ISG Blog

On a previous blog we talked about collaborating and working a file together.  Maybe what should have come first is how to get the file in Teams in the first place.

Well today we would like to share how to do just that...

Anywhere in Teams, look for the paperclip icon  to Attach a file. Alternately:

• Go to the Files tab.

• Select Upload.

• Select single or multiple files from device computer or OneDrive for Business account.

• Select Open.

For the video on how to do this follow this link to the Microsoft Support page. 

Pinning may not be new to some of you, but this is a useful function in Teams for keeping those items you use often near the top of the list.

On either the channel or on a chat, simply select the elipses "..." and then select Pin from the menu provided and this will ensure that the item selected then stays at the top of the list for easy access. It should be noted you can pin a "Team" but can pin the channel within a team.

This is really useful when working on particular project that you want easy access to.  Once the project is over, simply "unpin".  This will move it back to the normal location on a list.

For more information follow this link for the Microsoft support video on how to do this.

As always, if you require further assistance, feel free to call ISG on (04)802 6262 and the team will be happy to help.

For the video, click here

If you need to have focused, private conversations with people on your team, create a private channel. Most channels are standard ones — everyone on the team can see them as well as view and participate in conversations, share files, and more.  With a private channel, members of a team must be specifically added to it to participate, see content, and to see the channel appear in their list of channels.

For the video, click here

Working in Microsoft Teams lets you work on files together at the same time. Also, messages about the document stay with it and will show up in your team conversations.

For the video, click here.

In Microsoft Teams, teams are groups of people brought together for work, projects, or common interests.  Every Corps and Centre already have a Teams group set up for their location.

Teams are made up of two types of channels — standard (available and visible to everyone) and private (focused, private conversations with a specific audience). Each channel is built around a topic like "Team Events," a department name, or just for fun. Channels are where you hold meetings, have conversations, and work on files together.

The tabs at the top of each channel link to your favorite files, apps, and services.

We see an ever increasing use of Microsoft Teams within the Salvation Army, and we are excited at the various possibilities of its use for collaboration in the workplace, and success in the delivery of our mission (to care for people, transform lives, reform society).

There have been a number of tips already provided through this blog on useful features in Microsoft Teams and you can search the blog for these.

However as is common with all things IT, features are often getting updated and its hard for us to keep this information up to date.

However, we have good news.  If you want to know more of what's available in Teams, or need a training video on what's available in teams, you already have this accessible to you.

When the Teams app is open on your screen just click on the "?" on bottom left corner of the window...

That will give you some options...

Selecting Topics will give you a list of various features you can choose to read how best to use them. Selecting Training will provide with a list of short videos where you can see how to perform certain tasks (working in Teams and channels, uploading files, managing chats and calls, etc).  Really useful when you have a few minutes spare in your day to watch and learn how to best use the tool that you have at your disposal.

Over coming weeks, we will highlight some of the ones we believe will be useful to you, but don't wait for us to show you.  Take the opportunity to learn from here.

Thanks for all you do in the mission of caring for people, transforming lives and reforming society.  We hope the tools TSA provides you (O365, Teams, SAMIS, etc) help enable that mission.

It has been good to see the increased use of Microsoft Teams around the territory, and one could say this has been one of the silver linings of our lockdown period. Microsoft Teams is a great tool for collaborating with each other particular when you are unable to be in the same location but even for sending quick messages to colleagues no matter where they are.  Video conferencing has also been used to a much greater extent in the last few months.

But much more than this, there are a number of useful applications within Teams that are often not used because many don't know about it.  Today we want to show you a simple tip that will help you be more effective and productive when using MS Teams.

The search bar in Teams can be used not only for searching through any chat, or collaboration thread for previous information, but it can also be used as a command line.  If you type "/" on the search field you are given the following list:

You choose whichever option you wish by simply typing the remainder of the command. For me the ones I find really helpful in this list include:

/org - which provides the line management for a specific person in our TSA directory

/dnd - quickly sets my status to 'Do Not Disturb' when I'm working on a project and don't want any interruptions, or find myself in a meeting doing a presentation and don't want my chat notifications popping up on screen

/chat - which saves me searching a previous conversation to add to it, I can just use this to quickly send a message to a specific person

Why not take the time to try some of these?  You may, like me, find this a really useful way of quickly finding or sending information.

It has been a while since ISG provided any tips on our blog and so we want to help you be more productive with the tools you currently have as well as learn some tips on some of the features that are available to you within O365.

Over the next few weeks we will be looking at MS Teams and help you make the most of this fantastic O365 tool that all TSA users have access to.

Today we want to focus on the latest update to the video capability in Teams.  A new feature called "Together mode" has recently been launched to all MS Team users and this is particularly helpful when you have a video meeting with a number of people.  The grid view is still available (up to 9), and an extended Large gallery is also now available (up to 49!) but the grid view can be a little hard to focus on who or what to watch.

The Together mode, using AI, merges all the faces into a single "room" and helps with focussing on the topic at hand.

This is available now to all TSA users. and to get this going you need to do a couple of things:

First, when in Teams, you may need to ensure you have the latest version of Teams, so go to the icon on top right of the Teams window and select "Check for updates"

then select Settings > "Turn on new meeting experience" by ticking the appropriate box

If the box has not been ticked, and you have now made the change, you will need to restart Teams to ensure this takes effect. Your pc may need a complete restart to ensure Teams is not still running in the background.

Then next time you are in a Teams meeting, and you have joined the meeting, you simply need to hit on the "..." (3 dots) on the toolbar and select Together mode.  Be aware that if there are not enough people in the group meeting, then this option may be greyed out but as soon as there are enough people to fill the "room" this will become available.

So next time you are in a video call with a number of people, why not try this.