Launched in 2017, Microsoft Teams has quickly become one of the leading workplace communication platforms, with around 300 million active users globally. Incorporating unrivalled video meeting capabilities, an intuitive chat interface, deep integration with the rest of Microsoft 365, plus hundreds of third-party app integrations, Teams consolidates multiple collaboration tools into a single, streamlined platform. While local competitors in the Central Coast and San Luis Obispo may be using similar tools to you, by getting the best out of them you can gain improvements in your competitive edge.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already a Microsoft Teams user. While the platform’s main functionality is easy to master, Microsoft regularly adds new features to the platform, many of which aren’t well publisised. As such, many convenient features go overlooked, which is unfortunate, as they often resolve longstanding communication challenges and help users collaborate more productively.
To help you fully exploit the empowering capabilities of this revolutionary platform, here are 7 Hidden Microsoft Teams features that San Luis Obispo and the Central Coast’s businesses should know about.
Saved Messages
The chat feature in Microsoft Teams provides a useful platform for collaborative discussions, but at times, it can leave you feeling overwhelmed with information. Just as bookmarks let you save your favorite websites in your web browser, Teams lets you save chat entries for future reference and easy retrieval. To save a message, hover over it with your cursor, and click ‘more options.’ Then, click “save this message,” from the pop-up menu that appears.
To retrieve your saved items, navigate to your profile icon in the top right of the Teams window, and click ‘saved.’ This will take you to a page displaying all your saved items, including files that have been saved into the chat thread.
Make an Announcement
The announcements feature in Microsoft Teams allows you to post visually striking messages into your channels that stand out against the noise. Greater impact is achieved through large-print formatting options, plus the ability to customize your post with a bold background colour. To make an announcement, navigate to the relevant channel, click on the “posts” tab, and click “Start a post” at the bottom of the window.
This will then open a text box for a standard channel post. To switch to an announcement, change the post type by clicking the icon to the left of the “Post” button as shown below.
Slash Commands
Slash commands serve a similar purpose to keyboard shortcuts, giving you an alternate route to performing simple tasks that saves time. To access the slash command feature, simple type a “/” into the search bar and a list of useful shortcuts will appear. Teams currently offers 21 slash commands, enabling you to change your availability status, browse recently saved files, send a quick message to a colleague, and much more, in just a couple of clicks.
Microsoft Whiteboard
Whiteboards allow user to collaborate on a shared virtual canvas in real-time: ideal for brainstorming ideas, discussing ongoing projects and fostering closer engagement between remote colleagues. Microsoft whiteboard can be utilized both within chats and channels, and during video meetings. For local businesses in San Luis Obispo and the wider Central Coast that offer remote working, this can prove to be an invaluable tool.
To use whiteboards within a chat or channel, the whiteboard app should be added as a tab at the top of the window. Select the “+” at the top of the window to add a tab, and from there you should see whiteboard presented as one of your options. To get started, name your whiteboard and click “save.” Your whiteboard can then be posted to the channel posts page or the chat thread to make team members aware of it and encourage them to contribute.
Whiteboards can also be used within meetings, a great way to improve engagement and make virtual get togethers more productive. To activate whiteboard in this setting, click the “share content” icon in the top right of the meeting window, and select “Microsoft Whiteboard” from the options presented. You’ll then be given the option to either create a new whiteboard from scratch or share an existing one. Once shared, meeting attendees will be able to contribute, comment and react, with changes made to the whiteboard visible to everyone in real-time.
Real-time Translation
You may well be aware that live captions are available for Teams meetings, but did you know that this feature contains a built-in translator that supports over 40 languages? This game-changing feature allows meeting attendees to speak using the language they’re most comfortable with, while real-time captions providing a translation into the language most widely used by your team. This breaks down linguistic barriers, and ensures all meeting attendees are able to contribute fully to the group discussion.
To activate real-time translation, start by turning on live captions via the “more” menu at the top of the meeting window as shown below.
Then, choose the spoken language you require the feature to translate from, followed by the language you want your captions to be written in. These changes can be made through the caption settings menu located at the bottom right of the meeting window.
Route Emails to Your Teams Channels
Need to get an important piece of email correspondence in front of your team? Forwarding the message directly to your team’s emails is one tactic, but this could result in that vital email getting lost among the inbox clutter. Microsoft Teams provides a solution, by allowing you to forward emails, and their attachments, directly into a channel feed. This ensures the email forms part of the conversation, and encourages maximum engagement.
To leverage this feature, navigate to the channel you want to send an email to, and click on the “more options” menu beside the channel name. Then, select “Get email address” from the options presented. This can be a great way to keep collaboration seamless for businesses in San Luis Obispo and beyond.
You’ll then be provided with an autogenerated email address that you can copy and paste into your email client to forward the email in question into your channel. If the email contains attachments, these will appear alongside the email content in your channel thread, and they’ll be automatically saved to the channel’s “files” tab.
Obscure Distracting Meeting Backgrounds
While video meetings are a great way to prevent remote colleagues feeling detached and disengaged, there is one thing you probably don’t want to appear on camera: busy, distracting backgrounds. Thankfully, Microsoft Teams provides several options for obscuring distracting backgrounds, ensuring attendees are able to focus on the individual speaking and the topic at hand.
To activate this helpful feature, simply turn on your camera prior to joining the meeting, and turn on background effects by clicking the button highlighted below. You’ll then be given the option to blur your background, or alternatively, choose from a range of effects that can be superimposed to obscure your background and prevent distractions.
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