Notice:   

• Microsoft Teams is a collaboration app that helps your team stay organized and have conversations—all in one place. Here's a quick look at the left hand side of Teams.

Contains:

• Teams and Channels  Overview 
• Introduction to Channel Functionalities 
• Tabs
• Teams Introduction Video 
• Notifications on Desktop App 

 

Teams are a collection of people, content, and tools surrounding different projects and outcomes within an organization.

• Teams can be created to be private to only invited users.
• Teams can also be created to be public and open and anyone within the organization can join (up to 10,000 members).

 

A team is designed to bring together a group of people who work closely to get things done. Teams can be dynamic for project-based work (for example, launching a product, creating a digital war room), as well as ongoing, to reflect the internal structure of your organization (for example, departments and office locations). Conversations, files and notes across team channels are only visible to members of the team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Channels are dedicated sections within a team to keep conversations organized by specific topics, projects, disciplines—-whatever works for your team. 

• Channels are places where conversations happen and where the work actually gets done. Channels can be open to all team members or, if you need a more select audience, they can be private. Standard channels are for conversations that everyone in a team can participate in and private channels limit communication to a subset of people in a team.
• Every Team starts with a channel called "General" that everyone on the Team has access to. When posting to a General channel consider whether everyone on the Team needs to see what you're posting. 
• Channels are most valuable when extended with apps that include tabs, connectors, and bots that increase their value to the members of the team. To learn more, see Apps, bots, & connectors in Teams.

 

 

Channels include the following functionalities: 

• Meetings
• Calls
• Activity

Meetings

See everything you’ve got lined up for the day or week. Or, schedule a meeting. This calendar syncs with your Outlook calendar.

 

 

 

 

Calls

You can make one-on-one or group calls with anyone in your organization directly from a chat without having to host a team meeting. These calls are private and won't appear in any team conversation. Entries for the calls will appear in your chat, though. Up to 20 people can be on the same video call. 

 

Activity

Catch up on all your unread messages, @mentions, replies, share files and more.

Use the command box at the top to search for specific items or people, take quick actions, and launch apps.

 

Tabs are located at the top of each channel. Tabs allow team members to access services and content in a dedicated space within a channel or in a chat. This lets the team work directly with tools and data, and have conversations about the tools and data, all within the context of the channel or chat. 

 

The following section includes: 

• Tabs in Channels
• Tabs in Chats
• Custom Tabs 

 

Tabs in Channels 

 

With every new channel, two tabs are provisioned by default: Conversations (or Posts) and Files.

 

 

Tabs in Chats

 

With every private chat, four tabs are provisioned by default: Conversations (or Posts) , Files, Organization, and Activity.

 

Custom Tabs in Channels and Chats

 

Owners and team members can add more tabs to a channel or chat by clicking Add a tab  at the top of the channel or chat.

• For example, the IT department customized the tabs to include Meeting Notes and Polly.

 

Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF files must be uploaded to the Files tab before they can be converted to tabs. Any existing uploaded file can be converted to a tab with a single click, as shown below.

 

Files Tab 

 

The files tab keeps track of any files that are linked in the current channel.

We can see that the three default tabs for new Channels are Conversations, Files, and Wiki:

 

Files that you share with someone through a DM are saved in your OneDrive. Other files that are shared with you are not in One Drive

 

 

 

 All files shared in a chat with someone are available in a Files tab under that chat. You can download files from here. 

 

 

 

SharePoint Tab

 

 A SharePoint tab is linked to a SharePoint Document Library.

 

 

 

 

Please note that you must have access to the SharePoint site where the Document Library exists to view it in Teams. 

 

You can Modify your notification settings within different Teams by selecting the three dots in the right corner: 

• Select Channel notifications
• Here you will be able to select if you would like to turn off notifications or you could be notified with a banner and feed or just the feed.