Microsoft Teams is all about chats, video calls, and collaboration. However, there are some other features and integrations with Microsoft 365 in Teams that not many people know about, or not many IT Admins enable as part of most Teams rollouts and installations. Today, we’ll be looking at some of those features.
Lists
To begin our list, we’ll mention Microsoft Lists (pun intended.) As we’ve covered before, Microsoft Lists is one of the newest apps for Microsoft 365. It’s not to be confused with Microsoft To-Do, and it helps you track information centered around your work. Lists actually has its own experience in Microsoft 365, but it also plugs into Teams as a tab in a channel. When Lists is added to Teams, you’ll be able to use Teams to collaborate on the Lists you create. There are various views for Lists in Teams, such as grids, cards, and calendars. The point is to help make sharing and getting together on lists much easier.
Yammer
Next on our list is Yammer. We’ve covered Yammer before and called it “The Facebook for the workplace,” but Yammer also has direct integration with Teams, too. Yammer can be added as an app, and dragged into the sidebar of Teams, giving you quick access to your communities. It also encourages people to post more, too.
Shifts
Third up is a feature for Teams on mobile. This one is up to your IT admin to enable, but Shift is a great tool for front line workers, and once enabled, can be added to the bottom bar on mobile in Teams. Anyway, shift lets you clock in and clock out of work, and put in time off, and swap out your working shifts with someone else. If your company doesn’t use payroll management software or services like ADP, then Shifts is a nice workaround.
Immersive Reader
Another choice for our list is the Immersive Reader. This one is something that will likely be appreciated by those in educational institutions or anyone who is hard of hearing. Just like the immersive reader in Windows 10 or Edge, this will speak the text of a channel out loud at different speeds. To use it, all you need to do is click the three dots next to a message, and then choose the reader from the drop-down menu.
Slash Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /Files | Shows the most recent files share with you on Teams |
| /GoTo | Helps you jump straight into a channel |
| /Call | Initiates a call with someone on Teams |
| /Saved | Takes you to your saved messages |
You might be spending a lot of your time in Teams scrolling up, down, and through a lot of stuff, but did you know that Teams also supports commands? When typing directly into the search bar, you can get some commands for common tasks in Teams, saving you clicks and scrolling. We’ve put some of our favorites in the table above.
How do you use Teams?
These are just five features in Teams we think most people might not know about. Do you have any features in Teams that you use which we didn’t mention on our list? Feel free to let us know in the comments below. And, while you’re at it, check out our Microsoft 365 Hub, where we dive deeper and have additional how-to guides and more.
