Microsoft Teams is a shared work space that brings many of the collaboration and communication solutions within Office 365 into a focused work space. It integrates with other services from Microsoft and third-party vendors. If these integration points don’t meet your requirements, you can develop custom functionality all aimed at facilitating faster and smarter working.  Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365, and it is delivered in a secure and controlled manner.

Microsoft Teams administrators have a variety of controls available to configure the implementation to meet your needs. This covers simple things, such as if your organisation should allow users to add GIFs to guest and external sharing settings. This level of granularity helps improve compliance, manageability, and relevance for your organisation.

Here are our top tips and tricks to maximise the benefits of using Microsoft Teams

Tag people, channels and teams to get your message noticed

@Mentions call attention to your message. In a chat or channel conversation, type @, followed by your teammate’s name or email address, and select them. In your Teams list, find one of the Teams or channels you work with most often. Select to the right of the name. Select Favourite.

Keyboard shortcuts make Teams more accessible

Use a keyboard instead of a mouse? Teams has a shortcut. In the Teams app, press ALT + / to display a list of available keyboard shortcuts.

Make collaborating on files a breeze

Add a file to a channel to give access to everyone who needs it. On the menu at the top of your channel (above the conversations), select Files. Select New to create a new file, or upload to upload an existing one. Now the file is shared with your entire team, and everyone’s edits will show up as they are made. The benefit being that multiple users can work on the same document together and maintain a central source of the document which stops duplication.

Have a question about Teams? Fear not, help is on the way!

There is an app for that. In the bottom left corner of Teams is where you’ll find Help. Select Browse topics, then choose from a list of help topics or check out the videos tab to watch short how-to’s on the basics of Teams.

Streamline access with built-in and custom tabs

Add tabs to channels to give your teammates easy access to the files, tools, and sites they use every day. Owners and team members can add tabs to a channel, private chat, and group chat to help users’ access and manage the data they need or use the most. In channels, the Conversations and Files tabs are created by default. In every private chat, the Conversations, Files, Organisation, and Activity tabs are also created by default. In addition to these built-in tabs, you can design and add custom tabs.

It’s all about meme

Add GIFs to inject some personality into your conversations. To add a GIF to your reply, click the GIF button at the bottom of the conversation view. Search for, or select, a GIF from the picker. Click Send when ready.

Always be in the know with notifications

Notifications keep you current with what’s happening in your Teams. Turn them on, turn them off, choose how and when to be notified – it’s all up to you. Select your picture at the top right of Teams. Choose Options > Notifications. For each type of notification, choose an option.

Take your team with you

The Teams mobile app helps you connect and collaborate wherever you are. The app is available on iOS and Android. Participate in conversations, join meetings on the go, and access all your teams, channels, files, and more.

Keep communication fuss-free – title your chats

Use a subject line to make your topic stand out and help you search for it later. To add a subject, select the formatting button (it looks like an “A” with a pen) and add a title in the Subject line. Type your message and press Enter to post your new conversation.

Connect your Team to the world with connectors

Did you know you can set up a Twitter feed for your Team, and many other services too? With Office 365 Connectors, it’s easy to connect many of your favourite apps and services, such as Trello, GitHub, Bing News, and more.

Here’s how: Right-click the channel you want to add a connector to. Select Connectors, then search for the connector(s) you want to add to the channel. Click Add and follow the prompts.

Stay in the loop with activity alerts

The Activity tab notifies you when somebody @mentions you or directly interacts with a message or conversation you’ve started. It also shows you any channel activity for which you’ve turned on notifications in Settings. The number on the Activity bell indicates how many alerts you have waiting. You’ll find the Activity tab at the top of the navigation pane on the left.

By encouraging the use of the Office 365 collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, we give you the ability to reduce email overload, communicate more effectively and reduce lengthy content generation timescales, creating more agile and engaged teams with higher productivity.

Find out more about our collaboration solutions here.