An Introduction To Microsoft Teams

An Introduction To Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams was introduced in 2017 and immediately started making an impact on the desktops of corporate customers. However, due to the impact of COVID-19 and the drastic increase in the number of at-home workers, the number of daily active users of Microsoft Teams has nearly doubled in the past year, increasing from 75 million to 145 million. Businesses of all sizes can take advantage of the collaborative features found in Teams, but in order to utilize Teams to its fullest potential, YOUR entire team needs to better understand its core features. Let's jump into a short introduction to Microsoft Teams.

What is it?

Microsoft Teams is a collaborative workspace within the Microsoft 365 platform that acts as a hub for conversations, collaborative meetings, video chats, document sharing, and more. It was designed to give employees a productive suite of tools to utilize on a daily basis to increase connectivity to each other.

Teams and Channels

A team is a collection of people, conversations, files, and tools—all in one place. Every Team has a channel and it will be your go-to location for information. This is where you will be able to see the files and conversations about that topic, department, or project related to that channel. You can also toggle between teams if you are a member of more than one to see the different conversations taking place around different projects. This is a handy way to compartmentalize your department projects.

---

---

Manage Profile

Like any communication platform, you can adjust your profile settings according to your preference. This is a great way to mold your Teams app to operate in a way that makes life easy. For example, there are light and dark mode options, notification preferences, the ability to download the mobile app, and more. Some of your preferences may be blocked by your organization so you may have to ask your IT group for assistance.

Chat

Waiting for a response on an email can stifle productivity. With Microsoft Teams Chat you can instantly collaborate with anyone in your Team. Equipped with all the fun gif and emoji keyboards, the Chat option helps people connect quickly and efficiently. You can schedule a meeting with certain people, bounce ideas off one another, or send someone a gif to make their day. Who says teams always have to be about work?!

Feed

In the right-side panel, you'll notice an "Activity" section which will open up The Feed. This shows you all of your notifications and EVERYTHING that's happened lately in the channels you follow. Long gone are the day of missed emails or pings! Here in the Feed, you will be able to see any news so you can stay on top of things.

Tabs

In each chat, you enter you are able to add and remove what Microsoft refers to as Tabs. You can add different apps to the chat by clicking the + and clicking or searching for the apps you want to use. For example, you can add Excel or Azure to your chat to easily manage files or project timelines. By adding apps to your different chats or channels, your overall organization increases.

Working Files

Let's be honest, we have all forgotten to send in a document to be reviewed or approved once or twice. Playing email tag is now a thing of the past with the files option in Microsoft Teams. In each channel or chat you are in you can make a specific file into a tab so you can collaborate with others.

Takeaways

This was just a simple introduction to Microsoft Teams to get you a bit more familiar with the core functionality and feature-set. A fully trained team will take full advantage of every feature we discussed and more. United Training offers a variety of courses for all roles for Microsoft Teams. Click here to view our upcoming Teams classes, on-demand training options, and free Teams resources.