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…

H is for… HELP!

Did you know that you can get access to help with Microsoft Teams from inside Microsoft Teams itself?

In the bottom of your sidebar you should see a help icon:

And, as usual, from here you’ve got a variety of options to explore:

Topics

Clicking on Topics will open up a page full of help articles for loads of different things you might need. Microsoft have handily put some of the most requested ones at the top, like how to share your screen and change your background:

You can also scroll further down to find more specific help articles on other topics within Teams:

This content is all provided and curated by Microsoft themselves on their https://support.microsoft.com/ support site, so you know that you can trust the information. If you’re looking for particular use-case examples and advice on ‘best practice’ though, you might find the Microsoft info pretty generic.  

There’s also a search function in case you’re looking for something very specific:

Training

The content in the Training tab is also provided by Microsoft via their support pages:

They’ve got lots of quick video snippets on how to do things which is useful if you’re short on time:  

You can break out from Teams into a browser tab if you want to as well, which might make it easier to further explore other topics and pages (and favourite the really useful ones!):

What’s new

This one’s a pretty useful tab to keep tabs on (see what I did there…)

Here you’ll find updates (again from Microsoft) about new features and changes.  You can see what’s new on the Desktop and Web, as well as on mobile for both iOS and Android users. (If you haven’t downloaded the mobile app for Teams yet, you should!)

If you have a more technical role or interest, you can also find updates on VDI (Virtual desktop infrastructure) and devices (like room systems) here too. Microsoft releases and updates things ALL THE TIME so it’s a good idea to keep as up to date as you can, you never know when a new feature will come along that will make your working day 10% easier – or be a downright game changer.

Suggest a feature

Back to that help button on the side bar – there’s an option called ‘suggest a feature’. If you use Teams day-in-day-out and sit there thinking “I really wish Teams would… [insert killer Teams feature here]” then believe it or not Microsoft does want to hear from you!

They have created a feedback portal to collect and organise feedback from users (just like you):

You can sign in using your O365 account and suggest your killer feature, as well as look at what other people have suggested and upvote it. In theory the feature suggestions getting the most votes get more attention from the development team who work on Teams. Who knows, your killer feature may end up in Teams one day.

Give feedback

This option gives you a simple text box to provide feedback to Microsoft about Teams:

 You can use it to:

• Tell Microsoft what a great job they’re doing and what your favourite Teams feature is (mmhmm, sure) or…
• (More likely) report a problem you’ve had or a bug you think you’ve found

You aren’t able to include any screen shots though, which is a little frustrating if you want to illustrate your experience.

Contact support

This option lets you download a support app to troubleshoot issues with Teams:

You’ll notice from this screenshot that there are more options open to IT Admins and Teachers (if you didn’t know; there is a special version of Teams for education too!) who can use this app to escalate a problem to Microsoft Support – us mere mortal end users need to report our problems through our organisation’s support channels first though😊.

I hope this blog has shown you that there are lots of ways you can get help with Microsoft Teams from resources that are handily accessible from within Microsoft Teams itself.

Do bear in mind that a lot of the guidance that Microsoft provide is generic in nature. There are a lot of use-cases and best practices that are no doubt specific to your organisation. Hopefully they’re well communicated enough that you can access them just as easily – and if not, maybe it’s time to be asking some questions!

If you liked this blog and want to catch up on the rest of the A-Z series so far, you can find posts A-F 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/

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – C is for… (Part 2) – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – C is for… (Part 3) – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – C is for (part 4!!!) – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – D is for… – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – E is for… – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – F is for… – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – G is for… – Lyndsay Ansell’s Blog

Happy Teamsing!