Microsoft Teams: Tips for Working from Home

Microsoft Teams Working From Home

Over the last few weeks, the workplace has had to adapt to people now working remotely. Whilst working from home has presented various challenges, Microsoft Teams can help keep you connected and on-track with your work. 

What is Microsoft Teams? 

Microsoft Teams is an Office 365 centralised collaboration hub that allows you to chat, call, and collaborate with your colleagues. Teams is available as a desktop app or you can take it on the go with the mobile app. We have put together our top tips for effectively using Teams whilst working remotely. 

Running Meetings 

Meetings in Microsoft Teams include audio calls, video chats and screen sharing. Here’s our top tips for meetings. 

• Record your meetings – this feature captures audio, video and screen sharing activity. The recording is saved to Microsoft Stream, it can then be shared securely across your workplace. 
• Blur or change your background – if your video background is distracting or you simply want to hide your background, you can either blur it or entirely replace it. 
• Stay up to date – in the ‘Calendar’ tab in Teams, you will see all your appointments for the day or the work week. Your meetings list is in sync with your outlook calendar, so you always know what’s going on. 

Teams & Channels 

Whilst Microsoft Teams lets you chat one-on-one with colleagues, you can also create teams and channels 

• A team is made up of a group of people to collaborate on a project, sometimes it could be your entire organisation. 
• Teams are made up of sub-sections called channels. Channels can be dedicated to a specific topic, department, or project. 
• Add apps to a channel – Teams also allow you to connect apps to channels which allows you to share content and work collaboratively. Read more here. 

Collaborate on Documents 

Microsoft Teams gives you the ability to share and collaborate documents within one-on-one chats, teams, and channels. Teams makes it easy to share files and work on them together. 

• Keep track of your files – Teams has a dedicated ‘Files’ tab on the left-hand side. The ‘Files’ tab has all your recent files, OneDrive files and files recently shared within your teams. 
• Work on and edit files – As well as accessing files within Teams you can also open and edit them. 
• Collaborate on files – You and your team members can co-edit Word, PowerPoint, or Excel documents. You can edit the same document at the same time, your changes will seamlessly be merged as you work. 

Teams & Microsoft Planner 

Another benefit You can organise and assign tasks or responsibilities by adding a ‘Planner’ tab to your team’s channel conversation. 

• Assign tasks within Teams – Once a task has been created, you can assign it to a specific person. They’ll be notified if you assign it to them. 
• Keep track of tasks within your planner – Planner also lets you keep track of your tasks in the ‘Charts’ tab. Here you can see the status of tasks (completed, late, in progress, not started), you can also get access to a graph that lists the channel members and their tasks. 
• Customise your tasks – Planner also allows you to customise your tasks by setting a status for the task (not started, in progress, complete), set a priority (urgent, important, medium, low), as well as add a check list and other notes. 

To speak to Milnsbridge Managed IT Services about remote work solutions or upgrading your IT support service call us on 1300 300 293.