Microsoft Teams for Professionals

Interface Overview and Summary

In this section we look at Microsoft Teams, the desktop version. We have a look at how you can navigate around the application, where to find your profile image and account details. We take a look at the meeting status, search bar, command bar and most importantly, the sidebar or navigation bar. It has icons for everything you can do in Teams, there's activity, chat, teams, calls, files, calendar. You may not have all those. If you don't I'll show you why you don't and how to pull them up.

I also summarize the topics I'll be covering in the next sections:

• Chat

• Calendar for scheduling meetings

• Meeting controls, such as muting, sharing your screen, file sharing

• Meeting roles

• Channels

See you in the next one!

Private Chat

With Chats in Microsoft Teams you can send instant messages to your co-workers or friends, you can send files or start a video/audio or screen share call.

Chats in Microsoft Teams are always private. Most chats are one-on-one chats, but you can have a group chat, if you want to. Even if you have the group chat, the group chat is still private. Clicking someone's name opens up a chat with them.

In the Chat section you have tabs across the top: Chat, Files, Organization, and you may or may not see Activity.

Some cool features of chat:

• You can see if someone has 'seen' your chat messages because Teams shows a 'seen' indicator.

• You can pop-out your chats into a separate window.

• You can start a video, audio or share-screen only 'call' right from the chat window with that person.

• You can add formatting to your chat messages and also bullets and numbered lists

• You can share files back and forth

You can delete a chat you sent?

This is a course update with new features added in Microsoft Teams after the course launched. There are some improvements to Chats in Teams, namely being able to change the view in Chats to see more chats on the screen at a time. You can swap from Comfy to Compact mode, for example. Also, you can pin chats if you have an important ongoing discussion and want to refer to it quickly.

Find out where Chat files and attachments are stored in Microsoft Teams, how to delete them and how to recover them.

Microsoft Teams now allows you to send chats or files to yourself. It's a great way to add quick reminders for later, brainstorming, ideas, lists, whatever you need to just see for yourself in a chat.

I walk you through several scenarios to help you decide when is a good idea to use a group chat with several people and when it would be recommended to create a team. In Teams, group chats have a limited number of participants, but also for practical reasons, you may want to create a team to discuss with larger numbers of people, put people into channels, share files and work on short or long-term projects. I discuss all these in this session.

In this lesson, I am demonstrating the new feature of Microsoft Teams where you can quickly send a video clip to someone through chat. You can review the recorded clip before sending it. I also show how this feature works in both one-on-one and group chats as well as during a meeting. The video clip has a maximum recording time of one minute.

Microsoft Teams now has a delayed send feature. You can type a message to someone and schedule it to be delivered at a later date and time. In this lesson, I show how to schedule the send, edit it, change the date and time, and cancel the scheduled send. I also mention the usefulness of this feature when communicating with colleagues in different time zones.

In this lesson, I share a useful tip for Microsoft Teams users who want to use voice to text for chatting and creating channel posts. This feature isn't available by default in Teams, but I demonstrate how it can be easily enabled on Windows 11 and mention its compatibility with Windows 10. By pressing the Windows key and H, I activate speech services to dictate messages directly into Teams. I highlight the importance of automatic punctuation in Windows 11 for clear communication and note its absence in Windows 10, where punctuation needs to be dictated manually.

In this video, I demonstrate a new feature in Microsoft Teams Chat that allows you to change the picture of a Group Chat. I walk you through the steps of renaming the chat, changing the image, and saving your changes.

In this lesson, I'll walk you through the process of changing your profile picture in Microsoft Teams, and how it affects your entire M365 ecosystem. Here's what we'll cover: I'll show you how to access your profile settings in the Teams desktop app, navigate to the profile picture change option, upload a new image (with tips on image size), save your new profile picture, and understand how this change affects other M365 apps.

In this lesson, I demonstrate a quick tip for using Microsoft Teams' Command box for Chat and Commands. Learn how to change your status using keyboard shortcuts and commands to streamline your workflow. Don't forget to subscribe for more tips and check out my online training classes.

The Activity Feed in Microsoft Teams

What triggers the activity feed in Microsoft Teams? Believe it or not, nine different items will trigger that activity feed, according to Microsoft. In this part of the course I'm going to tell you the really important ones you need to keep up with.

When I pull up Teams in the morning, I start my day clicking on the activity feed. The activity feed shows you all activity related to you, teams and channels you're in and provides notifications about items that might interest you such as:

• Anytime someone @ mentions you

• Someone @ mentions you inside of a team

• Mention of the entire team or channel you are in

• Someone replies to your conversations

• Posts you've liked

• You're added to a team

• You're made a team owner

• Trending or suggested posts

• Reactions to your activity

Scheduling Meetings in Microsoft Teams

We take a look at how to schedule a meeting in Microsoft Teams. Teams has great integration with other Microsoft software, such as your Teams calendar, which is tied into your Outlook calendar and vice-versa. If you schedule something in Outlook, it shows up on Teams, schedule something in Teams, it shows up on Outlook.

You also have the scheduling assistant which I love to use a lot, as it helps you see who is available and when, if you're trying to schedule meetings that involve more people and you need to consult their schedules.

Other things I cover in this session:

• Scheduling assistant

• Scheduling a meeting in a channel or team calendar

• @mentions

• Attaching files to meetings

• Taking notes in a meeting

• Whiteboard

Meeting Controls

We're going to take a look at a few features you have when you're actually in a meeting in Microsoft Teams.

I join from two different accounts to demonstrate the meeting controls.

• The person that schedules the meeting is the meeting organizer, and you can only have one organizer per meeting.

• All the people in your company that attend are called presenters.

• People outside your company are called attendees. They will be placed in the lobby when they come into a meeting, and someone will need to admit them from the lobby by default.

Before you join a meeting, you have to configure your devices and meeting settings:

• Camera on or off

• Change the name of the meeting

• Audio on or off

We look at the meeting control bar, the roles an attendee has, changing attendee roles, allowing participants to share, raise their hand, mute/unmute, etc.

We also look at the types of views you have during a meeting:

• Large Gallery Preview

• Together Mode

• Focus mode

You can have backgrounds, blur your background in Microsoft Teams, and you can bring in your own backgrounds.

My goal in this lesson is to help you navigate the new Teams Meeting Controls. I am demonstrating the changes in the meeting controls in Teams meetings. The controls are still in the top-right but they have been grouped into different categories.

I go over the different categories, including Record and Transcribe, Meeting Info and Meeting Notes, Video Effects, Language and Speech, Settings, Call Health, Meeting Options, Mute Notifications, and People in Chat.

I also show how the controls used to look before the changes and point out some minor changes, such as the placement of People in Chat and the changes to the React and Views icons.

The Three Roles in a Teams Meeting

In this session we look at the three different roles you have for a Teams meeting.

There are three roles in a Teams Meeting: organizer, presenter and attendee. I'll discuss what they can and can't do. I'll also show you how to take someone that's an attendee that has limited features and promote them to a presenter.

The person that scheduled the meeting is the organizer and you can only have one organizer per meeting. You cannot transfer this role to someone else - before or during the meeting.

We also look at the lobby. Every attendee joining the meeting will be put in the lobby and only the organizer and presenters can admit people from the lobby.

I also include some tips for meetings scheduled by you, a few recommendations in case you can't make the meeting or you don't join.

I am demonstrating how to use co-organizers in Teams meetings. I create a meeting in the Outlook calendar and invite at least one person to the meeting. Then I convert this to a Teams meeting and explain how to choose co-organizers for the meeting. Other people from the company can also be added as co-organizers. If I can't attend the meeting and the co-organizer joins, they have all the organizer features available including the critical End meeting.

Sharing Content and Resources

In this short session we look at the sharing content experience in Microsoft Teams, how to share your screen or a single application Window. We look at the new experience that has been updated in Microsoft Teams with the new share tray that has a much better look, more streamlined design that makes it easier to select what you want to share.

Using PowerPoint in a Teams Meeting

In this session, we look at the features related to presenting PowerPoint slide decks during a Microsoft Teams meeting. I show a meeting example and highlight the cool features that you can use during a meeting where you have to present PowerPoint:

• You get speaker notes shown by default, even if you only have one monitor

• You can jump to any slide using the "Go to Slide" function or use the keyboard

• View slides in high contrast

• If you are in the middle of a presentation and you have to switch presenters, Teams remembers which slide you were on

Scheduling Meetings in Outlook or in Teams?

In this session we tackle the question: should I schedule all my meetings using Microsoft Teams or should I do it in Microsoft Outlook? I explore the pros and cons, I demonstrate which is best and show you how to do it in both programs.

There are multiple presenter modes in Microsoft Teams. This is a feature update that allows you to change the way you present during a meeting in Teams. There are several modes, and in this session, I run you through all of them and also tell you which ones I prefer.

New feature update: In Teams there's a new cool feature that allows you to hide your own video during a video conference. If you don't want to view your own video (but still let others view it), you can hide it. You can also pin your video and pin others' video as well for a customized view. In this session I walk you through those options.

Whether you are in a one-on-one call or group call, you can swap your meeting to mobile and back again, without leaving the meeting. In this quick course update, I demonstrate this functionality, that enables you to stay involved in your meetings even if you have to leave your desk.

When is a good idea to rename your 'Meet Now' meetings in Microsoft Teams? Always! I show you examples of what happens when you Meet Now and why you should always name these meetings.

We take a look at 5 Microsoft Teams tips about your meeting recordings, some of them you may not even be aware of. I'm going to cover that your meetings do expire, how to change that expiration for the recordings expiring, where to go to find all your recordings, the email you receive when a recording gets expired and disappears, and really important, how can you go and retrieve it once it gets deleted?

It's always recommended to check your audio devices before joining a meeting. In this session we have a quick look at setting your microphone, checking the camera, and making a test call to make sure you're good to go.

In this lesson, I am demonstrating how to use the polling feature in Microsoft Teams meetings by using Microsoft Forms. I then demonstrate the new feature of adding an image to the poll question. As an example, I create a multiple-choice question and include an image with that question. I show how the question can be launched during the meeting and how attendees can vote and see the image.

In this lesson, I demonstrate a new feature in Microsoft Teams regarding meetings called Instant Poll. This feature was released in December 2022 and it allows you to conduct quick polls in your meetings with ease. These instant polls mainly have three types of answers: Yes or No, Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, or Like or Dislike.

After you've announced the question verbally, you can then launch the poll. The cool thing about this is that there is no submit icon for your audience to click, so the voting process is very smooth and straightforward.

In this session, I focus on a cool feature in Microsoft Teams for users who participate in Teams meetings. I show how to use the "Pop out" feature, which allows you to view the screen share of another participant in a separate window. I demonstrate how to open the "Pop out" feature which opens a separate window displaying the participant panel and the screen share. You can move this screen share to another monitor or split your screen.

The lesson highlights the live captions feature in Microsoft Teams for meetings. The feature allows for multiple people in the same meeting to view captions in different languages. I demonstrate how to turn on live captions, change the language, and how it is a handy tool for multinational meetings. My friend, Christian, joins the call and mentions that his company used to have to use translators for meetings with people from multiple countries. He sees the live captions feature as a major improvement and a time saver.

In this lesson, I share a helpful tip on managing audio and video settings aimed to help both before and during meetings. I begin by explaining how to access and modify audio devices and configurations, including how to deal with custom setups when using different devices for speakers and microphones. Additionally, I demonstrate how to switch between cameras and modify settings while participating in a meeting, pointing out the simple process of changing camera and microphone settings via dropdown menus. Furthermore, I discuss the procedure for making audio or video calls within chats and the nuances of adjusting device settings in those situations.

In this lesson, I share how to manage who can record your Microsoft Teams meetings. With meetings I organize, I explain the significance of knowing that as of May 2024, any recording initiated by participants is stored in their OneDrive, not the organizer's. However, Microsoft plans to change this soon. I guide you through scheduling a meeting, navigating to 'More Options,' and then 'Recording and Transcript' settings to ensure recordings are stored in your OneDrive. I highlight a crucial feature available only to Teams Premium users, which allows setting recording permissions exclusively for organizers and co-organizers.

In this lesson, I demonstrate one of the new features in MS Teams. This feature allows anyone who creates a meeting for a Teams channel to send individual invites by Email to subscribers of a channel. I show how this works by creating two meetings, one where I choose to use the new feature, and one where I create a standard meeting. I show you how the Email appears in the inbox of someone who subscribes to the channel, and also how they can add the second meeting to their calendar, without the Email invite.

Join me as I dive into the new 'Meet Now' feature in Microsoft Teams Group Chat. Learn how this feature allows seamless impromptu meetings without disturbing all participants, enabling efficient discussions with active members. Released in May 2024, this feature enhances group communication efforts.

Join me as I showcase a new feature in Microsoft Teams that allows you to move the control bar, officially the Presenter toolbar, while sharing your screen in meetings. I'll provide a step-by-step guide on how to access and utilize this feature, including tips on how to test it yourself. Additionally, I'll highlight the convenience of the toolbar's location memory and its usability across multiple monitors.

In this lesson, I'm diving into creating and using polling questions in Teams meetings. I walk you through every step, from scheduling polls before a meeting to creating them mid-conversation. Plus, I'll show you my favorite feature - the instant poll. I start with a quick review of setting up polls for scheduled meetings, then jump into the meat of this tutorial: creating polls during an active meeting. You'll learn how to access the Polls feature through the Apps menu, create a new poll from scratch, and even use Microsoft's handy poll suggestions. I'll demonstrate how to launch your poll, show you what participants will see, and explain how to view the results.

Teams and Channels

In this section, we're going to take a look at where the real work happens within Microsoft Teams, and that is using Teams and using Channels.

We will create a team from scratch, we'll add some channels to that team, we'll take a look at how to have conversations with the members and the team. We'll share some files and even go and play with the Wiki for a little bit. And I'll also show you how to add apps in the tabs.

The Channel Calendar

You can have channel calendars inside your Teams and inside your Channels. In this session we look at three things: how to create a channel calendar, how to send invites out to the channel meeting and how to accept invites.

Excel File as a Teams Channel Tab

In this section, I'm going to show you how to add an Excel file as a tab inside of a channel in Microsoft Teams. By default you only have three tabs in a channel: Posts, Files and Wiki. But adding an Excel file as a tab is very easy. I show you this in this section and also how you can actually edit the Excel file you've added or collaborate on it in real-time with your channel members.

In this session, we look at Files in Microsoft Teams and I show you all you need to know about file management in Teams that you should know. I walk you through uploading files, adding files to chats vs. channels, where the files are stored, because there is a difference.

This lesson focuses on managing files and folders in a team using Microsoft Teams. I explain the locations where chat files and team channel files are stored. The lesson demonstrates how to create a new folder, upload files and folders, and move them around within a team. I also provide tips for moving a file or folder from one channel to another channel or team.

The Search functionality in Microsoft Teams has greatly improved recently, so this is a course update where I walk you through the search functions, how to find files, conversations, messages, people and more. The new search function breaks and filters your data so you can more quickly find what you need.

Many tips and best practices on organizing your Teams and Channels. Hiding, reordering, unhiding, pinning teams or channels, and much more.

Sharing Emails and Attachments from Outlook to Teams

In this section, we look at a great integration between Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook. A feature called 'Share to Teams' allows you to send one or more file attachments from Outlook to Microsoft Teams, in chat, or channels or teams.

Extending Teams functionality with Apps

Another cool feature about Microsoft Teams is you have apps. A lot of the apps aren't even from Microsoft and they still work. In this session we look at how we can browse the applications, add them to our teams and using them with a few examples. There are integrations for many types of functionality, like sharing online content (YouTube videos), to getting weather and search functionality inside your Teams workspace.

You can use the apps in one-on-one chats, group chats or team chats.

Microsoft Team's handy Timezone feature helps you be considerate when getting in touch with your colleagues who are located in a different part of the world. You can see what time it is locally for your colleagues and contacts and how many hours they are behind or ahead of you.

LinkedIn is now integrated with Microsoft Teams. While in Chat, you can have a LinkedIn tab with the LinkedIn profile of the person you're chatting to. Microsoft Teams automatically finds that person's profile and lets you view it in a separate tab. I also explain how email connected to your LinkedIn account works.

In this video, I introduce the new features coming soon for the Microsoft Teams chat launching in January 2024. I explain the simplified interface and demonstrate how to format messages, use emojis, and access actions, apps, and attach files. I highlight the addition of a search feature and the ability to collaborate with Loop. I also showcase the ability to record a video clip, schedule a meeting, and even schedule the delivery of a chat.

I introduce a new feature in Microsoft Teams that eases the sharing process during meetings. You can share individual windows from open applications such as Excel or Word, right from the taskbar.

I demonstrate a useful feature in Microsoft Teams - adding a website tab to a Teams channel for quick access. I guide you through the process, showing how to add a tab, input the URL, rename the tab, and choose whether to notify the channel about the new tab.

I walk you through some of the fantastic AI features offered by the Microsoft Teams Premium version - the newly added 'Engagement' feature, which allows you to track participant activity during meetings. We also navigate to the minuting functionalities 'Recap Speakers' and 'AI notes', and explain how these tools can facilitate identifying who contributed to the meeting and when.

I show how meeting-related files could be shared using the improved file-sharing feature. The lesson concludes with an exploration of the 'Attendance' and '@Mentions' features.

In this lesson, I demonstrate a new feature released in January 2024 for Microsoft Teams, which allows users to forward chat messages. This tutorial covers how to forward a message to another person directly within the Teams desktop app as well as in Teams on the web, using both the Teams desktop and web versions.

I start by showing how to forward a message from a chat with Carol Wilson to another user, Christian, including the ability to add additional text to the forwarded message. Then, I switch roles and use Teams on the web as Carol to forward the same message to Christian, proving that this feature is available across different platforms.

The new Microsoft Teams is great but I note the absence of the 'save message' feature present in the classical version. In this lesson, I detail 3 practical workarounds for saving important chat messages. The first workaround involves copying the desired message and pasting it into OneNote. The second approach utilizes the 'forward chat message' feature to send the message to oneself, adding any necessary notes for clarification. I introduce a third method using Power Automate to save messages directly to OneNote, demonstrating the setup process and its functionality.

In this lesson, I demonstrate a new feature available to users with Microsoft Teams Premium and Copilot, which enhances the Announcement feature in Teams. Specifically, I show how to use Microsoft Designer through these platforms to create custom backgrounds for announcements, making them more visually appealing and attention-grabbing. I walk through the process of selecting and customizing a background tailored for an announcement. This feature is designed to help your announcements stand out in any channel within Teams.

In this lesson, I introduce the newly rolled out feature in Teams' updated Planner. This updated feature now allows for the creation of personal plans, a significant update from its older version allowing me to drag around cards and put them into buckets for personal organization.

I walk through how to navigate to Planner, pin it for easier access, and create a new plan using the Employee Onboarding template, highlighting the ability to make plans private, visible only to the creator. I also touch upon how this integration improves task management and planning for individual users, distinct from the shared team plans available in the past. Additionally, I share insights on adding tasks to these personal plans and explore what happens when attempting to assign tasks to others within these plans.

In this tutorial, I guide you through the process of exporting a plan from Microsoft Teams to Excel. I start in the Teams app, specifically within the general channel of Human Resources, and show you my plan named 'Task'.

I illustrate that the export process is the same regardless of the plan's name or which view you're in within Teams. Moving to the browser version of Tasks (tasks.office.Com), I demonstrate how to access the 'Export Plan to Excel' option and proceed to download the plan.

I then open the Excel file, noting the importance of enabling editing, and confirm the successful export by showing the tasks listed as either not started or completed.

I discuss some notable changes on Microsoft Teams, set to be the default from March 31, 2024. I highlight the new location for camera controls in meetings and teach you how to swap cameras during a meeting, adjust brightness, and use the newly added green screen feature.

In this lesson, I demonstrate how to delete an unnecessary or test plan from Microsoft Planner. The process involves navigating from Microsoft Teams to the specific plan in a web browser, as it cannot be done directly within Teams. I walk you through the steps of locating the plan under 'Plan Settings' and then permanently deleting it after confirming the action. I also highlight the importance of removing the corresponding tab from Teams to avoid confusion, noting that merely removing the tab without deleting the plan leaves the plan intact.

In this lesson, I demonstrate the return of the 'Notify When Available' feature in Microsoft Teams. This feature, which disappeared in previous versions, is back as of June 2024. I show how it works by using an example with Carol Wilson, who is currently set to Do Not Disturb. I'll guide you through the steps to enable this feature, why it's useful, and how to manage it effectively.

In this lesson, I demonstrate a great new feature in Microsoft Teams where you can hide the General channel. I walk you through how to do it with a Test Delete team and explain why some users might want to hide the General channel. Be cautious if the General channel is the only one in a team, as hiding it will also hide the entire team, which will require extra steps to make it visible again.

In this lesson, I demonstrate how to change the zoom settings in Microsoft Teams for both chats and meetings. I'll show you where to find the zoom options, how to adjust them with your mouse or keyboard shortcuts, and the impact these changes have across different screens. Whether you're chatting or in a meeting, learn how to manage the display to your preference.

Discover how to manage access to Teams meeting recordings, transcriptions, and AI insights as a meeting organizer. I'll walk you through this new Copilot feature step-by-step. Learn to customize who can view your meeting content, enhancing security and privacy in Microsoft Teams. Perfect for managing sensitive meetings!

In this lesson, I demonstrate how to use the 'Present in Teams' feature in Microsoft PowerPoint. This tool allows you to present slides directly in a Teams meeting with interactive features like clickable hyperlinks and customizable viewing options for participants. Learn how to view speaker notes while presenting and control participant navigation through your slides. Discover the advantages of sharing presentations this way compared to traditional screen sharing. Perfect for enhancing your virtual meetings. Enjoy the tutorial and check out more of my online training resources!

In this lesson, I demonstrate how to effectively archive teams in Microsoft Teams, covering the difference between archiving and deleting a team, the reasons for archiving, step-by-step instructions on archiving a team, and the process to restore an archived team. Learn how to manage your project teams efficiently and ensure important data and conversations are preserved. Ideal for team owners looking to organize and maintain control over their project timelines and team activities.

Microsoft Teams has introduced a new chat and channels experience that combines chats and channels into a single, streamlined interface. We will explore the features and functionalities of this new setup and provide insights on how to navigate and utilize it effectively.

Introduction to the New Experience

Microsoft Teams has unveiled a groundbreaking update that merges chats and channels into a unified interface. This new chat & channels experience represents a significant shift in how users interact with the platform, offering enhanced flexibility and efficiency.

The most noticeable change is the absence of the separate "Teams" icon in the app bar. Instead, all your team interactions are seamlessly integrated within the "Chat" section, creating a more streamlined workflow.

In this video, I demonstrate the new Name Pronunciation feature in Microsoft Teams, which helps you and your colleagues avoid mispronunciations. I walk you through how to record your name using the Teams desktop app and show you what your colleagues will see. This feature is available to work or school accounts using M365, including guest accounts. I also preview how it sounds from a different account.