By Shannon Glennon, AI Technology Transformation Specialist, Syracuse University ITS
Most of us use Teams in similar ways every day. Join the meeting, send the message, share the screen, find the file, repeat. Meanwhile, there’s a whole layer of the app quietly waiting to make your workday easier!
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Test your setup before a meeting
Teams can place a test call, pick your microphone and speaker, show you a live camera preview, brighten your picture and quiet the room around you. Give it a minute before your next meeting and you’ll feel much more prepared.
How to do it: Click the three dots to the left of your profile picture, choose Settings, then Devices.
Under Audio devices, select the speaker and microphone you want Teams to use. Worth checking if you move between a dock and your laptop, because Teams can mix them up. Then click Make a test call. Teams records a short message from you and plays it back. Noise suppression toggled to on cuts a nearby fan or a busy hallway, and a secondary ringer lets your laptop speakers ring along with your headset, so calls don’t slip past.
Under Video settings, select your camera and check your framing before you join. You can also adjust some camera settings such as mirror my video and adjust brightness.
- Allow attendees to interact with your slides while you present
When you present with PowerPoint Live instead of sharing your screen, your attendees get controls you never see.
Any attendee can translate your slides into one of 19 languages on their own screen, without interrupting you or anyone else. They can switch to a high-contrast view if the design is hard on their eyes, magnify the content, and move back a slide to catch something they missed, then jump right back to where you are.
Screen sharing gives them none of this. It sends a flat picture of your monitor.
How to do it: In a meeting, click Share, then pick your file under PowerPoint Live rather than choosing a window or screen. Attendees use More options on the presentation to translate slides or turn on high contrast.
And you’re still in control. Turn on Private view in the meeting controls if you’d rather everyone stay on your slide.
- Write the message now, send it Monday morning
You’ve had the thought at 10 p.m. on a Sunday. You want to write it down before you lose it, but you don’t want to be the person whose name pops up on someone’s phone at 10 p.m. on a Sunday.
Teams will hold it for you.
How to do it: Type your message, then click the plus sign in the message window and choose Schedule send. Pick your date and time and the message waits until then. It works in chats, though not in channel posts.
- @mention a whole group without typing everyone’s name
If you find yourself @mentioning the same six people over and over, tags are what you’ve been missing.
A tag is a nickname for a group of people. Create one called Advisers, Front Desk or Search Committee, add the right people, then @mention the tag. Everyone in it gets notified and nobody else does.
How to do it: In the Teams list, hover over the Team you want to manage. Click More options (…), then Manage tags. Create your tag, add members and use it like any other @mention.
- Send yourself a message
Your own name is sitting in your chat list, and it works exactly like any other conversation.
It’s a scratchpad. Park a link you’ll need in tomorrow’s meeting, draft a message you’re not ready to send, drop a file you want waiting for you on another device. Everything syncs everywhere you use Teams, and it’s searchable later like any other chat.
How to do it: Search your own name in the chat list, or find yourself at the top of it, and start typing.