by Shameera Nair Lin
Recently, YTL made a full transition to Microsoft Teams as a centralised work platform. With change, there comes an inevitable need to alter certain old habits and adapt to new systems. We thought we would ease your transition to Teams with a few tips on how to make your workflow as seamless as possible.
1. Hover to revisit old files
Here is an extremely useful way of navigating the Microsoft Teams desktop application. If you find yourself opening a document, only to lose track of what it was you were up to previously, hover on the left arrow next to the search bar for a tracked history of your activities. What’s even better is with one click, you will be able to return to the page of your choice. See above for an example.
2. Pin it down! Now!
No, really: there’s no need to spend an entire minute searching for a channel or chat you would like to read. Pin all essential channels, teams and chats according to frequency of usage. Look out for three dots next to your chat, channel or team name, as we’ve highlighted above.
3. Create reminders and to-dos from messages received
This is a hack that will almost certainly save you a lot of heartache in the workplace. At least, if you’re anything like us when it comes to prioritising.
Teams has an extremely convenient workaround concerning work reminders and tasks: add the Remind and Tasks apps to your Teams account.* When you receive or send a message you would like to remind yourself about later or add to your list of tasks, hover on the message. Click on the three-dot icon next to the emoji reactions, and select ‘more actions’. Both apps should appear as options. After which, you will be able to customise personalised reminders and tasks.
There is also an option to add colleagues to your created task, which works well on collaborative projects.
*How to add apps to your Teams account:
On the bottom-left corner of your Teams app, select ‘Apps’ and browse through the selection for an array of productivity-oriented tools.
4. Save those messages for another day
If you prefer responding to messages in batches, save your messages and revisit them as and when possible. Move your cursor to the upper-right corner of a message you wish to save, select the three-dot icon and click Save this message.
When it’s time to get to those messages, click on your profile icon at the upper right corner of the Teams app and select Saved from the menu. Alternatively, type “/saved” into the search bar for faster access. However, do not forget to clear your saves from time to time once addressed!
5. Get your files in order
On Teams, your files may be stored on shared platforms or on your personal OneDrive cloud. To ensure colleagues are able to obtain access to shared documents at all times, create shared folders in channels where everyone with authorisation will be able to access documents. If you choose to host documents on your personal OneDrive, these will require you to individually authorise access.
6. Announcements on Teams channels
Some messages are more important than others. To emphasise on what matters most, use the announcement feature in a channel.
Under the message box in your channel, select Format . Following which, click on New conversation > Announcement. From here, you can customise your announcement with background options, images, headlines and more (we suggest using a short headline to keep things simple!). Once you’ve given your announcement a topic, click Send!
