Microsoft Teams saw a huge uptick in users during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and the growing practices of social distancing and working from home. Rising from 20 million users in November 2019 to 44 million in March 2020, then 75 million by April. Teams has managed to retain these users post pandemic, and has grown considerably since. In 2022, Microsoft announced that Teams reached 115 million daily active users (DAU). Stats from 2018 say that the average meeting lasts 48 minutes. That makes for a lot of time spent in Teams. The following are tips and tricks to be more productive when using Teams.
Command Teams to do your bidding
Commands are shortcuts for performing common tasks in Teams. You can use Teams commands to update your status, go to a specific channel, show your recent files and saved messages, and more. To use a command, type “/” and then your command in the command box at the top of Teams.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /available | Set your status to available. |
| /away | Set your status to away. |
| /busy | Set your status to busy. |
| /call | Call a phone number or Teams contact. |
| /dnd | Set your status to do not disturb. |
| /files | See your recent files. |
| /goto | Go right to a team or channel. |
| /help | Get help with Teams. |
| /join | Join a team. |
| /keys | See keyboard shortcuts. |
| /org | See someone's org chart. |
| /testcall | Check your call quality. |
| /unread | See all your unread activity. |
| /whatsnew | See what's new in Teams. |
| / | Displays all commands. |
Manage Teams Notifications
The stream of notifications in Teams can feel a little overwhelming, especially when you need to focus on an important task. There are a few simple ways to reduce interruptions.
Update your Teams-wide notifications. Click on your profile picture in Teams.
- Click on Settings and then Notifications
- Locate “Missed activities emails”
- Click on the pull-down and select the frequency you want to receive emails for ‘missed activity.’
I recommend at least “Once every hour” to reduce email volume, and pressure to check what is happening in Teams.
Teams can be very intrusive, especially when you need to focus on the immediate task at hand. You can use the /DND command to block incoming calls and notifications. Of course there are some users you want to or have to quickly respond to. In order to always get calls or notifications from these team members, you can grant them priority access. This means you’ll still receive notifications from these individuals when your status is set to ‘Do Not Disturb’.
To grant priority access in Teams, Update your Privacy. Click on your profile picture in Teams and then Settings.
- Click on “Privacy”
- Click on “Manage priority access”
This will bring up the page where you add specific users whose notifications will still go through even when you are in “Do Not Disturb” mode.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.