10 Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks to help you get the best out of it

A lot of teams work from home, and they must have a tool that helps them communicate, manage tasks, get on video calls, and so on. Microsoft Teams is a viable solution that anyone can use; it is available without any extra cost. In this post, I am sharing 10 Microsoft Teams tips and tricks that will help you improve your experience with the product.

These are some of the important Microsoft Tips and Tricks you should know and try. Some of them will need an IT admin or Office 365 admin to enable the feature.

Microsoft Teams offers tons of features, and if you use features that you think will be worth adding to the list, let us know.

Conversations could be lengthy, and they can be in large volumes. That’s where the bookmark feature in Microsoft Teams comes into the picture. Any message or attachment in a conversation can be bookmarked. Select the message, and it will reveal emoji picker along with three dots. Click on it, and you have the option to “Save this message.”

To access saved message, click on your profile on the top-right, and then select “Saved.” It will reveal the list of all the saved messages. When you click on any of the bookmarked messages, it will open the whole conversation, and it’ll temporarily highlight the saved message with a yellow background.

To remove a message from the list, select or hover over it, and then click on the “unsave this message” menu. You can also unsave any message by hovering over it on the list, and then clicking on the bookmark icon.

Read: How to integrate Zoom with Microsoft Teams.

It is a powerful feature which you should master to find anything in the ocean of messages. Click on the search box, and you can type forward-slash(/) to see all the commands, mention feature(@) to find a contact and all the conversation, The “@” feature can also be used to interface with installed apps.

Not everyone uses the same service, and if you have just moved to Microsoft Teams or want to connect with other services, then you can use the Microsoft Teams’ connectors. You can use it to receive notifications and messages from your web, RSS feeds, and even o push content from different Office 365  applications into Microsoft Teams.

Connectors are available in the Teams menu and are similar to apps, but they work differently. If your company has built a custom connector, then you can publish it into the store and access it or ask IT to deploy it for the company.

If you are using an app, the navigation buttons are going to be your savior. Available on the top left, these buttons act as the browsing buttons (back and forward) like on the browser. So if you opened the inbox and then want to back to your team conversation, use the nav buttons to move back and forth.

Teams allow you to add multiple sections or tabs. You can add a wiki, a calendar, a website, or even a file. To add a table, click on the ‘+’ sign on the right -hand side of the channel and then search for what it is you want to add in the tab.

Microsoft has done an incredible job when it comes to translation, and it is powerful enough to translate messages in real-time. If you are conversing with people around the world, the translation feature will be handy. Once enabled by the administrator, you can click hover over any message, click on the three-dot menu, and then choose to translate in your default language.

To read all the messages in a distraction less view, Microsoft has integrated immersive reader for all team message. It is useful, especially for those who need special assistance. In the immersive view, you can read the message with clarity, and also use the audio tool to read the message aloud. To have eth best experience, set the speed, and audio selection.

Click on the menu button of any message, and select Immersive Reader. It also offers extra features such as translation, line focus, change text size, bookmarks, and more.

If you have access to the Microsoft planner under Microsoft 365 subscription, then it is going to be the most straightforward task manager for you. It is recommended for those who do not use any third-party task manager and need one for the Team. Once integrated, you can create a task out of any message and assign it to any person. You can also “pin” the Planner app to any channel to make it more accessible in one click.

If you have used Skype meetings, I am sure you already know about this feature. It allows you to hide what is in your background to keep your privacy.  Microsoft teams offer video calling, and it uses Skype, which means you can use the same set of features.  If you want to activate Background Blur during meetings, click on the more actions on the call menu and select ‘Blur My Background.’

TIP: You can also use Custom Backgrounds in Microsoft Teams.

While Teams-Outlook integration is yet to happen, until then if you want to forward any email into your Team, you can enable the built-in feature, click on the Teams menu, and then select Get email address.  It will then reveal a unique email id to which you can forward an email to appear on the teams. The configuration allows you to let anyone send emails, or only members of Team or only from the fixed set of domains.

That said, there can be a lot of tips tricks available for Microsoft teams. These are some of the best and will make sure you get to learn something new and help you use Microsoft Teams even better.

Microsoft Word accessibility tips

Creating accessible Microsoft Word documents is relatively easy when you know what is required. Word also has a real time accessibility checker that alerts you to errors and provides accessibility warnings and tips.

Accessible Word documents should have the following features:

The Word accessibility checker indicates errors and warnings for items that may affect understanding or functionality for users with disabilities and provides and tips for making additional accessibility improvements.

Step 1: Click File

Step 2: Click the Check for Issues button and select Check Accessibility

Step 1: Click the Review tab

Step 2: Click Check Accessibility in the Accessibility group

Once the accessibility checker is active, you can click on the listed items to gain more information about the errors, warnings, and tips and where they occur in the document.

Step 1: Click the Review tab

Step 2: Click Check Accessibility

Once the accessibility checker is active, you can click on identified items to gain more information about the errors, warnings, and tips and where they occur in the document.

Headings define the structure of a document and allow users to quickly navigate to specific content. They are essentially an organizational outline shown within the paragraph structure of a document.

Headings have different levels that correspond to the topical structure of a document. Heading level 1 (h1) is a main topic or title, heading level 2 (h2) is a sub-topic, heading level 3 (h3) is a sub-sub topic, and so on. Think of heading levels as you do outline structure.Heading levels 1 (h1) through level 6 (h6) may be used to designate document structure.

You'll find headings under the Home tab in the Styles group. Click within the content you want to change to a heading and choose the appropriate heading level or use Normal for normal paragraph text. If you highlight only a portion of text, only the highlighted portion will change to the selected heading. This technique is sometimes used when a content creator wants headings to be in-line with the text instead of on a separate line above the text section.

You may only see Heading 1 and Heading 2 in the styles group at first; once you use a Heading 2, Heading 3 will appear and so on.

Bulleted and numbered lists help break up long passages of text by organizing key content or procedures into meaningful points or procedural steps. They provide variety, which prevents reading fatigue, and they allow users to quickly identify the key points.

Sighted users scan a document visually to find list information. When lists are created properly, assistive technology users can navigate directly to a specific list within a document. If lists are not created properly (e.g. asterisk symbols followed by tabs), assistive technologies treat them no differently than normal text, essentially burying them in surrounding text, which makes them difficult to find and navigate.

List options exist under the “Home” tab, in the “Paragraph” group. Type the content you would like to make into a list, then highlight it and click either the bulleted list icon or the numbered list icon (Word also has a multi-level icon) to add a generic bullet or number to each item. Click the dropdown arrow beside any type of list for additional bullet style options and/or to customize the numbering level or format.

You can also click a bulleted or numbered list icon and then start typing your list. When you reach the end, click the list icon again to toggle it off. Placing the cursor at the beginning of a list item and backspacing or clicking the list icon will remove a bullet or number. Using the “Increase Indent” or “Decrease Indent” icons (or Tab/Shift + Tab) from the Paragraphs group allows you to create and control the appearance of a multi-level list.

Alt text is announced to an assistive technology user to convey contextual information about images and other graphical content. Alt text is a brief description; it is not intended to describe every aspect of an image, just what is contextually relevant.

Graphical content can convey important information. Making this information available to people with vision impairments provides an equitable experience, allowing them to understand the same message that sighted people infer from an image.

Tips:

Step 1: Right click an image, shape, table, etc. (control + click on Mac) and choose Format (Picture/Shape/Object, etc.) depending on the type of content.

Step 2: The “Format” (Picture/Shape/Object name) sidebar will appear. Click on the Layout & Properties icon at the top of the sidebar.

Step 3: Select Alt Text.

Step 4: Type the alt text in the Description field. The “Title” field is optional.

Step 1: Right click on the image, object, Word Art, Smart Art, etc. (control + click on Mac).

Step 2: Select Edit Alt Text (or just Alt Text on Mac).

Step 3: Type the alt text in the field that appears.

Step 4: If an image has no contextual value, select Mark as decorative and assistive technologies will not indicate an image/object is present.

Assistive technology users can locate information and understand relationships more efficiently when data tables are provided with accessibility supports, particularly column and row headings.

Tips:

Step 1: From the Insert tab, use the Table button to select a desired number of rows and columns.

Step 2: After setting up your table cells, click anywhere in the table. The Table Tools Design tab will appear (called just Table Design on Mac)

Step 3: Click Design (for PCs, skip to step 4 for Macs)

Step 4: Use the proper way to identify headers based on your table layout A. Single row of column headers (across the top):

Step 5: Provide alt text for the table. This is particularly important if there is no caption or heading above the table.

Step 6: Click OK.

Descriptive links are hyperlinks that appear as meaningful text rather than a long string of characters. Assistive technology users can choose settings that read all links on a page before reading content; it’s helpful to know where the links lead without having to click each one. If descriptive links are used instead of a lengthy URL or meaningless link text such as “more info” or "click here,” users can determine whether or not they want to click the link

Step 1: Type a phrase that describes what information the user will access or why they should click a link.

Step 2: Highlight the text to be used as a descriptive link.

Step 3: Creating the link can be done in several ways:

Step 4: A dialog box will open. The “Text to display” is often shown along with a text entry field where you can paste or type the URL.

Step 5: Click the OK button.

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