Microsoft Teams

As consultants, we are constantly working on behalf of other organisations, and if you're anything like me, you've collected quite a set of Microsoft 365 accounts.  Up until now, the only way to deal with these in Teams has either been logout-login, which is a pain, or a multi-browser/multi-browser-instance approach (you should see how many profiles I have in Chrome, each with their own M365 login!). So... take a look at the screenshot from the new Teams: you'll notice I'm logged in to 3 different M365 accounts at once, so it's easy to switch between them. Moreover, that little [...]

The Microsoft 365 Template Problem - Over-Writing an Old Version Typically, when I ask, "How do you create your monthly report?", the answer comes back "I edit last month's, then 'save as' ". Which leads me on to the next question, "How often do you accidentally overwrite last month's?".... "All the time." This problem gets worse when working in the cloud, thanks to the marvellous Auto-Save - which, of course, automatically overwrites last month's before you even get the chance to 'save as'. (Never mind that you can switch back to last month's version when needed... That wasn't the [...]

When running Teams training courses, we recommend doing so inside your own Microsoft 365 installation (Microsoft refer to this as your 'Tenant') - then, all conversations and history are stored within your Microsoft 365 security perimeter. However, sometimes we will host the courses in our Tenant: these instructions relate to courses held inside Out of the Hat's tenant. The Process We will add you to the Training Team, after which you will receive an email invitation similar to the one shown below. In order to take part in practical sessions, you MUST go through the process [...]

When you add an external Guest to your Team, you only get one shot at setting their display name (unless you are a Microsoft 365 Admin), so make sure you do it right the first time. Once you've entered their email address and hit 'Add (address) as a guest', your one-shot is the tiny pencil highlighted in the second graphic.  Using this, you can type their real name in, rather than the one generated from their email address.  You don't get any other opportunity... We recommend that you put in the person's full name, even if you don't think [...]

Microsoft Teams Meeting or Live Event? Microsoft Teams meetings are a great way for a group of people to have a discussion, but sometimes you want to limit what the audience can do, so you perhaps start considering Live Events. Here are some of the features that might influence your decision. In short, Teams Meetings are good for meetings, seminars and group discussions among people cooperating with each other.  Teams Live Events are good for webinars and information sessions, where you are broadcasting to an audience and want to control the audience's interactions with speakers.  There may be particular [...]

Be Mindful of Where You Chat Microsoft Teams Chat gives you many different places to hold a conversation: Channels, Meetings, Documents, Wikis, Private Chat, and so on.  There are different reasons for chatting in different places, so make sure you understand which is best for what. Image credit: Warren Wong The General Channel Surprisingly, the Team General Channel is not a good place for chat in Microsoft Teams. If you use it because 'I'm not sure where else to put this', you'll quickly find it becomes filled with unconnected conversations which are [...]