Microsoft for dummies

5 ways to be more productive on Teams

1. Open your Microsoft documents from the desktop app

TL; DR

Always open your Microsoft Documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) in their mother application (as opposed to opening them in the Teams application).

What you need to know:

  • By default MS Teams open all your Microsoft Files within MS Teams. This hinders your productivity as you have to get out of the file to use the other features on MS teams.
  • The best option would be to change the default value to open all the documents in the mother application.
  • This way you have access to all the functionalities and you can limit the usage of Teams for communication and project management.
  • Also note that opening on the web could be an option, but you still don’t have access to all the functionalities.

What you need to do:

Change the default property to open all the files in the mother app (figure 1).

Fiture 1: change the default value
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Figure 2: The end result

2. Customize your pinned apps

TL; DR

You should customize the pinned apps layout by pinning and adding the apps you use the most.

What you need to know:

  • In MS Teams, the pinned apps are the applications that you see on the leftmost tab.
  • You have the ability to pin other applications to that same task bar with a limit of 9 applications on the desktop app and 8 on the web app.
  • You also have the ability to move and remove pinned apps from that leftmost bar.
What you need to do:

Identify the applications you need the most, the applications you don’t use and modify the pinned apps tab to your need (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Complete reconfiguration of the pinned apps tab

3. Organize your Teams

TL; DR

You should also customize your Teams in a way that will improve your productivity. 

What you need to know:

  • You can also change the layout of your Teams
  • You can move Teams to change their order.
  • You can also hide Teams that you’re no longer using to make the active Teams more accessible.

What you need to do:

Reconfigure the layout of the Teams apps (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Customize your Teams

4. Manage notifications

TL; DR

You can change your availability status to “do not disturb” and choose the unique people from whom you can receive a notification.

What you need to know:

  • Receiving messages, even a single one, can affect your focus.
  • On MS Teams you can change your status to “do not disturb”.
  • This will disable notification pop-ups.
  • You can add Priority Access to some people (Your managers if you like your current job 😂) to still receive notifications from them.
  • Note you will receive all the notifications, but you won’t see the flashy pop-ups.

What you need to do:

  1. Change your status to “do not disturb” (Figure 1).
  2. Press on the change settings pop-out that gets created (Figure 2).
  3. Add the people to which you always have to be available (Figure 2)

Figure 1: Change status to "Do not disturb"
Figure 2: Add priority access to specific people

5. Search content with "CTRL F"

TL; DR

You can use the CTRL F shortcut to search for content from within a chat or within a channel. This will help you search for content more efficiently.

 

What you need to know:

  • Using “CTRL .” (Control key and dot key, in case that was confusing 🙄).
  • One of the shortcuts is the CTRL F.
  • CTRL F will allow you to search for content within a specific channel or a specific Chat.
  • Depending on where you press CTRL F.
  • So if you press CTRL F in the Teams pinned app, you will research content from a channel and if you do so from the Chat pinned app, you will research content from a chat.
  • After filtering by chat or channel, you can write additional keywords to search within that chat or channel.

What you need to do:

  • Choose a Channel and press CTRL F (Figure 1)
  • Choose a chat and press CTRL F (Figure 2)
Figure 1: Control F within a channel
Figure 2: Control F within a chat