Getting ready

To access the Teams app, you need the appropriate Microsoft 365 license plan as described in Chapter 1, Overview of Microsoft 365.Microsoft also provides a Commercial Cloud Trial offer for existing Microsoft 365 users in your organization for 6 months without charge. They can try the product for 1 year without being licensed for Teams.

How to do it...

To install Teams, follow these instructions:

1. Go to www.office.com.
2. Sign in with your work account as described in Chapter 1, Overview of Microsoft 365.

3. Click on Teams (shown in the following screenshot):

   

4. You will be prompted to download the desktop version by a pop-up screen, as in the following screenshot:

   

5. Click the Get the Windows app button to get the client version of Teams.

This will download the client application installer for you. Running the installer will guide you through the installation process and install Teams for you. You can then sign in to the Teams desktop app by using your organization credentials.If you are using the free version of Teams, you can log in using your Live account.

If you choose to stay on the web app, you can download the app later by clicking on the Get App icon in the lower left-hand pane of your Teams web application interface.

How it works...

Although Teams has a web and client version, the user experience on the web and desktop applications is strikingly similar. The ability to join video calls and share your screen is supported on both the desktop app and the web version (only Edge and Chrome are supported at the moment). However, some features, such as “Allow Control” (to remotely control another user’s desktop) and the ability to host "live events," are only available on the desktop version.

Let us look at the layout of the Teams App.

Teams Top Panel

The Top panel in the Teams interface provides the following options:

1. Clicking the search bar next to the magnifying glass allows you to perform a search and invoke commands (explained in the Searching within Teams recipe in this chapter).
2. Clicking the profile picture provides additional settings, such as:
   • Setting availability (Available, Busy, etc.)
   • Change Org: The Org icon allows you to change organization: you will see other organizations in this section if you are invited to collaborate with external teams outside of your organization
   • Setting a status message (for example, I am working from home today)
   • Accessing Saved messages (discussed in the Initiating conversations via posts recipe in this chapter)
   • Updating General Settings such as: choosing a Teams skin color; setting default audio devices for Team calls; managing notifications (discussed in the Creating channels and tabs recipe in this chapter); setting keyboard shortcuts for common Teams tasks, etc.

Teams Left Panel

The panel on the left lets you navigate through various features within Teams.

Please note that some feature icons might be hidden under the ... icon. Let's look at some of these features in more detail.

Activity

Clicking on the Activity tab takes you to the activity feed. This feed rolls up notifications related to all your team channels and team conversations and one-on-one chats or calls. A notification appears in your activity feed when someone does the following:

• Mentions you
• Mentions a team you are part of
• Mentions the channel of the team you are part of
• Replies to your post
• Likes your post
• Adds you to a team
• Makes you a team owner
• Leaves you a chat message
• Calls you (and you missed the call)

If you have any unread notifications and you are not in your activity feed, a red circle with a number appears next to the Activity icon:

Under Activity | Feed | My Activity, you will see all the messages that you posted on any of your Team channels.

Clicking the filter icon next to the Feed heading displays a text box that lets you type free text, thereby filtering the search results:

You can also click on the ... icon to filter the search results by a certain type:

Clicking the gear icon next to the filter icon takes you to Teams settings page, as described above in the Top Panel section.

Chat

The Chat tab lets you initiate a chat with an individual or a group. You can have threaded conversations with one or more people. You can also share files by uploading the files in the chat window or just by dragging them to the conversation text window. The files are automatically uploaded to OneDrive and participants receive a link to access them:

You can initiate a chat by clicking on the Compose (1) icon. A text box appears (2) where you can specify the name(s) of the people you would like to chat with.

Teams

The Teams tab displays all the teams that you are part of. It also lets you join or create a team:

Every team that you create has a default General channel to start with. Channels let you create focus areas, such as a specific topic, department, or project. We'll learn about channels shortly.If you are a team owner, you can add more channels:

Each channel gets its own area for posts and a storage place for channel-specific files in SharePoint:

We will learn about channels in the Creating channels and tabs recipe in this chapter.

Calendar

The Calendar option lets you schedule team meetings or audio/video calls with an individual or team. Read more about the Calendar in the Scheduling a meeting recipe

Calls

The Call option lets you make audio/video calls with an individual or team. Clicking on this tab, takes you to the Speed dial page where you can see people you frequently interact with. You can add people to your speed dial for quicker access:

You can also create a group to logically club them based on your interactions with them as shown in the following screenshot. To add people into a group, you need to create the group first (1) and then add people (3) into the group (2):

You can access your contact list by selecting Contacts. You can add people that are internal to your organization, as well as external contacts from this screen:

You can check the history of calls that you placed or received using the History link.Teams also support voicemails. People can leave a voicemail for you if you are unable to attend the call. The good thing about voicemails is that it even generates a transcript of the message. So, you can choose to read the message instead of listening to it. This is especially handy when someone leaves you a voicemail while you are in a meeting. Instead of attending the call, you can glance through the transcript of the voicemail.Read more about Calls in the Scheduling a meeting recipe.

Files

Finally, the Files option displays all the files that you have access to or files that have been shared with you in Teams, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint. The Location column displays where the file resides (including other cloud locations like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)

You can access your OneDrive files by clicking on the OneDrive link on the left. You can move or copy your files from OneDrive to Teams using the context menu (the three dots at the end of each line).

There's more...

Microsoft Teams also comes with a free version that can be used for chats, file sharing, and video calling. The features that it offers have been listed on the Office website. You can access this at: https://m365book.page.link/teams-free.Microsoft Teams supports keyboard shortcuts and might be handy for those who prefer the keyboard. You can find Teams keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac listed in the following link: https://m365book.page.link/teams-shortcuts.Next, we’ll learn about one of the most important Teams recipes that explains how you can create a team.

Getting ready

You should be able to create a new team as long as your organization has assigned you a valid Teams license and has enabled Team creation.

How to do it...

Follow these steps to create a new team:

1. Click on the Join or create a team option:

   

2. Clicking Join or create a team actually takes you to the screen where you can join one of the existing teams, join a team with a code, search for an existing team to join, or create a new team.

3. If you Create a new team, you can choose to create a new team (which creates a Microsoft 365 group in the background) or connect the team to an existing Microsoft 365 group. Those of you who are already using Microsoft 365 Groups can use the latter option to connect your existing group to Teams:

   Creating a Microsoft 365 group does not create a team; however, creating a team creates a group. The Microsoft 365 group created as a result of a team doesn't appear in Outlook by default. Administrators will need to run a script if this feature is required. Learn more about Office 365 Groups in Supplement Chapter 3.

   

4. You will then be asked whether you want to create a private, public, or organization-wide team.
5. Give your team a name.

Now, you have created your own team.

How it works...

We just learned how to create a new team from scratch. The other option lets you convert an existing Microsoft 365 group into a team. As it turns out, Microsoft 365 Groups were released before Microsoft Teams. So, this option allows you to upgrade an existing Office 365 group (that was created before Teams was released) to Teams. We will discuss this more in the next section.Based on its privacy, a team can be of the following types:

• A private team: This is a restricted area that is only accessible to the team members.
• A public team: This team is available to join for everyone in the organization.
• An organization-wide team: This adds all of the organization's staff to a team. Only global administrators can create organization-wide teams. You will automatically be added to an organization-wide team unless your administrator has explicitly disabled your Teams account.

There's more...

The following key considerations should be kept in mind while creating teams:When you specify the team name while creating a team, Microsoft 365 doesn't validate whether a team with the same name already exists. It will instead let you create another one with the same name, as shown in the following screenshot:

The new team with the same name then appears in the Teams interface.This poses a challenge because a SharePoint site is created for each team and you cannot have two SharePoint sites with the same URL. To assign a separate storage space, Microsoft 365 adds a random number next to the team name when provisioning the SharePoint site, which can then result in a lot of confusion. As an example, it created the following site for the second Team from the screenshot above: https://m365x263078.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales774/Shared%20Documents.It is, therefore, recommended that you check for an existing team before creating one using the search option on the team creation page, as shown here:

Team owners can assign an email address to each team channel. The email address cannot be changed or modified, is assigned at random, and appears in your organization's global address list. This feature has some benefits, which we will see in the recipe on Creating channels.

See also

• The Joining a team recipe in this chapter
• The Leaving a team recipe in this chapter
• The Adding a member recipe in this chapter
• Supplement Chapter 3, Microsoft 365 Groups

Now that you have created a Team, let’s learn about adding members to it.

Getting ready

Members can be added to a team by the team owner. Only an owner can promote another member to the Owner role.

How to do it...

To add a new member:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.
2. Click on the ... link next to the team name.
3. This brings up a context menu with an Add member option.
4. Type the name of the person you would like to add.
5. Change the role of the member to Owner (if you have owner privileges).

The team members section will look as follows:

How it works...

The new member automatically gets access to all the related Microsoft 365 services, such as SharePoint, Planner, and Microsoft 365 groups. The new member receives an introductory email after being added.You and other members of your Team are notified via the General tab about new members being added to your team:What a member or a guest can or cannot do is set by the team owner through the Teams settings:

You can request to Join a Team even if you were not specifically added to it by an owner. We'll see how to join a team in the next topic.

See also

• The Joining a team recipe in this chapter
• The Leaving a team recipe in this chapter

Getting ready

You are added to an organization-wide team as soon as you are added to your organization's Microsoft 365 tenant. For public and private teams, you need to take the following steps.

How to do it...

To join a team, do the following:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.

   

2. To join a public team, click on the Join or create a team option.
3. You should see all the publicly available teams.
4. Click on the Join team option to join the team.
5. To join private teams, the team owner will have to either add you as a member or send you a team code. A team code can be generated by going to Team | Settings | Team code.
6. Click the … next to the team name, then to Manage team | Settings | Expand Team code | Generate.

Guest users won't be able to join a private team using a code. They need to be added explicitly by the owner.

How it works...

After joining a team, you can participate in team conversations. You can also view conversations that have taken place in the past. When you are part of a team, you can access all the channels within that team. Once you have joined it, the team starts to appear in the left-hand side navigation pane along with the other teams you are part of.

See also

• The Leaving a team recipe in this chapter
• The Adding a member recipe in this chapter

Now that we know how to join a team, let’s see how you can leave a team that you are a member of.

Getting ready

You do not need special permission to leave a private or public team.

You cannot leave an organization-wide team on your own. You will need to ask the administrator to remove you.

How to do it...

To leave a team:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.
2. Click on ... next to the name of the team you want to leave.
3. Select the Leave the team option from the context menu, as shown here:

How it works...

When you click Leave the team, all the permissions associated with that team and its channels are revoked. You also lose access to the underlying SharePoint site and all the content within it.

See also

• The Deleting a team recipe in this chapter
• The Joining a team recipe in this chapter

If there is a team that you provisioned, you can delete it by following the next recipe.

Getting ready

You need to be the owner to delete a team. You can delete a team via the Outlook client, Outlook Web Access, or the Outlook mobile app.

How to do it...

1. To delete a team, do the following:
2. Click on ... next to the name of the team you want to delete.
3. Select the Delete the team option from the context menu, as shown:

How it works...

By deleting a team, you lose all its associated components, such as the team mailbox, calendar, SharePoint site, notebook, Planner tasks, and so on.

The team owner or administrator can restore a deleted team within 30 days.

See also

• The Leaving a team recipe in this chapter
• The Joining a team recipe in this chapter

In our next recipe, we are going to learn about creating channels and tabs in a team that you are a member of.

Getting ready

Team owner can create new channels. The owner decides if members can create channels and tabs.

How to do it...

To add a channel:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.
2. Click on ... next to the name of the team you want to add a channel to.

3. Select the Add channel option from the context menu, as shown:

   

4. Provide a channel name and set the Privacy option:

Adding a channel adds two tabs to the channel—one for conversations and the other for shared files.Besides the standard apps, a channel lets you enhance the Teams experience by connecting other Microsoft 365 or third-party applications. You can use connectors for scenarios that include the following:

• Managing team backlog items in Trello
• Posting messages in your team channel using Microsoft Flow
• Enhancing team conversations using actionable cards

To add additional tabs, do the following:

1. Click on the + symbol next to the Files tab.

2. Choose an app from the list or search for it, as shown here:

   

3. Provide the details required for the specific app and click Save.

How it works...

Creating a channel provides you with a dedicated conversation area and a place to store all your files. Channels are public or private. All public channels in a team share a common SharePoint document library in a team site.However, creating a private channel assigns you with a separate SharePoint site collection altogether. Owners or members of the private channel are the only ones who can access the channel.Private channels appear with a lock icon () in front of the channel name.Tabs in the channel let you connect to both Microsoft 365 as well as to connect to other third-party apps to your team. There are two types of tabs:Static tabs provide a personalized experience to everyone (such as a tab for your personal notes in the channel).Configurable tabs need you to provide additional configuration information while adding the app, such as the following:

• To add a Power BI dashboard, you need to specify the workspace name.
• To add an Excel app, you need to provide the worksheet name.

Tabs offer interactive web content to the user without them having to leave the team's interface.

Showing or hiding teams and channels

Keep your list of teams and channels tidy and relevant by hiding any teams or channels you don't want to see. Just click on … beside the team/channel name and select Show or Hide:

Hiding a team will remove it from your list of teams, but you can always access or show it again by expanding the Hidden teams section towards the bottom of the teams list. If you know you're a member of a team but you can't see it, you can scroll down to this section, locate your team, click … next to it and then click Show to move it to the Your teams section:

Managing notifications

There are, broadly, three types of notifications that you receive in Teams.

• A banner: This alert pops up on your device (on desktop, your web browser, or mobile) even when you are using another application:

  

• In the feed: A badge notification appears on the icon:

  

• An email: A notification arrives in your inbox:

There are lots of different ways to access and manage these notifications in Teams.A good place to start is via the notification settings—click your profile picture at the top-right of the screen (or initials if you don’t have a profile picture), then go to Settings | Notifications. This is where you can turn your notifications (and their associated sounds) on and off and select how you would like them to display. There are lots of things you can turn on and off, so you can either set it up to your liking or just stick with the default:

If you receive too many notifications, you can also reduce them by hiding a channel. Hidden channels will only show up in your list if a message is marked important or when someone @mentions you or the channel.

See also

• The Initiating conversations via posts recipe in this chapter
• The Sharing files recipe in this chapter

Channels are a medium of having conversations with other members of the team. We shall learn about conversations in our next recipe.

Getting ready

We mentioned earlier that every team can have one or more channels. The Post tab in the channel displays team conversations and other channel activity. All team members can view channel conversations and participate in them.

How to do it...

To initiate a conversation:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.
2. Click on ... next to the name of the team that you want to post in.
3. Select a channel. You will see all the channel activity in the conversation area.
4. To participate in conversations, use the text box provided at the bottom, as shown in the following screenshot:

Conversations support @mentions, emojis, attachments, and video calling.

1. Press Enter or the symbol.
2. To edit a message, click on the ... symbol and choose the Edit option.

The option lets you save a message. You can search for saved messages later.You can upvote a conversation by clicking on the like button, as shown:

How it works...

The options available under the text box are configurable and can be switched on or off by your administrator. This can be done through the team's admin center.Using @mentions is a way of notifying an individual or team of a message (shown in the following screenshot). When mentioned, the individual or team will receive a notification in their Microsoft Teams client. Using the Reply button will keep messages in the same conversation thread:

A channel appears in bold if there are new, unread conversations in the channel:

There's more...

Besides conversations, Teams also supports one-to-one and group chats. These chats can be initiated from the chat icon in the top pane (see (1) in the following screenshot). You can type the name of the individual(s) you would like to chat with (see (2) in the following screenshot). Your conversations are only seen by the participants of the chat. Any files that you share in these chats will be saved in OneDrive and shared with the participants:

See also

• The Sharing files recipe in this chapter
• The Adding a connector recipe in this chapter

Now let’s look at another key feature of Teams: meetings.

Getting ready

You do not need any special permission to schedule or join a team meeting.

How to do it...

You can set up the various meeting types in the following ways:

Meet Now

1. Go to your team's channel (1)
2. Go to your team's channel post (2)

3. Click on Reply (3) and then click on the video camera (4) icon:

   

4. Specify the title of the meeting, turn video on or off and click Meet now:

How it works...

All meeting types (except live meetings) provide an interactive experience to the attendees. The team's meeting interface displays a control pane when you move your mouse in the meeting interface:

This panel contains options to do the following:

• Turn your video camera on or off.
• Mute the microphone.
• Share your screen or application.
• Raise your hand to ask a question or to request to be unmuted.
• Send a message.
• Share a file.
• Invite more participants.
• Choose your speaker and microphone.
• Bring up the meeting notes pane.
• Reveal meeting information (such as conference bridge details).
• Make the window full screen.
• Add background effects (discussed later).
• Launch the keypad.
• Share files.
• Record the meeting.
• End the meeting.

If you record a meeting, they automatically appear in Microsoft Stream (refer to the Chapter on Microsoft Stream in the Appendix) and can be shared with others who missed the meeting. A searchable transcript of the recording is also generated:

Teams has various capabilities to enhance the calling experience in meetings.

Live captions

The live captions feature adds real-time captions to a conversation for anyone who wants to use them, which helps make meetings more inclusive and effective. The feature is useful for people with a hearing impairment or differing language proficiencies:

Once it is turned on, the function will transcribe what anyone says and display it as a live caption at the lower-left side of the meeting screen.

Custom backgrounds

This feature lets you add a custom background while keeping your face in focus. It is a useful feature to use when you are in a public place or working from home. There are many custom background images provided by default.The one highlighted in the following screenshot lets you blur your background:

You can take this even further by using a photo of your office with your company branding or simply use an image to add some humor:

There's more...

Those of you who prefer using Outlook to schedule meetings can use the Teams add-in which gets installed when you install Teams:

This option lets you leverage Outlook's familiar scheduling window. A link to the Teams meeting is inserted automatically in the invite and the meeting location is set to Microsoft Teams Meeting:

Microsoft Teams also comes with a special meeting type called Live event that lets you stream a video or content to a large audience. You can schedule and run a live event using the Teams client.When you schedule a live event, you are assigned the role of producer. You can add additional event presenters or co-producers. Besides the meeting time, meeting venue, and meeting agenda, you can choose some other special options as shown below:

The Q&A feature is very useful when you are running a webinar and don't want to get distracted by attendees talking in the background. Attendees are all muted; they can ask questions, which appear on the producer's dashboard.The questions that are asked are not visible to others until the producer chooses to publish them. The producer can publish or delete a question:

The producer controls the streaming content that appears on the screen of live attendees. You can share your desktop, application, or a video feed with the attendees. You can even live stream a video or YouTube clip by turning on the option to share system audio:

You can run a live event from Microsoft Stream as well (refer to the Chapter on Microsoft Stream in the Appendix). You can turn on captions for the event and share a video with subtitles later. The transcription can be updated manually too.

See also

• The Initiating conversations via posts recipe in this chapter
• The Sharing files recipe in this chapter

Getting ready

All members of a team can upload files to any channel they wish to.

How to do it...

There are multiple ways of adding files to your team channel, which we will explore in detail.

Sharing files via conversations

To share files with peers in a conversation:

1. Select Teams from the left-hand side pane.
2. Click on a channel.
3. Drag and drop a file into the conversation area, as shown in the following screenshot:

Also, note that if files are shared in the chat portion of the interface rather than in a channel post, they will be stored in and shared from the user's OneDrive for Business account.

How it works...

Files are stored in the Documents library inside a folder with the same name as the channel name.Files that are shared in the conversation area are uploaded to the Documents library automatically.The uploaded files can be copied, moved, or even shared across multiple channels (instead of creating copies of the same files) by using the Get link option and then pasting the link in another team or channel.There is a File option in the left-hand side navigation panel, as shown in the following screenshot:

There is also a File option in each channel:

The difference is that the option in the left-hand side navigation panel displays all the files that you have access to or the ones that have been shared with you by a colleague from within SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Teams, whereas the option under the channel area displays only the files shared within that channel.

See also

• The Initiating conversations via posts recipe in this chapter
• The Creating channels recipe in this chapter
• The Scheduling a meeting recipe in this chapter

All content within Teams is searchable via the search/command bar; we shall learn about it in the next recipe.

Getting ready

The search feature within Teams is available to everyone. However, you can only search for content you have access to.

How to do it...

To search for a message, person, or file:

1. Type the word or phrase you are searching for in the search box. In this example, we will search for the word everyone. The search results are grouped under three topics—Messages, People, and Files:

   

2. Clicking on a search result will reveal the contents of the result.

3. You can use the filter option to narrow down your search results:

   

4. The search box also serves as a command box if you type / in the search box. The Microsoft Teams interface brings up a list of all the available commands and what each command does:

How it works...

Using Teams, you can search for messages, people, and files.

Searching for people in your Microsoft 365 tenant

You can search for your colleagues from within the Teams interface:

You can initiate a chat with your colleague using the Teams command box. Simply type /chat followed by the name of the person:

Searching for files within Teams and other Microsoft 365 locations

The /files search feature searches for files across Microsoft 365, including OneDrive and SharePoint. Just typing /files reveals all your recent files. The list is filtered as you type the filename:

See also

• The Initiating conversations via posts recipe in this chapter
• The Scheduling a meeting recipe in this chapter
• The Sharing files recipe in this chapter

The power of Teams is enhanced by its ability to integrate with other applications. This is achieved by using connections. We will learn about connections in the next recipe.

Getting ready

You need to be a team owner to add a connector.

How to do it...

To add an external connector:

1. Select a team using the navigation bar on the left.
2. Select the channel you want to add the connector to.
3. Click on the ... symbol, as shown, and select Connectors:

The next screen will display all the available applications that can be connected to Teams. You can use the filters on the left to narrow down the list:

1. Click Add and follow the application-specific instructions.

How it works...

Depending on what app you add, you might see subsequent screens that take you through a setup process. For instance, if you add a connector to GitHub, it will ask you to log in with your GitHub credentials and then it will pull your GitHub information through:

So, now, we don't need to have access to GitHub to track progress. We can track progress right from within a Teams channel conversation area:

There's more...

You can use connectors to create actionable cards in Teams, which lets you perform actions in the external application without having to leave the Teams interface. You can read about actionable cards here: https://m365book.page.link/adaptive-cards.

See also

• The Creating channels and tabs recipe in this chapter

Let’s now learn how you can use Microsoft Teams to help facilitate approval business processes in your organization.

Getting ready

Anyone with policy-granted permissions to use the Approvals app in Teams (allowed by default) can create approvals. A Teams Administrator would have to explicitly block the Approvals app via permission policy assigned to a user in order for it to not be available for that user.

How to do it…

1. From a new channel conversation or reply, select the Approvals icon from beneath the text box:

   

2. In the resulting dialog, leave Request type as Basic, add a request name, approver(s), and any relevant details your approvers need to know. You can also choose whether a single approver or all approvers’ responses are required to qualify as approval:

   

3. Scroll down in the dialog to attach a document (optional) and customize responses (optional):

   

4. When you’re satisfied with the approval, click Send to notify approver(s) and request their response(s).
5. If your team members haven’t used Approvals in your team before, you’ll get a prompt your first time to accept the privacy policy and terms and conditions for using Power Automate (which supports the Approvals app). Click Continue if you agree.

The Approvals app will post to the channel conversation with the details of the requested approval. All team members can see these details and monitor its current status:

How it works…

Posting a new approval in a Teams chat or channel conversation creates an approval process in the Approvals app. Approvals is powered by Power Automate, so the process is actually an approval flow running in the background. The flow will notify the approvers in the request, share the details you’ve provided, and allow them to submit a response with comment that, ultimately, updates in the original location (whether it was requested in a chat or channel conversation).

If you’re an approver of the request, you’ll see response options on the same post shown in step 6 (since she is an approver with the ability to approve/reject):

Approvers also get a Teams activity notification when an Approval is requested:

Approvers can also use the Approvals app in Teams to review all requested Approvals and work through them in one place:

Once approved, the original location (a channel conversation post in this case) is updated so all team members can see the status. Requester and approvers also have a history in the Approvals app they can refer to:

There's more...

Approvals can also be used in one-on-one and group chats. No matter where Approvals are initiated (chats or channel conversations) you can find a history of all sent and received approvals and their current status by navigating to the Approvals app via the left-hand navigation (app bar) of Teams:

The Approvals app has two tabs along the top to help you navigate from the requests you’ve been sent as an approver, as well as those you’ve sent as a requestor. If we were to look at the Sent tab for the approval we created in this recipe, you’d see the following:

You can also pin the Approvals app to the app bar so it will stay there as you navigate to other apps within Teams. Simply right-click the Approvals app once visible on the app bar and choose Pin:

From the Approvals app, Teams administrators and team owners are also able to customize the templates available in the entire organization, or in their specific teams respectively. This way users can do more than a generic approval. To customize templates, you can go to the Approvals app in Teams, select the … next to New approval request, then Manage templates:

Then select the team for which you wants to add a new template, followed by New template:

Choose from a large selection of templates from which you can start, or choose to create a new approval template from scratch:

Depending on the template chosen, you can then customize the fields (like form fields) and arrange them how you like. As you work through the wizard, you’ll have an opportunity to not only change fields but also specify specific approvers for a process so users can’t simply choose their own. This standardizes processes and simplifies things for your users. In the following screenshot, you can see the screen from which you are able to specify approvers for this particular new template:

You can always edit this template again later from the same place (Approvals > Manage templates > Select team):

Finally, users will now be able to use this new template whenever they add an approval to a channel conversation in that team. They’ll just need to select Templates from the Approvals dialog, followed by the template of choice:

By using Approvals in Teams, your team will be able to reduce its reliance on paper form processes and perhaps even simply some manually built digital form processes and their associated approvals.

See also

• Approvals app now available on Microsoft Teams: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/approvals-app-now-available-on-microsoft-teams
• Approvals in Microsoft Teams - Power Automate: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/teams/native-approvals-in-teams

Now that we know how to implement approval processes in Teams, let’s look at how our team can create, share, and execute events easily within each channel.

Getting ready

You will need to be a team owner or team member with permissions to add tabs to channels in your team to be able to complete the steps in this recipe.

How to do it...

1. Navigate to the specific team channel to which you’d like to add the channel calendar. In this recipe, we’ll use the General channel of the Design team.
2. Select the + to the right of the existing channel tabs along the top of the channel to add a new tab.

3. Search for or find and select Channel calendar:

   

4. Choose Add:

   

5. Enter a name for the new tab (Channel Calendar is default) and click Add when ready:

   

6. Your channel now shows the calendar for your team/group, specifically filtered to events for its hosting channel. In this case, we see the Design team’s group calendar filtered to the events for the General channel:

How it works

Each team in Microsoft Teams is supported by a Microsoft 365 group. That Microsoft 365 group comes with an Outlook shared inbox and calendar. Each channel in a team can have its own meetings. When you schedule a meeting and invite a channel, the recordings, chats, etc. are all stored/accessible via that channel. The channel calendar allows you to show these events in a calendar view for ease of access and navigation. You can now easily navigate previous and upcoming events and all of their resources such as chats, recordings, attendance reports, and more without having to search the Posts tab at length.

There's more...

Once you’ve added the Teams channel calendar tab to a channel, you can use it to not only view events but to add more. When you add an event to a channel calendar, it automatically inserts that channel as an invited channel in the new event to save you time and keep you focus in the current context. To add an event via the channel calendar, click Add new event in the upper right:

Notice the new event already has the specific channel inserted in the event so all team members will certainly get an invite:

See also

• See all your meetings in Teams: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/see-all-your-meetings-in-teams-cebd0b41-5cab-42bd-a6dc-bca46bda7b35

Next, let’s learn how we can gather pre-event information by requiring registration for a meeting or webinar.

Getting ready

You’ll need to be the meeting organizer/creator to create the custom registration form. Your settings for who can complete the registration form may also be limited if your admin has restricted external access in your organization.

How to do it…

1. Click Calendar in the left-hand side pane:

   

2. Find and open the meeting or webinar details for which you want to create a custom registration form:

   

3. Select Require registration, then choose the audience for this event (who can register for the meeting or webinar). In this example, we’ll choose For everyone so people outside our company can register to attend as well:

   

4. In the dialog that pops up, select View registration form:

From here you can upload a banner image for the registration form, add or change event details (that those registering will see), and speaker details:

1. Under the Register for this event column of the form, you can click Add field to add additional fields to survey attendees on their interests, opinions, job function, existing knowledge, etc. prior to the event. As you add these additional registration form fields, you can check a box for each to require it as well:

   

2. When you’re satisfied with the registration form, click Save in the upper left corner:

   

3. You’ll now see a preview of your registration form. You can choose to Edit it again, or View in browser. But if you’re satisfied with the way it appears, you can return to your Teams event details:

   

4. You can share the form with potential attendees by selecting Copy registration link either in event details as shown in the following screenshot, or from the registration form’s edit page as seen in the previous screenshot. Then include that link in any Teams chats, SharePoint event pages, mailing list blasts, social media posts, etc. to promote your event and get attendees to register:

How it works…

The custom registration form is available for meetings and webinars using Microsoft Teams. It allows you to build a web-based registration form for attendees (whether exclusively within your company, or a combination of internal and external). Meeting and webinar organizers can use this to better plan for the event, as well as to collect information about the audience such as industry, years in the profession, interest levels in various agenda items, etc.

There's more...

As people are registering to attend your meeting or webinar, the meeting organizers can access the automatically generated and updated registration report at any point. This can be found in the event details and is labelled Registration as seen in the following screenshot. The registration report is an Excel worksheet with one registration per row, and your registration form fields across the columns:

Just as with live events, your webinars and meetings with custom registration forms should be treated differently than a normal meeting. Be sure not to share the Join links with any attendees of registration-required events. Attendees should only use the Copy registration link option you share with them:

You can share the Join link (or invite attendees or forward the Outlook invite) with presenters and organizers only. If you need to edit the registration form at a later time (after initial creation), open the event details from your Teams calendar (step 2) and choose Customize registration form:

You’ll then need to choose edit as the form will first show in preview mode:

If you change your mind about requiring registration, you can change Require registration back to None, then invite attendees or forward the usual Join link as you typically would in a normal Teams meeting:

See also

• How to schedule a Microsoft Teams webinar: https://natechamberlain.com/2021/05/18/how-to-schedule-a-microsoft-teams-webinar/
• Schedule a Teams meeting with registration: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/schedule-a-teams-meeting-with-registration-435b2b67-c1bd-411e-9be6-9ed1b4a9f04a

Now that we know more about pre-meeting setup, let’s explore a popular intra-meeting feature you can use to help facilitate Teams meetings: breakout rooms.

Getting ready

To manage breakout rooms for a Teams meeting, you must either be the meeting organizer or must have been assigned as a co-organizer by the original organizer. If you are not an organizer or co-organizer, you will not see the breakout rooms icon or management settings and will only be able to participate as an attendee.

In addition to being an organizer or co-organizer, you’ll only be able to manage breakout rooms using the Teams desktop app (you won’t find the ability in the Teams web or mobile apps).

How to do it…

Join the Teams meeting for which you’ll be managing breakout rooms as an organizer or co-organizer.

1. Click the Breakout rooms icon next to the Reaction/Raise hand icon:

   

2. Change the number of rooms to the desired number, and then choose if you want attendees automatically distributed evenly into that number of rooms or if you’ll be manually assigning attendees as they join. For this recipe, we’ll choose 3 rooms and automatic assignment:

   

3. Click Create rooms.

4. Once created, you may wish to configure a timer for the rooms. Click the … at the top of the Breakout rooms panel and choose Rooms settings:

   

5. Make any room setting changes such as specifying a time limit (to end rooms after a specific period), whether participants are automatically moved or have to move themselves, and whether participants can return to the main room before breakout rooms are officially stopped. When satisfied with your selections, choose the < to the left of Settings:

   

6. Once back on the breakout rooms’ main panel, you’ll see the ability to Start rooms (send attendees to their designated breakout rooms) or Add room in case you determine you’ll need another. Click Start rooms to begin the breakout rooms:

   

7. As organizer, you may wish to join one of the now-open rooms. Use the … next to an open room to join it:

   

8. Your breakout room will open in a new window. You’ll notice a timer if you set a time limit for the rooms as well as a Leave button which allows you (as organizer) to return to the main meeting only. Click Leave when ready to return to the main room:

   

9. You can reassign a participant to a different room manually by selecting the room they’re in, selecting their name, choosing Assign, and then their new room:

   

10. During your breakout room sessions, you may wish to make an announcement to all rooms (such as remaining time, sharing links or prompts, etc.). Announcements appear in each of the rooms’ chat panels. You can make an announcement by choosing the … then Make an announcement:

    

11. When finished with breakout rooms, you can end them (or end them early if a time limit is running) by choosing Close rooms:

    

12. All rooms are now ended, and participants will automatically rejoin the main meeting. When the main meeting is over as well, you can use the dropdown arrow next to Leave to End meeting for all.

How it works…

Breakout rooms allow meeting organizers to plan for larger meetings where the agenda items could benefit from attendees breaking into smaller groups for more focused discussions, but ultimately returning to the main meeting.

Some organizers may use breakout rooms professionally, such as when committees need to collaborate for a period of time before returning to the larger group. Others may choose to use breakout rooms for less formal purposes such as virtual trivia or other activities in which questions are shared in the main meeting, then trivia teams split out into their breakout rooms to submit answers before returning to the main meeting when answers will be shared and winners announced.

No matter the purpose, these breakout rooms allow for less hassle than setting up separate meeting and requiring attendees to manage multiple links. We, as organizers, can instead send a single link and manage their “presence” ourselves.

Technically, when a participant is in a breakout room it’s as though they’ve joined another meeting and placed the main meeting on hold. When they return, they leave the second room (breakout room) and reconnect to the main meeting.

There's more...

Breakout rooms also have their own settings where instead of automatic attendee assignment, you can manually assign attendees to specific rooms (such as committee members or trivia teams). Automatic may be more useful if you simply need an even distribution of attendees across the number of rooms you’ve specified. But manual can be handy when you know specific people need to collaborate, or perhaps you have a designated moderator per room. To set up manual assignment, you’d choose Manually in step 3 instead. After creating the rooms, you can then click Assign participants:

Then you’ll select the attendees to group together, choose Assign, then the room to which they’ll breakout:

You can also configure a timer for breakout rooms so that automatically after 15 minutes, for example, your attendees are brought back to the main room. In these scenarios they’ll see a timer in their individual breakout rooms and are given a 5-minute warning before they’re returned to the main room. You may also wish to rename breakout rooms. Instead of Room 1, Room 2, etc. you may wish to name them after committee names, strategic initiatives, etc. To do this, you’ll select the … next to the room and choose Rename room:

Attendees cannot currently choose their own breakout rooms, and you cannot configure breakout rooms and manual assignments prior to joining the meeting.

See also

• Using breakout rooms in Teams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/using-breakout-rooms
• Create and manage breakout rooms during class meetings (Education focus): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/create-and-manage-breakout-rooms-during-class-meetings-18b340cd-1106-4fa5-a852-5676614f7e7d