Microsoft Teams: How To and Best Practices

Quick Resource: Want to know more about Teams? There’s a website for that.

Getting Started:

Create a Teams Meeting From Outlook (Just Like You Did With Skype).

It will provide you with a link to your eventual meeting titled, “Join Microsoft Teams Meeting.”

From here, it will have you enter your title, meeting time, see when others are available, and add people to the meeting. Once you hit “Schedule,” it will get added to your Outlook calendar as a “Microsoft Teams Meeting.”

Quick Meet Now

No need to schedule; you can meet now.

Teams Options:

Meeting Roles

Meeting organizers choose between three roles (Organizer, Presenter and Attendee) for participants.

Record Teams Meetings

• You can record meetings and group calls, but recording one-on-one calls isn't supported at this time.
• To start recording, go to the meeting controls and select More Options button > Start Recording.
• Everyone in the meeting will get a notification that recording has started.
• You must use Teams audio to have it in the meeting recording.
• You must download within six days until the stream is active; rename and upload to meeting files tab for others to access.
• After the meeting, you can still see chat and files (and notes, if used) after the meeting.

Teams Etiquette:

Remember to Mute When You Join a Teams Meeting.

There is a "mute all participants" function. To mute all, go to the meeting roster and select “Mute all.” Each individual will get a notification and will be able to unmute themselves if needed.

Turn Off Video When People are Presenting (Save Resources).

There is an option to turn both audio and video off/on when you first join a meeting.

Turn on Video for Group Discussions.

Teams Chat Function:

Chat it up.

IM outside of meetings; one-on-one and groups; gifs and stickers; text formatting, including linking texts; naming chat or marking important.

Formatting: If you click on the “A” at the bottom of the chat box, a variety of formatting and customization options will appear. You can create lists, add links, bold and italicize text, add quotations and headers, etc.

Notifications: The “!” allows you to distinguish things as Standard, Important, or Urgent. Standard will result in a normal alert, Important will send an alert with an exclamation, and Urgent will ping someone a message every two minutes for 20 minutes total.

Chat/IM Emos (emoticons) and Stickers and GIFs, Oh My

Emos or Emoticons: Located next to the file attachment icon, emoticons offer a range of different expressions as potential responses in your chats.

GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format): The “GIF” box will allow you to search for an appropriate GIF for each situation. Adding a GIF everyone once in a while can make a conversation more lighthearted.

Stickers: Like GIFs, stickers can be used to add some flavor to a conversation. They are located to the right of the GIF button.

Meeting Chat/IM/Notes.

During meetings, there is an option to contribute to a chat, take meeting notes for the group and share your notes after the call.