Microsoft Teams' main features can be divided into two major sections: chats and meetings.

The chat feature takes a principal role in Microsoft Teams, allowing you to communicate with your peers in a few different ways with text. You can have one-to-one or group chats, which can be public or private. One-to-one chats are always private, and you will be able to start a new conversation with anyone from your own organization internally, or someone external—if your organization allows such communications.

Group chats, which you can start manually by adding people to the chat, are private, while team chats that you start in the context of regular channels are public and accessible to all team members.

The meetings feature on Microsoft Teams provides a rich environment that allows for collaboration with peers who are not in the same location as you. It allows you to bring people from all over the world into the same virtual space in a matter of seconds. Meetings allow each member to share audio and high-definition video, including screen sharing – you can share your entire desktop or individual applications with other users.

Meetings on Microsoft Teams can also be recorded and shared with other members of the organization in a matter of minutes. If you have a conflict in your schedule and are not able to attend the meeting, you can always watch the recording later.

Now that you understand what chats and meetings are, you need to learn how to manage your meetings and schedule. Let's see how to do this in the next section.

Microsoft Teams would not be a true collaboration solution if it were not equipped with a calendar. The calendar app is available by default on Teams and allows you to view and schedule team meetings.

The calendar with filled-in example slots is shown in Figure 2.2.1:

Figure 2.2.1: Scheduled appointments in the Teams' calendar

The Microsoft Teams calendar includes the following features:

• Daily view
• Weekly view, with the ability to display just workdays or the entire week
• A visual identification of the work schedule, with the working hours displayed with a white background and the hours out of the schedule displayed in a light gray. This feature can be seen in Figure 2.2.1.
• The ability to view the meeting scheduling details
• The ability to schedule a meeting or live event
• The ability to cancel a meeting
• Synchronization with the Outlook and Exchange calendars
• The ability to meet immediately, without previous scheduling

In the next section, you will learn how to work faster with Microsoft Teams by making use of search, filters, and commands.

All the collaboration work that is done using chats and meetings on Microsoft Teams will generate a considerable amount of data, which can easily reach hundreds of megabytes across all the teams and channels in an organization.

Microsoft Teams comes with three features that can help you find content and carry out tasks without spending hours looking through the information manually:

• Search
• Filters
• Commands

Let's look at each one of these in more detail.

Search

The search feature is available in all versions of Microsoft Teams. On the desktop version, you can find it in the title bar, as shown in Figure 2.3.1.

Figure 2.3.1: Searching through chat histories to find a specific message

The search feature looks for information in three different scopes:

• Messages
• People
• Files

The search results are displayed in the left pane and you can alternate between the results using the tabs at the top of the pane. When you click on one of the results displayed in the Messages tab, it opens the message in the context of where it was posted, that is, in the team, channel, group chat, or one-to-one chat.

If you are looking for a team member and click on one of the results shown in the People tab, you will get access to a private chat window with that particular member.

The results shown in the Files tab are displayed in their Microsoft Teams context. For example, a Microsoft Word document will be opened in the web version of the application in the stage area. If the file is not compatible with the Microsoft Teams preview functionality, you will have the option to download the file locally or open it in a browser.

The mobile version of Microsoft Teams has the same search functionalities as in the desktop version, with the search bar also located at the top of the app. To use it, you will need to click on the magnifier icon and type in your search query. The results are then displayed in a separate window divided into the same three categories: Messages, People, and Files.

Pro tip: Search in your current location using keyboard shortcuts

When in the context of a chat or team, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F on Windows, or Command + F on macOS, to restrict the scope of the search bar to your current location. After executing the keyboard shortcut, the search bar will display the information where the search is being made, as seen in Figure 2.3.2.

Figure 2.3.2: Searching in the command bar is restricted to the current channel

While performing a search, you can take advantage of the typeahead feature included in the search box that displays suggested results based on the words you are typing, as seen in Figure 2.3.3. These results are divided up into seven categories: People, Group chats, Teams, Channels, Files, Apps, and Commands. To view all the results, you must press Enter.

Figure 2.3.3: Suggested search results

Filters

The filters function offers another way to find content inside Microsoft Teams. You can use it, along with the search function, to filter the results retrieved, or in the context of Activity, Chat, and Teams. In the context of a search, filters are located in a second bar below the Messages, People, and Files tabs, as shown in Figure 2.3.4.

Figure 2.3.4: Filters can be accessed to refine a search

Filters are dynamic and display different fields depending on the context of your search. They are only available for Messages and Files—it is not possible to filter when searching for People.

Outside of the search context, the filter option also has its own search box and predefined tags that can be selected to retrieve information faster.

To filter in the context of Activity, Chat, or Teams, click on the filter icon (the three stacked horizontal lines) and type what you are looking for in the textbox. To use the predefined tags, click on the three dots (…) and choose one of the available options.

The tag feature is only available in the Activity and Chat contexts; in Teams you will only be able to filter using the filter textbox.

Figure 2.3.5: Filtering by activity type

Once a tag is selected, an icon is added to the text box, immediately filtering the results; this can be combined with your own search query to refine the results even further.

Commands

Commands are designed to help you work faster; they are shortcuts for tasks such as opening a channel or changing your present status. There are two types of commands: the ones built into the Teams application and the ones added by third-party apps.

To use the built-in commands, you will need to type a forward slash, /, into the command box at the top of the screen, followed by the command you want to use.

Commands will perform simple tasks. Some of them will trigger the command action, while others will require input data to trigger the action. Figures 2.3.6 and 2.3.7 show two different examples of actions that can be carried out in Teams using commands. If you type /busy, your presence status will be modified to busy:

Figure 2.3.6: Modifying your online status using a command

If you type /chat, the search bar changes its layout so that you have access to your contacts list and a textbox to send a quick message. This is particularly handy if you are in a meeting and need to send a private message to someone:

Figure 2.3.7: Sending a message using a command

Table 2.1 is taken from the official Microsoft documentation; you can see all the default commands included in the platform. This list might change in the future as new functionalities are added to Teams. To get the latest version, use the following link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-commands-in-teams-88f61508-284d-417f-a53d-9e082164050b

Table 2.1: Commands available to users in Teams

To view all the available commands at any given time, you can type a forward slash, /, into the search bar, as shown in Figure 2.3.8.

Figure 2.3.8: A forward slash, /, can be used in the search bar to display all available commands

Some apps can install new commands, and these are also available from the search bar. To use them, you will need to type the "at" symbol, @, followed by the name of the command. Typically, these types of commands are used to bring information from outside the organization into Teams.

As an example, if the Microsoft weather app is installed in your Microsoft Teams tenant, you will be able to get the current weather for any city when you type @Weather, followed by the name of the city:

Figure 2.3.9: Using commands to see information from custom apps installed in Microsoft Teams

Both built-in and third-party commands are only available on the desktop version of Microsoft Teams.

In this section, you learned how to harness a variety of tools that allow for the quick execution of tasks using Microsoft Teams shortcuts. Knowing how to use the command bar effectively will improve your efficiency while working with Microsoft Teams.