There’s SO MUCH going on in Microsoft Teams as a product, how do you even start to talk about it?! In this blog series I’m going to attempt to work my way through the letters of the alphabet, talking about as many features as I can think of in turn.

If you’re new to Teams, hopefully this helps you find your way around. If you’re not new to Teams, maybe you’ll still get some new ideas. Here we go…

C is for… (part 2)

I know, I know – I’m bending the rules for an A-Z here but it’s not my fault; Teams is too full of STUFF.  

We’ve looked at chat, so let’s move on to channels.

If you’ve been using Teams, you will already probably know the basics of using channels. A channel is a collaboration space that lives inside a Team. You can have multiple different ones, and I’ve come across many different metaphors to describe them; if a Team is a house then a channel is a room, or if you’re a bit more musical; if a Team is a guitar then a channel is a string. I like to think of a Team as an overall theme or category, and the channel as a sub-category.

Microsoft has just announced that a new channels experience will be generally available in June, which should make using channels a much better experience I think!

Changes include:

• The most recent posts will be at the top instead of the bottom (makes sense, right?!)
• The compose box will also be at the top, making it much clearer when you’re starting a new thread rather than replying to an existing one.
• A better information pane that gives you the context behind the channel.

For more info on the new channel experience, check out Microsoft’s blog on What’s new in Microsoft Teams at Enterprise Connect. I’m looking forward to using new channels!

(I won’t get into when and why you should create a channel right now – I had some thoughts on that in a previous post here.)

While we wait for the new channel experience to reach us, let’s take a look at a few ways you can power-up your channel game:

You can pin your favourite channels to the top of your Teams window

If you find that you need to use some channels more than others, you can pin them to the top of your Teams list by clicking on the three dots next to the channel name and choosing ‘pin’:

You’ll then see them at the top of your list under ‘Pinned’.

You can also do the opposite and hide channels that you don’t need to see all the time (don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone…).

You can share files in a channel:

Each channel comes complete with a ‘Files’ tab at the top, which gives you a space to store documents that you’re working on. Everyone who has access to the channel can also work on the document. Say goodbye to hundreds of email versions of the same document flying around.  

You can add apps to a channel

Did you notice the plus sign next to files in the last screen shot? Clicking on that will let you add Microsoft or Third Party apps right into the channel. So if there is a Trello board or Microsoft form specific to the channel, you can add it here. There are even some fun ones for team building and breaks in your workday.

You can email directly into a channel

By clicking on the 3 dots in the top right of the Teams window (just under the minimise/maximise window icon) or next to the channel name in your side bar, you get a whole host of other options for the channel. One of those options is to get an email address:

 You can use this email address like you would any other and send an email directly into the channel itself. It looks like this when it arrives:

The email starts a new thread in the channel, and people can post replies (to the thread, not the actual email). You can also view the original email as an email file.

This can come in handy if you have a customer email that needs a bit of async discussion with the project team to come up with a response, or if you have some nice feedback in an external email to share.

You can customise your notifications from the channel

Under the same three dots menu, you can also pick and choose which notifications you’d like to receive from this channel. Maybe it’s a channel for a project with a very tight deadline, so you want every notification going. Maybe it’s a channel about a project you’re not involved in any more, so you don’t want so many notifications. Customise away… 

You can get a direct link to the channel

In the same three dots menu (powerful little things those three dots), you can also get a direct link to the channel:

This could be useful if you’re sending out some company comms and want to direct employees to a particular channel. Note; a user will have to have access to the channel to be able to see it, lets look at what we mean by that next:

You can choose who in the Team gets what access to a channel

When you first set up a channel, (if you have permissions to do this as a Team member) you can choose from 3 levels of access:

This is quite an important one to think about when you’re setting up your channel – who actually needs access, or more to the point who doesn’t?! (Note that access to the channel depends on access settings within the Team itself. You’ll need to be a Team owner to modify this):

You can see Analytics for your Channel

It’s those 3 dots again! If you click on the 3 dots next to your channel’s name and choose Manage channel, you have the option to see Analytics for that channel:

This can be really useful if:

• You’re a team manager and want to keep an eye on how well your team is engaging with the channel you’ve set up
• You are running an employee engagement campaign internally using a particular channel and want to track how it’s going and provide some engagement metrics
• You’re auditing channels and looking to archive or delete channels that aren’t really in regular use any more.

What’s your favourite tip for using channels?

Stay tuned for next week when C (part 3) is for Calendar.

If you missed the earlier letters of the alphabet, you can find them here:

https://lyndsay.blog/2023/03/01/lyndsays-a-z-of-microsoft-teams-a-is-for

https://lyndsay.blog/2023/03/07/lyndsays-a-z-of-microsoft-teams/

https://lyndsay.blog/2023/03/16/lyndsays-a-z-of-microsoft-teams-b-is-for/

https://lyndsay.blog/2023/03/22/lyndsays-a-z-of-microsoft-teams-c-is-for-part-1/

Happy Teamsing!