Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – I is for…

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – I is for…

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…

I is for … Invites and Immersive Reader. This week I’m digging into yet more of the handy Teams settings that Microsoft likes to hide away, but once you know they’re there, they can prove super useful.

Invites

When you send (or receive) an invite to a Teams meeting, you should see some default information on how to join the meeting:

As an attendee, you can click on the link to join, or dial in on your good old fashioned telephone with the audio only options at the bottom of the invite information.

There are also 2 additional links:

Learn more takes you to the Microsoft support page on how to join a Teams meeting, which is handy if you’re doing it for the first time or having a problem: Join a meeting in Teams – Microsoft Support
Meeting options gives the meeting organiser a long list of ways to customise the meeting experience for organisers, attendees from inside your organisation and guests from elsewhere.

You can toggle the different settings on and off or choose from the dropdown menus, but don’t forget to press save otherwise the settings won’t stick! (I do this alllll the time!)

You can find a full breakdown of what all these different settings mean on the Microsoft Support page here: Participant settings for a Teams meeting – Microsoft Support

My favourite ones to change are:

Who can bypass the lobby; you might want guests external to your organisation to sit in a lobby for a bit before you allow them onto the call, or you might want everyone to just hop straight in and get on with it – change this setting in the dropdown.
Announce when callers join or leave; this is one you might want to turn off if you’re expecting a lot of people to turn up to your meeting. If you turn it off, you won’t hear the little notification noise that Teams makes every time someone enters the meeting.

The Watermark for shared content is also a great idea but only available at the moment on Teams Premium: Watermark for Teams meetings – Microsoft Support

Immersive Reader

This is one of the accessibility features within Teams that is hidden away under the 3 dots options.

In a chat or channel message, if you choose Immersive Reader from the 3 dots (which might be hiding under More actions the first time you try to find it)