✨Custom Tabs in Teams 📁➕ and Why They're a Game Changer!

Teams is so much more than chats and meetings—it’s your ultimate work dashboard! Many of my clients tell me they’re missing out on its full potential. Today’s Kari’s Tips & Tricks #111 shows you how to create 💥 Custom Tabs ➕ for files, 📑 sites, and more in Teams. Let’s pin your go-to resources for one-click access!

🎥 Video Is Back! 

You asked - I listened - videos can be suer helpful! 

💥Create Custom Tabs ➕  -  think Spreadsheets,📊SharePoint sites📑,  and more - in Teams...AND WHY?

Time to Read: ~2 min

Got a million links and files scattered across Teams? Have sites and libraries you need to always reference but it's so much clicking to get to it? Or - even remember where it is?  Add a custom tab to pin your go-to resources instantly! Here’s how to Create a Custom Tab in Teams in a snap: 

Why Custom Tabs in Teams? 

Before we know how - this one is important to know WHY?

Teams is your all-in-one hub for collaboration, w...

How to Retire a Team

Teams are meant to be fluid and not necessarily all permanent. Although you will likely have the long-standing teams like your department teams, you will likely have some teams that run their course.  What do you do when you have a team you no longer need anymore? Maybe it's a project, maybe it's a conference that's over or something that's no longer relevant. You have some choices when you want to retire a team.

You have 3 choices.

1. Hide the team.You can keep the team if you think you may want to refer back to it or it may be relevant again, in that case you can Hide it.
2. Archive the team. In the case where you don't need it anymore, you can archive it. You can still get it back if you need, but it's not just hidden, it would need to be restored. 
3. Delete the team. If you don't ever need access to it again, you should delete it. If you delete it, it's gone once it's out of the deleted items folder.  

1. Hide a Team

When you hide a team, it's only for you...

The New Teams Calendar

The NEW Teams calendar rolled out in January, 2025. The new calendar integrates the feature of the Outlook calendar into Teams, for more consistentency across the apps. 

Enable the New Calendar View

Go to your calendar in Teams and toggle on the New Calendar. 

A Couple of Key Features 

Updated Views 

• Month View - especially useful for users with sparse calendars.
• Split View - when more than one calendar is selected, you can now split the calendar into two independent views.
• Time Scale - specify time scales or intervals for the calendar surface.
• Saved Views - save your current view for easy access later
• Weather Display: See your current location's weather in the calendar

Filtering

• Filter by type of events
  

View Shared Calendars 

View colleague calendars available in Outlook. Click on People's calendar to view other's calendars available in Outlook.

Improved Meeting Details

When viewing prior meetings, you will see recaps and additi...

Renaming the General Channel in Teams

In every team, there was always one default channel, named General.  This was intended to be the main place where conversations and activity took place. As Teams evolved, Microsoft realized that people used Teams so differently that General didn't always apply.  So now you can rename the General channel and give your main channel a more meaningful name making it more intuitive to organize and navigate in Teams. 

How to Rename the General Channel

1. Go to your Team and click on the General channel and hover next to it and click on the ... and select Edit channel.

2. In the window, type in a new name for the channel.

New Teams and First Channel

When you create a new team, you will be prompted to give the first channel a name, it won't automatically name it General anymore.

Teams Chat Tab Changes from Files to Shared 

In a chat, there used to be a Files tab which showed you the shared files. This has been renamed to the Shared tab. It now includes any file that has been shared but also includes any links (which is SUPER helpful). As I noted last week, the longer you have used Teams, the longer your chats are - so any easy way to find things is a TIME SAVER! 

Shared Tab

1. Select any chat.

2. Click on the Shared tab. It shows all the files and links shared in your chat as well as who shared them and the date they were shared. Additionally, (especially if the list is long) you can filter by files, recent or links. It is also searchable using Filter by keywords.  

3. When you select a file or link, you will see a ribbon with additional opens like, Copy link, Download, or Open. 

4. You could also hover over the chat bubble and click to go back to that spot in the chat.

Teams: The Chat Details Pane

Since I'm in the business of learning - there are 2 ways you can learn this tip #1 - Read the step by steps with screenshots or #2 - watch the video (or #3 - both 😊)

Same Chat, More Deets

The Chat Details Pane is new as of October 2024. It's one of the more useful new features, honestly.  If you've been using Teams a while, some of your chats, like mine are REALLY REALLY long. Also, the nature of a chat is there are lots of short replies.  When you need to find something, it can be frustrating...and take a LOOONNNGGG time to scroll and find files or pinned messages. 

Enter...the Chat Details Pane

The Chat Details Pane is a small little icon in the upper right hand corner of your chat window.

Click on it...and ta-da...the Chat Details Pane shows up on the right side of your screen. It's a toggle so you can toggle it on and off as needed.

What's in the Chat Details Pane

• Files sent in the chat.
• Pinned messages.
• A place to search for content.
...