MS Teams Tips

Did you know you can give kudos or "Praise" to team members in Microsoft Teams now? Here's how it works. First, open the Teams channel where you want to acknowledge your colleague. Then from beneath the box to start a new conversation, select Praise. (It may be inside the show more (...) button.) Now you can select the type of Praise to give your teammate(s). Achiever - Maybe someone just received a new certification or award Awesome - Recognize some general awesomeness Coach - Praise a superstar mentor Creative - Perfect for teams solving a tricky problem Kind Heart - Worked through a trying situation? Leadership - It's important to recognize leadership traits shining through Problem Solver - For those who love a challenge Team Player - No lone rangers in here! Thank You - The team worked some extra time to meet a deadline? Thank them! From here, select the team members to add to the Praise, Preview the post and send it! That's all

The Command box in Teams can be an easy way to navigate or get information quickly. You can click in the command box, or type alt-K (or Option-K for Mac) to navigate there by keyboard. Type a “/“ to see a list of available commands. As you start typing, the list will filter to the commands that match the characters entered, as you would expect. Here are a few useful commands to get you started. Status Commands /dnd - Set status to Do Not Disturb (surpresses notifications) /available - Set status to Available /busy - Set status to Busy /away - Set status to Away Other Useful Commands /call - Call somebody /org - View someone’s org chart information /unread - View your unread messages /mentions - View your mentions (@’s) /goto - Navigate to a specific team or channel /whatsnew - See what’s new in Microsoft Teams /keys - Get a list of Teams keyboard shortcuts To see the full list of available commands, visit the Office support page for Teams here . O

We’re finally back after more than a year since Tip #1 . Wow, time flies! In this tip, we’ll look at the setting to control the skinning of your Microsoft Teams client. Are you a light theme kind of person or do you stay to the dark side in your software? Teams provides three themes to choose from today. Default (Light) Dark High contrast To change your theme, click your avatar to open the application menu, and select Settings. The theme selection is in the General settings section, which will open first. Here is the same application menu with the Default theme applied. And here it is again with the High Contrast theme selected. As you can see, no matter what your preference (or need), Microsoft Teams has a theme for you. Go try all three of them and maybe find a new favorite. Happy Teaming!

A couple of weeks ago, I did an unboxing and initial impressions post about the KuaiFit K Sport Headphones on my Morning Dew blog . I’ve been using them for a couple of weeks and tried the companion training app for Android, and I’m ready to talk about my impression of the product. As I mentioned in my previous review the K Sport Headphones launched as a Kickstarter campaign last month. The campaign is now fully funded and has some early bird rewards still available. There are currently only 12 days left to join and get a pair for yourself. I’ve really enjoyed using the headphones over the last few weeks. I spent last week at the TechBash 2018 developer conference and used them at the conference, the resort’s water park and around the resort and convention center complex itself. They sound good with audiobooks, podcasts and listening to music at normal levels. The battery lasted all day for me with intermittent use. I charged them each night in my bedroom or hotel room with the includ

4-day (with Workshop) and 3-day early bird tickets are now on sale for TechBash 2018. This year TechBash will be held October 2-5, with the 2nd being a pre-conference day of full-day workshops for 4-day ticket holders only. These workshops will be presented by top experts in each area. The topics from which to choose are ASP.NET Core 2.1, DevOps, Docker and Azure for Developers. Get more workshop info here . Early bird tickets will save up to 25% off the Standard ticket price this year. Don't wait because these prices will only be available for a few weeks and space in each workshop is limited. This year's keynote presenter is Scott Hunter , leader of the Visual Studio and .NET Teams at Microsoft, and these other speakers have already been confirmed: Jeremy Likness Jessica Deen Richard Taylor Chris Woodruff Jeremy Clark Anna Bateman Brendan Enrick John Wright Ashley Grant Ivana Veliskova Steve Bohlen Angel Thomas Jim Wooley Walt Ritscher Paul Hacker Jeff Fritz Mitch Denny Anoo

Yesterday at Microsoft Ignite , Microsoft announced that Teams will be the go-forward client for "intelligent communications" with Office 365, eventually replacing Skype for Business. This move had been widely rumored in recent weeks. I have seen mixed reactions in my social networks since the announcement, with most feeling that it will be a good decision in the long run, if not an inevitable one, given the rise of Slack for online collaboration. In the announcement, the team also listed some recent and upcoming enhancements for Teams. Guest access was recently added for collaborating with users outside your organization, as was Outlook calendar integration, scheduled meetings and meetings via mobile. Integration with audio conferencing services was announced yesterday as being available in preview. Integration between Teams and Skype for Business is also being added, enabling messaging between the platforms and a shared online presence. Expect a slew of new features