20 More Tips. Each month we provide the 20 latest tips for how your organization can gain more productivity from Microsoft Teams. Learn how you can make your team more effective using Microsoft Teams

1. 20 MORE TIPS TO
IMPROVE
PRODUCTIVITY WITH
MICROSOFT TEAMS
RUSS BASIURA
JUNE 2020

2. RUSS BASIURA
Founder & CEO, Accel365, Consultant, background is SharePoint
20 years experience with mid-size and enterprise companies
10 years growing Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
8 years running Philadelphia SharePoint User Group
SharePoint Saturday and SharePoint Conference Speaker
Author – Security and .Net Development Books
5 years Working From Home

3. CHRISTIAN BUCKLEY
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC (www.buckleyplanet.com)
30 years in IT, primarily working with collaboration + project technology
Microsoft MVP (Office Apps & Services) and Regional Director
Utah SPUG board, formerly on Puget Sound SPUG board
Spearheaded SPS events in Utah, Redmond, Oregon, Los Angeles, Sacramento
Co-author of 3 books on SharePoint, 3 books on SCM / Rational (IBM) products
10+ years Working From Home

4. Please subscribe : https://bit.ly/3fCWEOM
May 2020 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhdWxyLhEgw
SESSION RECORDINGS - YOUTUBE

5. TIPS 1-5
1. Add Documents as Tabs
2. Get more screen real estate with Expand Tab
3. Navigate forward and backwards
4. Control Who can Email a Channel
5. Use the Meet Now feature

6. 1. ADD AN OFFICE DOCUMENT AS A TAB
If you find that sending team members
to a document library to locate the file
to which everyone needs to contribute,
there is a better way…
If you want your collaborative content to
be more front-and-center so that people
can actively review and comment, add
your Office documents as a tab right
inside of the relevant channel in Teams.
This feature applies to any content
uploaded into your team, and found
within Files.

7. To add your Office document, go into the
relevant Team and Channel where the
content lives, and where you would like
to collaborate with team members.
From the top of your screen, select + to
open a new tab.
1. ADD AN OFFICE DOCUMENT AS A TAB

8. The Add a Tab dialog box will open. Find
and select the Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
OneNote, PDF or wiki on which you would
like to collaborate.
1. ADD AN OFFICE DOCUMENT AS A TAB

9. Once selected (in this case Word), navigate to
the right project or folder to find your
content, and select the file.
You can navigate to content in other
channels, or within other Teams – but
remember that people who do not have
access to those other locations may not be
able to see and collaborate on this
document.
Double-click on the item, or select the file
and click Save.
1. ADD AN OFFICE DOCUMENT AS A TAB

10. Once shared as a tab, you can then co-
author, comment, or review within a real-
time chat much more easily than sending
someone to a document library and waiting
for them to respond with comments.
You can find out more about adding Office
documents as a tab in Teams at
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/
microsoft-sharepoint-blog/4-topnotch-
teamwork-tips-for-microsoft-teams-plus-
sharepoint/ba-p/864155
1. ADD AN OFFICE DOCUMENT AS A TAB

11. When you're in a Teams
Channel tab (other than
Conversation), you can expand
the screen to remove all the
Teams information on the left
side of your screen. There's an
Expand Tab icon that does that
for you.
In this example, I'm in a
Planner tab in my Unified
Communications > General
Channel. On the left side is the
normal list of all the Teams I'm
part of. If I have a small screen
I'm working on, this can take
up way too much space that I
could use to show content.
To reclaim some of that space,
I can go to the right side of the
screen and click on the Expand
Tab icon (two arrows pointing
outward):
2. GET MORE SCREEN REAL ESTATE WITH EXPAND TAB
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

12. When I do that, my list of
Teams disappears, and the
tab uses that extra space to
display content.
In this particular tab, I got
enough space to show an
additional column in my
Planner. If I want to re-
display my list of Teams, I
just click on the Collapse
Tab icon (two arrows
pointing inward):
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
2. GET MORE SCREEN REAL ESTATE WITH EXPAND TAB

13. When using Teams, we sometimes become lost
in the navigation, moving between
conversations and projects…and then forget
where we started.
Thankfully, there are the Forward and Back
navigation arrows in the upper left corner of the
Teams client.
Here's how they work…
In this example, Tom was working in the Chat
area, discussing some information with Sandra:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
3. NAVIGATE FORWARD AND BACKWARDS

14. He decides to go to the Teams icon to look at the
list of all of his Teams. However, he now wants
to go back to where he was in Chat.
The easiest way to do that is to click the Back
arrow in the upper-left corner of the Teams
client, much like the Back arrow on a web
browser:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
3. NAVIGATE FORWARD AND BACKWARDS

15. One click, and he’s right back to where he left off!
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
3. NAVIGATE FORWARD AND BACKWARDS

16. 4. CONTROL WHO CAN EMAIL A CHANNEL
Within Teams, you have the ability to collaborate
within a Channel via email. For some organizations,
you may want to control this access – restricting it to
members of that Team, or to specific domains, thus
limiting the capability for external users.

17. To find the email address to a Channel, right click or
select the Channel ellipses > Get email address
To control who can email the channel, select
Advanced Settings
Within the expanded view, select the appropriate
control and click Save.
Of course, admins can elect to shut off all email
access to the Team, either as part of the Team
provisioning process, or through the Teams admin
console in the Office 365 admin center.
4. CONTROL WHO CAN EMAIL A CHANNEL

18. 5. USE THE MEET NOW FEATURE
There are many instances during the day when
you're in Microsoft Teams and you want to have a
quick meeting with a group. However, it's a pain to
have to schedule the meeting first, and then hope
that everyone can join. Now, you can just use the
Meet Now option in Teams to create an ad-hoc
meeting without the hassle of setting things up first.
Here's how that works…
Click on the Calendar icon on the left-side
navigation bar, and then click on the Meet Now
button in the upper-right corner of the workspace:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

19. Teams will give you a screen to update the name
of the meeting, set video and audio, and then join
the meeting:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
5. USE THE MEET NOW FEATURE

20. Once you're in the meeting, you can invite the
individuals who should join you.
There's no overhead in trying to set up a calendar
entry first for everyone to accept and join:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
5. USE THE MEET NOW FEATURE

21. TIPS 6-10
6. Copy a team to build your new Teams.
7. New File Sharing Experience.
8. Create a custom meeting invite for your company
9. Channel Information Pane / Pinned Posts
10. Use Live Captioning when Recording Meetings

22. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

23. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
3. Click Create from..
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

24. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
3. Click Create from..
4. Click Team
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

25. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
3. Click Create from..
4. Click Team
5. Select the site that you want to use as a template.
In this case we are using Sales Team Template
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

26. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
3. Click Create from..
4. Click Team
5. Select the site that you want to use as a template.
In this case we are using Sales Team Template
6. Give your site a new name
7. Select what items you would like to include
8. Click Create
9. Add any new members or click skip
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

27. There is no ability to save a template, however you can
create a site with all the necessary artifacts then create
new sites from the existing site.
1. Select Join or Create a Team
2. Click Create Team
3. Click Create from..
4. Click Team
5. Select the site that you want to use as a template.
In this case we are using Sales Team Template
6. Give your site a new name
7. Select what items you would like to include
8. Click Create
9. Add any new members or click skip
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

28. Structure is copied including channels
All members are copied
Tabs are created but not connected
Channels are created
New wiki is created
Files do not come over
Chats do not come over
6. COPY A TEAM TO BUILD YOUR NEW TEAMS

29. Streamline sharing with Microsoft Teams.
1. Create a shareable link for any file stored in
Teams
2. Directly set the appropriate permissions
3. Set permissions for files stored in
SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a
private chat or starting a channel
conversation.
7. NEW FILE SHARING EXPERIENCE (JULY 2020)
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

30. • Go to the admin center..
• In the left navigation, go to
Meetings > Meeting settings.
• Under Email invitation, do the
following: ...
• Click Preview invite to see a
preview of your
meeting invitation.
• When you're done, click Save.
• Wait an hour or so for the changes
to propagate.
8. CREATE A CUSTOM INVITE FOR YOUR COMPANY
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

31. 8. CREATE A CUSTOM INVITE FOR YOUR COMPANY

32. Selecting the "Channel info" icon in the channel
header will display summary information related to
that channel including the description, a list of
recent contributors and members, as well as system
messages.
Keep important information easily accessible and
top of mind with Microsoft Teams. Users will be able
to pin any message in a channel to the channel
information pane for all members of the channel to
see.
9. CHANNEL INFORMATION PANE / PINNED POSTS JULY 2020

33. Selecting the "Channel info" icon in the channel
header will display summary information related to
that channel including the description, a list of
recent contributors and members, as well as system
messages.
Keep important information easily accessible and
top of mind with Microsoft Teams. Users will be able
to pin any message in a channel to the channel
information pane for all members of the channel to
see.
9. CHANNEL INFORMATION PANE / PINNED POSTS JULY 2020

34. From the meeting start menu
1. Select the ellipses
2. Select Turn on live captions
10. USE LIVE CAPTIONING WHEN RECORDING

35. From the meeting start menu
1. Select the ellipses
2. Select Turn on live captions
3. The live captions appear at
bottom of the screen
10. USE LIVE CAPTIONING WHEN RECORDING

36. TIPS 11-15
11. Make Cross-Workload Connections 2-Way
12. Send urgent messages
13. Publish External Content as a Card
14. See your Planner Tasks
15. Sensitivity Labels in Teams, Groups, and SharePoint

37. 11. MAKE CROSS-WORKLOAD CONNECTIONS 2-WAY
Great advice from Emma Jobling at cobweb.com
on how to get more out of your Microsoft Teams
experiences, including this advice on a 2-way
connection with SharePoint, as well as other
workloads, such as Yammer.
If you find yourself working across multiple
workloads – in this case Microsoft Teams,
SharePoint, and Yammer – make it as easy as
possible to navigate between the workloads by
providing links within each navigation.
For Teams, this means adding Tabs to connect
your project team to the relevant SharePoint
team site and Yammer community.

38. 11. MAKE CROSS-WORKLOAD CONNECTIONS 2-WAY
In SharePoint, create a link by simply copying the
URL of the Teams team and adding it to the
Quick Launch links.
This link will then open directly into Microsoft
Teams through the normal authentication steps,
or, if Teams is already open, it will just open into
that Team.

39. 11. MAKE CROSS-WORKLOAD CONNECTIONS 2-WAY
And in Yammer, you can link to both your
SharePoint and Teams sites on the right side,
within your Pinned links list.

40. 12. SEND URGENT MESSAGES
If you use the Important indicator for messages you send in Microsoft Teams chats, you'll see a new level of functionality now. You can
mark a message as Urgent, and it will ping the user every two minutes until they look at your message. While it can really help to get
someone's attention when necessary, it comes with a couple of common sense caveats. Here's how it works…
The Exclamation Point icon is where you mark a message as Important, and now it also allows you to mark a message as Urgent:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

41. Once you click the icon, you can select from Standard, Important, and Urgent:
The thing to note here is that an Urgent message will continually ping the recipient every two minutes until they see your message. If you
really want to take the chance you won't irritate your recipient by doing this, click the Send icon:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
12. SEND URGENT MESSAGES

42. This is how it shows up in the chat… an Alarm Bell icon is attached to the message:
Here is what the recipient sees as a pop-up in their Teams client:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
12. SEND URGENT MESSAGES

43. 13. PUBLISH EXTERNAL CONTENT AS A CARD
One of the most compelling values of Teams is its ability to
make it a “hub” for everything your project team is working on
– which sometimes includes external content, including
discussions on various blogs and social networks.
Through direct connectors or 3rd party platforms, you can add
any content using the RSS feed.
Shared by Mark Jones at Collab365, he walks you through the
steps of adding a RSS feed (via Zapier) as a method for
publishing external blog content to your Microsoft Teams feed
as a card. Read More
Another great tool is the integration with Twitter, allowing
you to capture customer feedback to a Teams feed, and setup
alerts so that the right person can respond accordingly.

44. 14. SEE YOUR PLANNER TASKS
Something relatively new to Microsoft
Teams is the ability to see all the Planner
Tasks that have been assigned to you.
Here's what it looks like…
If you go into Microsoft Teams and click
on the Chat icon in the left-side
navigation, you should find an entry for
Planner. When you open that chat, you'll
see a list of all the Planner Task
notifications that are generated when
someone assigns a Task to you:
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

45. In the tabs at the top of the chat, you
also have the My Tasks tab, which is very
useful. It will show you all the Tasks that
are assigned to you across all the
Microsoft Teams workspaces that you're
a part of:
I love this feature, as it prevents you
from having to check multiple places to
keep track of what's up next on your list
of things to do.
This tip courtesy of @duffbert
14. SEE YOUR PLANNER TASKS

46. Additionally, you can add the Planner
app to the left hand rail of Teams, giving
you a quick way to access Planner no
matter which Team or Channel you visit.
14. SEE YOUR PLANNER TASKS

47. 15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT
Currently in public preview, you now have
the ability to create Sensitivity Labels in the
Microsoft 365 compliance center. These can
be applied to Microsoft Teams, Office 365
groups, SharePoint sites, and OneDrive.
Once created, you can associate policies to
control:
• Public/private settings
• Guest access
• Access from unmanaged devices
When you apply a label to a team or group,
the label automatically applies to the
connected SharePoint team site and the
other way around.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/sensitivity-labels-teams-groups-sites

48. Administrators can create, review, and
modify Sensitivity Labels by logging into
the Office 365 Security & Compliance
center and going to
Classification > Sensitivity Labels
15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT

49. To create a new label, begin with a name and
description, and click Next
You have the ability to apply encryption settings,
and define the specific permissions, as well as
how these permissions are applied (automatic or
manual) and click Next
15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT

50. Apply watermarks, or add/modify a customized
header or footer, and click Next
Determine whether to apply endpoint data loss
prevention (DLP), and click Next
15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT

51. Set up auto-labeling of content that meets certain
defined criteria (specific file types, keywords, etc),
and click Next
After reviewing all of your selections, Submit your
new label.
15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT

52. You’ll get a confirmation that the new label has
been created, and the new label will appear on
your admin list, ready to be published.
It requires PowerShell to activate the public
preview, but once your new Sensitivity Labels
have been created and published, they can be
applied to your Teams, to specific users or user
groups, or across your entire tenant.
Read more at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoftteams/sensitivity-labels
15. SENSITIVITY LABELS IN TEAMS, GROUPS, & SHAREPOINT

53. TIPS 16-20
16. Create contact groupings – Name the group then add your contacts
17. Pin your contacts or add them as favorites
18. Save a message / bookmarking
19. Mark messages as unread to indicate follow ups then use /unread to view
only your unread messages
20. Replace the Teams Wiki with OneNote

54. Add contacts to groups to quickly locate and
access contacts
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

55. 16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS
Select Create a new contact group at the bottom
of the chat contacts panel

56. Enter the name of the new contact group then
click the create button
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

57. The new grouping appears and you are now
ready to begin adding contacts to the group.
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

58. Select the ellipses next to the name of the group
then select Add a contact to this group
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

59. Enter the name of your contact and click add
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

60. The contact is now added to the group
16. CREATE CONTACT GROUPINGS

61. Teams has a usage report inside the Teaams Admin
Center. It includes several capabilities that allow you
to modify what information is reported.
1. Display Report by date range (7,30,90)
2. Selected Dates
3. Active users axis
4. Total active users
5. Team name
6. Edit columns
7. Export to excel
8. Full screen
More Info
https://bit.ly/30TajNx
17. ADMIN CENTER USAGE REPORTS

62. 18. SAVE A MESSAGE / BOOKMARKING
Saving a message or bookmarking
allows you to quickly find the
message later.
From a chat
1. Dropdown the ellipses in the top
right corner
2. Select Save this message
To see your saved messages
1. Click on your profile picture in the
upper right corner of Teams
2. Select Saved

63. 18. SAVE A MESSAGE / BOOKMARKING
All of your saved messages are displayed

64. Users often look for a way to flag
messages in Teams. Other than saving
a message there is no way to apply a
flag to a message yet.
A workaround is to mark an already
read message as unread by selecting
“mark as unread” from the ellipses
menu.
19. MARK MESSAGE AS UNREAD / INDICATE FOLLOW UP
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

65. Users often look for a way to flag
messages in Teams. Other than saving
a message there is no way to apply a
flag to a message yet.
A workaround is to mark an already
read message as unread by selecting
“mark as unread” from the ellipses
menu.
This will show that you have an unread
message in the left rail and the
message will be turned to bold type for
easy identification.
19. MARK MESSAGE AS UNREAD / INDICATE FOLLOW UP
This tip courtesy of @duffbert

66. By default every new teams gets a wiki created, however Wikis are not
searchable. To fix this remove the wiki and add the default OneNote
that is created for each team.
Remove the Wiki tab
1. Click the wiki tab
2. Expand the drop down menu
3. Select Remove
20. REPLACE WIKI WITH ONENOTE

67. By default every new teams gets a wiki created, however Wikis are not
searchable. To fix this remove the wiki and add the default OneNote
that is created for each team.
Remove the Wiki tab
1. Click the wiki tab
2. Expand the drop down menu
3. Select Remove
Add One Note tab
1. Click the plus sign next to the tab
2. Select OneNote on the Add a tab panel
20. REPLACE WIKI WITH ONENOTE

68. By default every new teams gets a wiki created, however Wikis are not
searchable. To fix this remove the wiki and add the default OneNote
that is created for each team.
Remove the Wiki tab
1. Click the wiki tab
2. Expand the drop down menu
3. Select Remove
Add One Note tab
1. Click the plus sign next to the tab
2. Select OneNote on the Add a tab panel
20. REPLACE WIKI WITH ONENOTE

69. By default every new teams gets a wiki created, however Wikis are not
searchable. To fix this remove the wiki and add the default OneNote
that is created for each team.
Remove the Wiki tab
1. Click the wiki tab
2. Expand the drop down menu
3. Select Remove
Add One Note tab
1. Click the plus sign next to the tab
2. Select OneNote on the Add a tab panel
3. Click the Save Button
20. REPLACE WIKI WITH ONENOTE

70. THANK YOU FOR JOINING
https://www.linkedin.com/in/russbasiura/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbuckley/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCktnDTdDFTj3zMRBrY01w