Microsoft Teams is a widely used communication platform across many organizations. It features a plethora of nifty features that make communication easy. At times, it may prove to be difficult to make use of all these features to enhance communication all while trying to remain at the top of your game while at the workplace.
As it happens, Microsoft has highlighted some of the most used features in Teams chat alongside quick tips that will help you get the most out of them and stay organized. Here’s everything you need to know:
Focused Teams Chat inbox
If you use Microsoft Teams as your primary tool for communication, then you probably get a lot of messages throughout the day. At times, it may be difficult to keep up with all of them. In turn, you might end up missing important information that might require your immediate attention.
Luckily, there are several options at your disposal to ensure that this does not happen:
First up, you can choose to hide and unhide your chats, thus decluttering your inbox with thousands of messages that might not be useful to you. All you need to do is right-click the chat you want to disappear and select the “Hide” option. However, if you find the chat completely redundant then you can delete it completely from your inbox.
There are also instances when you might have opened a chat message involuntarily. You might not be able to get through the thread at the time and might want to circle back and give it more attention. You can simply mark the message as unread. This way the message will be bolded for easy identification.
Additionally, you can also choose to mute your chats. This comes in handy, especially during meetings as it blocks out all chat notifications allowing you to focus on what the presenter is saying.
And finally, you can also pin important chats at the top of your inbox. This makes it easier to keep tabs on what is going on and also keeps communication flowing. Microsoft Teams will let you pin up to 15 chats at one go.
Communicate efficiently
Communication is very important in any organization or forum, it is, therefore, important to ensure that the correct information is passed to the right person in a timely manner. It is very easy to lose all these key elements, especially in a group chat.
But there are several features that you can leverage to ensure that the flow of communication isn’t broken. First up is the @mention feature. The neat feature lets you send notifications to a specific person’s Activity directly, ultimately drawing their attention back to the group chat.
What’s more, you can also use the feature to grab everyone’s attention in a chat, channel, or team instantly. All you need to do is type @mention everyone, then everyone will get a notification.
Another notable feature is the ability to edit chats once you’ve hit send. We’ve all been in situations where we have sent out messages rife with grammatical errors and more. Rather than starting to write up the message all over again, you can use the edit options to make corrections then hit send again, and the changes will be applied.
Quoted reply is also an important feature in Teams. A lot of information is passed in group chats, therefore, it may be difficult to make queries on specific issues.
Here’s where the quoted reply feature comes in, you can use it to highlight specific issues that you need more information on or even seek further clarification. All you need to do is select the message you want, then hit Reply, it will appear in your compose box where you can now make your query to the specific message.
You can also have a one-on-one chat with someone that’s outside your organization by entering their full email address or phone number.
Get expressive
Who said communication has to be boring, you can spice up your chats with emojis, GIFs, reactions, memes, and even stickers. All these are great ways to elevate your conversations in Teams and can even be used as quick responses to messages that might not necessarily require text responses.
We invite you to check out our detailed guide that will help you make the most of Teams features. Be sure to also let us know which Teams features you like most in the comment section.