Microsoft Teams is a tool you use to communicate with other FSU and MED faculty/staff/students. It is part of the FSU Microsoft O365 suite and uses your FSUID to keep your content linked across all of the suite of products. It can be accessed through the Microsoft Teams App on your desktop or any browser at teams.microsoft.com.
Overview
See below for additional information, though here is a quick overview of what you can do with Microsoft Teams.
Sections of this document:
Navigating Teams
The links on the left are specific to you and are the same no matter what Team you are working on.
Activity - Shows any activity that is specific to you across all of your Teams.
Chat - Shows any Chat that you initiated or were involved in. Chats are private communications between you and whomever you select.
Teams - These are all of the Teams you have access to.
Calendar - This is your Outlook calendar
Calls - Shows any Teams calls that you initiated or were involved in.
Files/OneDrive - These are ANY OneDrive Files that you have access to across the O365 suite. The files can be in libraries in a specific Team, your own OneDrive, a Teams Call/Meeting, O365 MedNet, etc. Anywhere you have been given access to or created a document within the O365 suite of products.
You may have other links on the left as well. You can add different apps to use by clicking on the Apps icon.
Working in a Teams site
A Team is made up of Channels which are kind of like folders in a document library. The General channel is always created when a new Team is created and is open to all Members of the Team.
Each Channel contains at a minimum, Posts and Files tabs.
- Posts - This is used to talk to the other members of the Team about topics related to the Channel.
- Files - This is used to hold any documents associated with the channel - all members of the Team can access them.
Create a new Channel when you want to keep files or have discussions about a subject. The channel can be a Normal channel open to all Team members, a Private channel open to a subset of the Team members, or a Shared channel open to members you choose from FSU. Any member of a Team can create channels. (See the article Microsoft Teams-best practices for creating/managing MS Teams)
This is a good training site for working in Teams - Dive Deeper into Microsoft Teams
A Typical Day Using MS Teams
I begin my day by opening the Teams app from my desktop and check for any Chats or Activity that happened after I left the day before. I also look at the channels in my primary Teams site to see if there are any Posts I missed after leaving the day before.
As I'm working through the day, I am alerted that one of my Teams colleagues has posted a message using @ChannelName on a channel for everyone to know. I look at it and respond if needed.
I get another alert that someone has started a chat with me. I click on Chat and respond.
I have another alert that someone is trying to call me. I answer the call by clicking the Answer button that's on the pop-up window. We talk and I need to share something on my desktop with the person, so I click on Share and select the screen to show to them.
I've got a Teams meeting scheduled in the afternoon. I'll click on the Calendar icon on the left and at the meeting time, click on Join to access the meeting. I can see and talk to everyone, share my screen, and use chat to share links, answer a question or talk to someone while the meeting is going on without disturbing the meeting. When we are done, there is a Chat available so all of members can be contacted again for follow-up if needed.
Throughout the day, I've been answering questions in all of the Channels, uploading, opening and editing files in different Channels and staying updated on different projects. All without emails that generally get lost and long as people reply all.
Training Videos:
Microsoft has training videos on Microsoft Teams that can walk you through each feature.
Additional Resources
See these resources for additional guides on using Microsoft Teams.
See all the help guides and articles FSU has to offer here:
https://fsu.force.com/s/global-search/microsoft%20teams
For more information, see Microsoft's Support page here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/teams