When you select Manage Teams, you’ll be redirected to new interphase showing all your team members.
• Use Add Member to include new participants or X to remove a user.

Use Rich Text Formatting

MS Teams allows you to use Rich Text Formatting to highlight important messages or make them look more organized. To use this feature, click on the letter A icon (with a pen) at the message window’s bottom. It allows you to change font, text color, and size, create numbered/bulleted lists, etc.

Send Direct Emails To Your Teams Chat Thread

This feature enables you to send direct emails to your Teams conversations. Open the chat and go to Ellipses > Get Email Address > Copy the address. You can then use this link to forward emails, files, or messages directly from Outlook or any other email service provider.

Essential Microsoft Teams Keyboard Shortcuts

When you enter “/keys” in the search bar, you can see the full list of all Teams shortcut keys. Here are some of the frequently used keyboard shortcuts and where they lead to:

• Command + Comma — Settings.
• R — Reply to thread.
• C — Compose box.
• Command + O — Attach a file to a message.

Bookmark Your Important Messages

Besides marking as unread, you can also add a bookmark to easily future reference messages. To do so, hover over the message and click on the ribbon-shaped icon. To find your bookmarked messages, type “/Saved” in the search bar.

How To Use The “Do Not Disturb” Mode

Sometimes, you may need to block out all notifications to concentrate on a project fully. Just type in “/dnd” in the search bar, and Teams will temporarily bar all alerts. Once you are done, type “/available” in the search bar to restore notifications.

Appear Offline When You’re Online

This feature is also handy when you want to give the tasks at hand full concentration. When you turn the Appear offline status on, you’ll still be able to receive messages while you remain invisible to others.

Hide Teams Messages Preview

If you find the message previews on your desktop distracting or want to hide them from those around you, MS Teams allows you to turn them off. Go to Settings > Notifications > Show Messages Preview and disable this feature. Usually, it’s toggled on by default.

Translate Your Teams Messages

The translation feature is useful when running an international company that deals with people that speak different languages.

To enable it:

• Go to Messaging Policies in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center.
• Select Translate Messages and click on Edit.
• Once you’ve turned on Translate Messages, remember to Save the updates.

Send An Urgent Chat Message

Do you have an urgent message that needs immediate response? Open the message and go to Status > Exclamation (!) > Urgent. Toggling this on will send notifications to the recipient every two minutes until they reply, or for a maximum of 20 minutes.

CSP, Inc is here to help your Raleigh/Durham business learn the ropes of Microsoft Teams and get the most out of this powerful collaboration and productivity platform. Call us now at (919) 424-2060 or email info@cspinc.com, and we’ll be glad to help you out.