5 Fun Things to Love About Microsoft Teams

So I’m not going to lie – I’m sometimes resistant to change. I mean, it took me a good year to be satisfied with Calibri rather than Times New Roman. So when our team switched to Microsoft Teams, and made a conscious effort to move away from Skype and Outlook, I thought Oh! I can’t wait!. Now that I’m 100% using Teams, however, I can honestly say that I’d never go back. Here are the top five things I love about Teams. I hope you’ll try them out, and maybe they’ll become your favorite, too.

Search. I’m notorious for coming up with a clever fix for something, then later having no idea what I did to fix it. Our habit at PPM Works is to share these clever tidbits in our Delivery General channel for later reference. But even if I didn’t share it on a channel, I might have had a conversation with someone about it. Either way, when I encounter the same problem again, I can easily go back and search for the keyword.
Tagging: Sometimes you won’t want to directly reach out to someone via Chat in case they’re in the middle of something, or you don’t need to specifically ask them a question. You can, however, tag someone so that when they have time, they can see their mentions. You do this by preceding their name with an @ sign, and their name will be found in the directory. Within channels, you will only be able to mention someone who has permission on that channel.

It also works for the team itself:
The Recent Chats View: There are two ways to see your chats: Either by Contacts, or Recent conversations. The reason I prefer the latter is because the last person with whom I chatted is already right there at the top of the list. Easy access to resume the conversation!
Color Options: You may have noticed that my screenshots show a darker theme. I use this because it find it’s a bit easier on my eyes. This setting is accessible via Settings, which is found under your own picture in the top right corner of your screen:

From Settings, you can then change the theme to “Dark”.

“High contrast” is also an option for those who need it, but it’s important to note that color status indicators will no longer appear in High Contrast mode:
Emoticons: Who doesn’t like to occasionally express themselves with a yellow face that’s smashing its head against a wall? (Type ‘headbang’ in parenthesis for this gem that no longer appears on the emoticon selection tray). In addition to emoticons, though, you can also simply acknowledge or reply to a message or post with a smaller set of emoticons. This is a good way to show you like something, or show that you’ve seen it without needing to type a response. You access these quick responses by hovering on the message, and they will appear.