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

Lyndsay’s A-Z of Microsoft Teams – Z 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…

Z is for Zzzzzz

Do you have the Microsoft Teams app on your mobile phone?

I avoided downloading it for the longest time, because I worried that I’d end up ‘always on’ and in a constant state of being at work even when I was trying not to be.

Eventually I did get the Teams app aaaand – that is exactly what happened. (D’oh.)

I just couldn’t resist the lure of a notification, at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm… which meant:

I was a bit distracted and not fully present during what should have been home time (or down time, or asleep time!)
I’d respond to messages and end up down a rabbit hole of “I’ll just do this one thing quickly…” for 20 minutes at a time.
Any to-do actions associated with messages I’d read would play on my mind.
The next day I’d forget what I responded to at 10pm the previous night and the chat wouldn’t be on my radar as it would appear as ‘read’ in my activity feed – so I actually did miss doing things I should have done / said I would.

Am I right? I know some of you out there are relating to this. I simply couldn’t trust myself to ignore the notifications.

However – the app is so useful for:

When you are travelling but still want to tick a few things off your to-do list. I’ve accomplished many a work task on Teams on my mobile while waiting for a train / a dentist appointment.
When your laptop decides to force restart or have a meltdown just as you’re about to join a Teams meeting – you can join on your mobile instead and paradoxically tell everyone (no matter their time zone) how rubbish technology is.
Literally doing anything on Teams when you’re not at your computer on your desk. Comes in handy all the time.

So how to get the best of both worlds? How do you use the Teams app on your phone to be productive while you’re out and about, but also protect yourself from the burnout of being ‘always on’?

Quiet hours – that’s how!

Disclaimer – I have an android phone and have no idea if any of what I’m about to explain works the same for you iphone folks. (Not sure the iphone will ever catch on tbh…)

Setting quiet hours on your Teams mobile app

First, open up your Teams app and click on your profile circle (it will be your picture if you’ve set one). Then choose notifications:

You will see that you can specify which notifications you want to receive on your mobile device – but you’ll also notice there is an option to ‘block notifications during quiet hours’:

If you choose this option, you can go through and toggle on quiet hours and also quiet days:

This means that you won’t receive any Teams notifications on your mobile during the times you’ve set.

So if you want to be truly ‘offline’ on your evenings and weekends, you can change these settings to make sure you don’t get disturbed and lured back into work mode at the times that you specify.

You also get the option to allow exceptions if you want to, like mentions or messages flagged as important.

During your quiet hours, if you do open up the Teams app, you’ll see a little Zz on your profile icon: