Keeping on top of communication in Microsoft Teams can be overwhelming. More so for those of us who have lived in an email Inbox dominant world, surviving by priority flags, follow up reminders and comprehensive folder structures!
From my experience with Teams, important information or tasks can end up being buried deep within one of a dozen channels or chat streams you’ve been multi-tasking in (rather than being kept nice and tidy in an email folder!)
Moving away from the Inbox; namely, being able to easily keep track of what you need to know (or do) and what you can ignore (delete) requires a mental paradigm shift in the way we work.
While notifications in Teams help somewhat for new items or mentions, it’s easy to miss something that’s unread as you move between apps, documents and conversations.
Here are a few tips I’ve picked up that help me keep track of communications at Mobile Mentor:
1. Quickly find posts or chats where you’ve been specifically mentioned
@ Mentions are one of the key things I look out for to help me keep on top of what I need to know about or do. The Activity Feed in Teams helps me keep track of when I am mentioned as well as other activity that’s of interest.
Unfortunately, it can get a bit messy here too (e.g. listing every emoji and text response to your posts). The filter feature can help here as you can filter by missed calls, replies or simply text (e.g. a name) as well as @ Mentions.
To use the @ Mentions filter:
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Navigate to the Activity Feed (Top left tab in Teams)
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Select the Filter Icon (Top right of your Feed section)
o Select the more “…” icon to view available filters
o You can now select the @ Mentions filter
2. Saving things for later by using the Bookmark feature
Quite often there’s a post I need to revisit, either to respond to when I’m ready or to recall information I’ll need at some point.
The Bookmark feature in Teams (whilst a bit clumsy) helps solve this problem and allows you to save items to a list that you can refer back to you needed:
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On a post or message, hover your mouse over the top until you see the emoji replies
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Click the “…” more options icon and then select “Save this message”
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The message is now saved.
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To get to your list of bookmarked messages:
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Navigate to the Profile photo (top right corner of the screen) and select it
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In the menu select “Saved”
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Your saved messages will now appear
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3. Save time with Keyboard Shortcuts
If you’re a keyboard shortcut fan like me, you will love these time-savers in Teams!
My favourites are the quick functions from the Search bar, such as Go to Saved Messages or send a Quick Chat.
This last one is brilliant as you can send a chat message while looking at a document or while in a Teams call without leaving where you are!
