Microsoft Teams Tips and More

Microsoft Teams is an incredibly powerful tool with a TON of features that we at WheelHouse IT love. We are taking a moment to highlight our favorite features for you. By leveraging the tips below you should be rockin’ and rollin’ with Microsoft Teams like a pro in no time!

Before we kick this off…
what is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a robust collaboration application that lives natively inside of the Microsoft 365/Office 365 ecosystem. You may know of one of its competitors as Slack. Microsoft Teams comes included with Office 365 Business Essentials, Business Premium or Enterprise licensing along with the entire Microsoft 365 license stack.

This simply means, you probably already own it! #score

WheelHouse IT fully adopted Microsoft Teams about two years ago and it has certainly changed how we operate and communicate as a business (for the better).

Now let’s kick off the tips!

Add a title to your chat

Channels typically contain numerous conversations. To help a particular chat stand out and make it more searchable, give it a title. For example, if you’re chatting with someone from Human Resources about a hiring, call the chat “LinkedIn Recruiter” and those keywords will pop up when you do a search later on. To name a chat, just click the pencil on the top next to the member names and type the title you want.

SharePoint in teams  stores and shares files

Many enterprises rely on SharePoint as secure file storage and collaboration platform. The good news is SharePoint is the backbone of Teams. In every channel, you can click the Files tab to share files with team members via SharePoint or access SharePoint files already shared to the channel. Team members can collaborate on files shared to a channel using Office Online or an Office desktop app. This is a great way to ensure that the appropriate team member have access to the files they need.

You can Forward emails into a channel

This is probably one of our favorite features! Microsoft understands how most of us in the corporate world depend on email. You can forward any email message to a channel from Outlook. Just click the ellipsis next to any channel name and select “Get email address.” That generates an email address for the channel. Copy it, and you can use that address to forward Word docs, messages, or just about anything you want to add to the channel. It’s a nifty workaround. As an example, we use this to showcase the positive reviews that are left by our clients when tickets are closed.

STAY CONNECTED ON THE GO

There are mobile apps for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile. The apps keep things simple, emphasizing team chats and channels without a lot of extra layers and features. Teams also run as a web app or a desktop client for Windows or Mac — which means you have a lot of options without having to do a ton of work to get it going.

you can Invite others into the Conversation

Microsoft Teams is far-reaching right out of the box. You’re not limited to chatting with people in your own team; you can provide guest access to anyone at your company with an Outlook account so you can chat, share documents and more. (Try it — you can search on the name of anyone at your company to find them and start chatting.)

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS ARE YOUR FRIEND

You can press the R key on your keyboard to reply to a thread in the Teams app? Or press Alt-A in Windows (Option-A on a Mac) to quickly attach a file to a message? See all the keyboard shortcuts available in Teams by pressing Ctrl+E to go to the Search field, type /keys, and then press Enter in Windows. Or press Command+E to move the focus to the search field at the top of the screen, type /keys, and press Return on a Mac.

GIFS MAKE CONVERSATIONS EXCITING

Who doesn’t like to spice up the day with a great GIF? Adding animated GIFs into your conversations can be motivational for your team, especially for ‘younger’ workers. Fresh Prince doing a dance is a great way to celebrate awesome work and say thanks. You can say a lot with a little. 😉

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 to the team chat. Note that although Giphy is built into Teams, the Teams administrator needs to activate it.

New Microsoft Teams Features

New Teams & Outlook integrated experience

Chat & Collaboration

Get in touch with the right people with targeted communication

What do you do when you need to get an important message across to all cashiers in a store, or all managers in a warehouse? Targeted communication allows team members to message everyone assigned to a specific tag at the same time; simply @mention the tag name in a post. Using tags, team owners can organize users based on a common attribute, like a role, project, or location. Admins can control who can add tags and how tags are used across your organization in the Microsoft Teams admin center. Learn more here.

Automatic creation of an org-wide team

Streamline the process of bringing everyone together in your small to medium-sized business. All new tenants with 5000 users or fewer will start with an org-wide team. Learn more about org-wide teams and related best practices here.

New Files Experience in Teams powered by SharePoint rolled out worldwide!

The Teams file experience is powered by SharePoint, and we are happy to share that the new file experience in Teams has now rolled out to 100% of worldwide tenants! This new experience in the File tab of a channel includes the ability to sync files to your computer (PC or Mac), see rich previews across 320+ file types, create views and work with metadata, see document life-cycle signals, review on-hover file cards, pin files to the top, take actions like check in and check out, and much more. See more of the experience here.

Calling & Meetings

Store recordings in-region storage when Stream is not available in Go Local 

Teams meeting recordings are stored in Microsoft Stream cloud storage. Tenant administrators have an option to go to the admin center to turn ON/OFF “Allow cloud recording” setting for Teams meetings. Cloud recordings are currently not allowed/enabled for customers where Stream service is not available in the corresponding Go Local region. We are going to change the existing behavior by enabling “Allow cloud recording” and turning it ON by default. This change will store the recordings in the respective in-region data center. Learn more here.

IT Admins

Manage your App Catalog in the Teams Admin Center

Confidently manage apps from the Microsoft Teams admin center. The Manage apps page provides administrators with a view into all available apps in the tenant and includes information to help them decide which apps to enabled for their organization. Additionally, the app catalog allows administrators to streamline the process of testing and distributing line-of-business applications. Learn more here.

Security & Compliance

Legal hold for Teams private channels messages

Meet legal requirements by preserving information in Teams. Legal hold now supports the preservation of private channel messages. Learn more here.

Communication Compliance

Minimize communication risks in your organization. Communication Compliance helps administrators detect, capture, and take remediation actions for inappropriate messages. Learn more here.

Apps & Workflows

Enhanced Power BI Tab for Teams

We’re excited to announce the new Power BI tab for Microsoft Teams. The new tab adds support for reports in the new workspace experiences, reports in Power BI apps, and paginated reports.

When the tab is added to your channels and chats, it’s easier for everyone to find and track the data they need to achieve their objectives. It’s also a great way to manage change in your organization. As new people join a team, the data they need is right there and ready for them to use

Pin your apps to the left-hand rail for easy access

Access to your favorite apps just got easier. You are now able to pin personal apps to the left-hand rail (also known as the Teams app bar). Simply find the app, right-click the app icon, and select “pin”. Even after you navigate away, the app icon will remain so you can easily return to it. Remember, you can also pin apps to relevant channels or chats for easy access as well!

The Teams Admin can also create group policies so certain apps appear on everyone’s Teams app bar. Learn more about Admin app pinning here.

Co-Authored: Microsoft Teams, Team