We’ve seen lots of cool headlines about Microsoft Teams over the last month or so, all built to make your collaborative (and remote-work) life easier. Since the pandemic started, Microsoft has put a lot of time an effort into Teams to make it the remote collaboration tool of choice for your business. Realistically, we could write individual article posts about quite a bit of these tips and tweaks and features (and we may down the road), but we wanted to get some of this stuff to you quicker instead of having you wait. So here is some Teams headlines, tips, and tricks for you:
Meet Now Links and Sharing Meeting Links: Microsoft Teams will now let users share a “Meet Now” link without actually starting a meeting. This feature was something that other tools (like Zoom) had been able to do for a while, but this adds a much needed feature. In addition, Outlook now has “Meet Now” button in its calendar which should make starting impromptu meetings much easier.
Raise Your Hand Your Keyboard: The raise your hand feature isn’t new. However, it was only accessible with the mouse and from an accessibility-standpoint, that’s not ideal. We love keyboard shortcuts and you can now raise your hand in Teams by pressing Ctrl-Shift-K.
Website Content to Teams Channels: If you have a website whose content you want to automatically pull into a Teams channel, see if the site has an RSS feed (use the checker here). RSS feeds are basically syndication feeds that publishers can put out to allow systems to be notified when new content is posted. Here is Weston’s Blog RSS feed for example. If the site you’re looking at pulling has an RSS feed, you can pull its updated into a Microsoft Teams Channel.
Teams Webinars: If you plan on using teams to host a larger public webinar or presentation, there are some things you need to know and some settings you need to adjust before you do so. This article will help you with that.
Suppress Noise in Teams Videos: We all have coworker that always has a bunch of background noise in every video call they’re on. Teams has a new AI-based noise suppression tool that works very well, as this hilarious video will demonstrate:
If you are one of those co-workers that is always making noise, turn on the feature. Your teammates will thank you.