Communicating Before, During & After Meetings

Now most of us know that Teams is very often used for meetings. Whether you use the video, audio or screen-sharing features in the meeting, there are some other underutilized features built into meetings as well. Teams does an amazing job of offering a variety of ways to communicate with your meeting participants before, during and after a meeting.

Ways to Communicate

• Chat with participants
• Share files
• Take "Meeting Notes"
• Whiteboard
• Post meeting recaps
• Meeting recording

Once a meeting has been scheduled and participants have been invited, you can take advantage of the "chat with participants" feature. In this screen, you will have access to all the above ways to communicate.

If the meeting takes place in a channel, you can also find the communication and files  in the channel.

How to Chat with Participants of a Meeting

1. Go to your calendar and find the scheduled meeting.
   
   
2. Click on the meeting and see a dialog box similar t
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Co-Authoring aka Document Collaboration in Teams

Reason #3 to use Teams is Co-Authoring/Document Collaboration. They mean the same thing. Have you heard these terms thrown around in relation to Teams? Although the features has been around since 2013 - using the feature within Teams brings it a whole new meaning and ease of functionality.  

Co-Authoring or document collaboration is when 2 or more people are working on a document simultaneously in Real-Time!  It's an amazing collaborative tool that is most often and most effectively used within Teams. Although you CAN collaborate in real-time - you don't have to and you can still take advantage of the great collaboration of this feature. 

This feature is one of the reasons that takes Teams to the next level as more than a virtual conferencing tool for Microsoft Office (O365) users. This type of virtual collaboration allows users to edit an office document with other users.

When can you Co-Author a File?

• A file stored in Teams
• Wor
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Why Teams? Reason #2

Anytime and Anywhere and Why It Matters

This might not seems like a big deal in this always connected world we're living in, but with Teams it's different...hear me out.  With Teams, it means more than just emailing or calling people anytime and anywhere, it means access to all the information IN Teams, anytime AND anywhere.

Now if you're like me - you're wondering, is this actually good? To be UBER connected all the time? Well - in this case - YES! Here's why, in 2 parts. Part 1 - staying in touch and part 2 - all your "stuff" is in the cloud.

Part 1: Staying in Touch

Since Teams is a cloud based app which you can install on your laptop, computer, smart phone and/or tablet, it allows you to not only be connected via chats and calls, but by doing it within the Teams app, you don't have to give out your personal digits. In other words, clients, co-workers and customers can contact you anytime and anywhere, when you have your Teams app installed on y...

Teams is a Paradigm Shift in HOW you Work

As I teach more and more Teams classes, one of the most common responses after our training users say things like, "Wow, it's a lot more than I thought?" or "Oh man, it's so much more than just chat."

One of the things that is hard to learn without training - is that using Teams as an organization is a paradigm shift. It is more than just, checking to see if anyone sent you a chat. Full Teams utilization means collaborating with your colleagues in an easy, seamless, organic way to co-work on documents, share files, meet virtually, call and work collaboratively.

Why Chat? 

The idea of when to chat and when to email is confusing for most people  at first in Teams. Initially, Teams just seems like more work, yet another app to keep tabs on. However, after you learn more about Teams and when to use it and when not to, it starts to come together and actually SAVE time. And don't we ALL want to SAVE TIME!

Emails Versus Chats

Emails will probabl...

Should you Schedule your Teams Meeting from Teams or Outlook? 

Does it matter you're wondering? As more and more people jump on the Teams train, the crossover of Teams and Outlook is undeniable. You have already noticed that your Outlook calendar also shows up in Teams. You have maybe also noticed you can schedule a Teams meeting from within Teams and in Outlook. So the natural question is - does it matter? Short answer - YES!

Question #1: Who are you inviting?

• If you're inviting people outside your organization, using the Teams Meeting button on your ribbon in Outlook is easier. This is because the To: field will bring up your list AutoFill list of people you send emails to and you won't have to either copy and paste or manually type in email addresses for invitees.
  
  
  
• If your meeting is strictly internal, then creating the meeting in Teams versus Outlook doesn't make much of a difference.

Either way - you will have a link and call in number (depending on your calling plan in Te...

Drawing in an Email Message

Sometimes you just need to sketch something out.  We've all heard a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes a lot of words can be eliminated in an email by just creating a simple drawing. Whether it's a diagram or something else - it's easy.  You can only create a drawing in an HTML formatted email.

In Outlook, you can create a drawing in your email by using the following steps.

1. Open a new message and click on the Drawing tab.
   
2. Click in the body of the message (the commands will be greyed out if you're not in the content area of the email).
3. On the Drawing ribbon, click the Drawing Canvas button.
   
4. Then you will be able to create your drawing within the canvas by either drawing  with your mouse or with your finger if you have a touch-screen.
   
5. You can use the drawing canvas handles to resize the image.

View your Calendar and Inbox at the Same Time

As an avid user of Outlook, you most likely pop back and forth between the calendar and the inbox.  There are a 2 ways you can view both your calendar and your inbox at the same time.  If you have multiple monitors, the first method is great - it gives you a full view of each window whereas the 2nd method is great for a smaller view of the calendar and if you only want it on a single screen. 

Method 1: Open in New Window

It's pretty standard that most people have multiple screens and there's an easy way in Outlook to have your inbox and calendar open in their own separate windows, one on each monitor. You can use this method with  Inbox, Calendar, People, Folders, Tasks and Notes.

1. To view the Inbox and the Calendar simultaneously, in Outlook, open the inbox.
   
   
2. Then right-click on  the calendar icon and choose Open in New Window.
   
   
   
3. You will now see when you hover over Outlook, both windows. You can drag one to each monitor.
   

Method 2: ...

Outlook's Focused Inbox

Who doesn't need help having a more focused inbox?? I will take ALL the help I can get. Outlook's built in Focused Inbox feature allows you to take advantage of automatic organization so you can quickly and easily see the more important emails and filter out the less important ones. Additionally, you can customize how Outlook organizes your emails by adding emails to the focused or the other lists.

Turn the Focused Inbox Feature On

1. Click on the View tab in Outlook.
   
   
2. Click on Show Focused Inbox button. This toggles the feature on/off.
   
   
   
3. Click Focused to view the focused emails. This should be the more important emails. The marketing and mass emails should be in the Other category. You can toggle between the 2 filters. You can also turn it off completely. 

Customize the "Focused" List

As you use this feature, you will need to "teach" Outlook what should be in the Focused list and what should be in the Other list.

1. Right click on a message in the Focused ...

Tricks to Sort your Inbox Like a Pro

Sorting your inbox might not seem like a big deal BUT if you have 100's or 1000's of emails in your inbox like most people, sorting like a pro can literally save you hours!

Using Outlook Columns

The new default view in Outlook looks like this.

If you change the width of the window - you will see all the column headings displayed. (It's easier if you watch the video than to explain it in steps.)

Once you have the columns visible - you can simply click to sort by that column.

Super simple - but so useful when you're trying to find all the messages from a certain person.

How Did I Do?

I want to take this week to reflect on last year. Can you help me? 

It's been a full year that I've been sending out weekly tips - I've got a quick 8 question form to help you share with me what your thoughts were. I want to take a pause to hear what you like, what you don't like, what else I can do for you, how I can better serve you.

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