Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks Part II

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Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks Part II

We have put together 7 more top tips and tricks we think everyone using Microsoft Teams will find useful.

Click here for the first 11 tips

Tip 12 - Break Out rooms

Separate a large meeting into break out rooms

  1. Click the breakout room button at the top of you meeting window
  2. Teams meeting header with break out rooms circled
  3. Select the number of rooms you want and if you want to randomly assign people to a room or set them automatically
  4. The breakout rooms panel on the right allows you to manage the rooms (add more rooms or assign people to rooms)
  5. You can close the rooms from this panel to get people back into the main meeting

Tip 13 - Record your meeting

You can record your meeting directly to OneDrive

  1. Hit the three dots at the top to open the menu
  2. Click start recording
  3. You can either click stop recording - or end the meeting to end the recording
  4. A link to the recording is available in the chat - it is available to all internal attendees but not external attendees by default
  5. You can share it with external attendees by going to the link to OneDrive and sharing the file.

Tip 14 - Mobile App

  • From the mobile app you can access your team channels, chats and files.
  • Join meetings and make teams calls.
  • If you need help with something on your phone you can share the phone screen over a teams call.
  • Useful if you are out of the office - or your internet is down.

Tip 15 - Make your video calls look and sound better

  • Light! Webcams perform better with more light. But you want this light on your face not the background. Position yourself next to a window or use a desk lamp to get more light on your face.
  • Virtual backgrounds perform better if the background is plain. Pick a plain wall and remove any pictures if you can
  • Make your virtual background more believable - if you are sitting with a window to your left - pick a virtual background with a window in the same place.
  • The built in microphones on webcams and laptops are OK - they do the job. But the quality you get from a headset is much better. This is especially true if you are in a noisy environment as they pick up less background noise.

Tip 16 - Urgent Chat notifications

  • Click the ! underneath your message in chat to change the importance
  • Urgent messages are marked URGENT! and will notify a person or group repeatedly, every 2 minutes for 20 minutes, or until they read it.

Tip 17 - Mark channel messages important

  • In a teams channel you can also mark a message as important (You need to click the format button, then you can mark as important)

Tip 18 - Integrations with other platforms

  • There are many addons and integrations available in teams - here are a few:
    • Microsoft Lists - Collaborative smart lists that can be used for to do’s or asset tracking
    • Microsoft Approvals - manage things that need approval (like holiday requests)
    • Microsoft Bookings - Fully customizable bookings system.
  • And a few we have implemented:
    • Linked our email system so we get a notification in teams if an email arrives in the support inbox
    • Integrated our ticketing system to get notifications when a ticket is created, and post daily KPIs
    • By linking weather data we remind our staff to drink extra water when the weather is hot.

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