What Is Microsoft Teams: Everything You Need To Know

Now that we have a better understanding of what Microsoft Teams is, let’s take a deeper dive into its functionality and look at what you can do in MS Teams.

Because Teams is such an integrated platform, it is easy for businesses who are newly adopting it into their technology stacks, and even companies that have been using the tool for years, to lose track of the functionality that it offers, making it more difficult for them to take full advantage of all the benefits Microsoft Teams has to offer. When used correctly, Teams can help you to further human connection within your business, do more with your time, and ultimately make more money. But in order for these goals to be reached, you need a good understanding of the platform that is available to you.

With that in mind, I’ve put together a few key features that help businesses to better understand what MS Teams can do and what MS Teams is used for. I’ve broken down some of the more confusing technology that Teams uses, and have highlighted some extra steps that you can take to do more with Microsoft Teams.

• Key Features

The functionality that Teams offers is practically endless, but there are a few key features that businesses can take advantage of straight away. These include:

1. Chat

Whether it’s one-on-one conversations, a discussion involving multiple humans, or a channel that you’ve set up to allow full departments to communicate effectively, Microsoft Teams allows you to send instant messages, and get immediate responses.

2. Calling

There’s something special about talking to another person – hearing their voice, and seeing their expressions. Teams makes voice and video calls between your humans quick and easy to manage.

3. Meetings

At SOLID, we like to think of calls and meetings as two separate occasions. Where calls are impromptu, and usually between two or three humans, meetings are organised, scheduled, and can include a couple of team members, or entire companies or departments. Microsoft Teams allows for both and includes features like recording and transcription to make meetings far more effective.

4. Availability

One of the biggest difficulties with switching to a remote or hybrid work model is knowing when the humans in your teams are working, busy, available, at their desks, or connecting while on the road. Microsoft Teams makes it easy for anyone to highlight their availability – automatically indicating when one of your humans is in a call, is presenting their screen, is away from their desk, or is only available on mobile. It also allows for custom statuses, out of office notices and more, making it easy for everyone in your teams to keep track of who is reachable at any given time.

5. Screen Sharing

There is a massive difference between telling a human how to do something, and showing them how it’s done. Microsoft understands this, which is why they’ve incorporated screen sharing seamlessly into meetings and video calls. They even provide an option for requesting control of a screen that another participant is sharing, making it even easier to demonstrate actions using their own computer, and gather relevant information quickly without going through the rigmarole of trying to explain where buttons are.

6. Calendar

Managing a calendar is no easy feat, and managing calendars for entire teams can seem entirely impossible without the right tool. Thankfully, Teams makes it easy to manage both individual calendars and even add calendars to channels, allowing you to see multiple events and schedules in a single, consolidated view. Better still, there’s no need to flit between Outlook, Planner and To-Do when Teams brings events, tasks and meetings into one platform, making for easier communication, task management and planning.

7. File Sharing

Because Teams integrates with numerous Microsoft platforms, it simplifies the process of file sharing. It allows you to link specific SharePoint folders to channels, and even advises you when the person you’re trying to share a link with may not have the correct access permissions for a particular file.

8. External Collaboration

There are plenty of benefits to having your entire workforce using Microsoft Teams. But even when you’re collaborating with people outside of your company – be it freelancers, outsourced providers, or prospective employees – you can still invite them to interact with you on Teams, while ensuring that they only have access to the files that they are going to need to collaborate with you effectively.

• Breaking Down Terminology In Microsoft Teams

If you’re not used to the Teams platform, the terminology that gets used can be a bit confusing to wrap your head around at first. You may have noticed, for example, that during this article I’ve tended to refer to departments, rather than teams, simply because teams in Teams has a very specific meaning. Let’s take a look at some of the terms that get used, and what they mean:

1. Teams

A ‘team’ within Microsoft Teams refers to a group of people who are grouped together and have the same permissions, and access to the same channels.

This won’t always, necessarily, be limited to a specific department of humans. For example, a Marketing ‘team’ may include all of the humans within your marketing department, but it may also include other members of upper management, external collaborators who you might be outsourcing Marketing work to, and maybe even members of your Sales team if you’re taking a ‘smarketing’ approach to lead generation and conversion.

2. Channels

Under each team, you can set up channels to discuss specific topics or projects, making it easy for your humans to organise and find the information that they need at any given time. You can set up channels that are shared within your company, are shared with external participants, or make them private to specific humans within a team as needed.

3. Tabs

Each channel starts off with three tabs – one for posts, one for files, and one for shared notes. But much like a browser, you can add any number of tabs to a channel, and each of the humans within the relevant team will be able to view and interact with them.

4. Threads

One of the most common uses for channels is starting discussions. These start as simple posts, but as they are replied to, interacted with and expanded upon, they become known as threads.

5. Mentions

Need to get a specific team member’s attention? Or perhaps you need to let a group of people know about a change that is taking place. You can use the ‘@’ symbol to tag a specific person, or even set up tags for groups of people. For example, because we at Solid Systems have an IT company in Cape Town and an IT company in Johannesburg, our Microsoft Teams is set up with a Joburg team tag, and a Cape Town team one, as well as Sales, Marketing, IT Pros and Management tags. Whenever these multi-person tags are used, everyone under them will be notified of the post.

6. Chats

Unlike channels, which are discussion and topic based, chats are personal conversations with one other person, or even other groups of people. You can start a chat with anyone within your organisation or external parties that you’ve invited to Teams, and it’s best used for chatting, catching up, and getting quick answers that don’t need to have a discussion behind them.

7. Chats

Your feed is the hub for all of your notifications within Microsoft Teams. Whether it’s a mention in a thread, a new message in one of your channels, a missed call, or a chat message that you may have missed, you can find a quick summary of all your notifications under the Feed section.

• Some Extra Tools That Businesses Can Use In Microsoft Teams

Now that you have a good idea of some of the fundamental features that Teams offers to businesses, let’s take a look at some of the extra tools that the platform provides for businesses who want to take connection, collaboration and communication a few steps further.

1. 3rd Party Integrations

Just because Teams is a Microsoft solution, doesn’t mean that it only integrates with Microsoft tools. There are plenty of integration options for Microsoft Teams including:

• AI tools like Fireflies, which can take meeting notes for you
• Interactive polls through tools like Polly and SurveyMonkey
• Development tools like GitHub
• Document management tools like Adobe Sign

2. Bots

Microsoft Teams comes with a number of built-in bots that can help businesses to use the platform more effectively. T-Bot, for example, is a chatbot which provides information and guidance for using Microsoft Teams itself, while Stats Bot provides analytics and statistics about how your humans are making use of channels within Teams. Icebreaker Bot is a great tool for helping your humans to connect to one another through fun questions and activities, while Scheduling Assistant Bot can help them to find convenient times for meetings that multiple people need to attend based on their Outlook calendars.

3. Meeting Recordings And Transcription

Remote and hybrid working may have plenty advantages, but one of the disadvantages that businesses around the world are experiencing is a rise in meeting fatigue. It has become so easy to conduct meetings online, that meetings are taking over peoples’ schedules, leading to less time for meaningful work. This is why Microsoft Teams has incorporated features to help combat this problem by allowing humans to record and automatically transcribe meetings. This allows for participants who cannot make a meeting for any reason to catch up on the sessions when it is most convenient for them, in the way that they prefer – either by watching the meeting later, or by reading through what happened in their own time.