Turbocharging Teams - Episode 9: Taking Command of Teams

By Kevin Kieller and Dino Caputo

Turbocharging Teams focuses on tips and tricks to help you get the most out of using Microsoft Teams. The Command Bar in Teams allows you to more quickly get some common things done. In this episode of Turbocharging Teams, Kevin and Dino introduce the command bar and share some of their favorite commands.

 

 

Microsoft Stream Generated Automatic Transcript

Welcome to another episode of turbocharging teams. My name

is Kevin Kieller and I'm joined as always by Dino

Caputo today. We wanted to talk about the command bar.

So the command bar are also known as the search bar as

shown kind of by #1 there.

If that's the the bar that's right at the top of your teams

client, and by default it says search, at least in the version

of the teams client that I'm running. It used to say search

or type of command, so it is the search bar, but as is shown in

right beside #2 is as soon as you click in that.

Bar then the message changes to say as is shown there, look for

messages, files and more. So if you type you know some text that

will search for it or and now it's telling you that it's also

the command bar type the slash key for a list of commands, and

lo and Behold, when you do what it says, as shown by item number

3, typing a slash, then you get a drop down.

That shows all of the possible commands, so that happens as

soon as you type the slash key in. What originally is is deemed

as the search bar, so you may have avoided that, or you may

have used it. You know to search for things which maybe we can

cover on another episode, just the different mechanisms of

Search. I know we've talked about it in different contexts,

but once again today we're talking about the command bar

and so. Tina and I have taken a couple commands that we're going

to talk about from this list, so the first one I'm going to talk

about there's a whole series of what I'll call status command.

So slash DND BBE slash away slash busy available. So those

set your status to the whatever you type in there. One of the

best ones, and I think we talked about this in the context of

when you're in a meeting.

And I don't know if it's the best one, but it's an important

one is if you type slash DND anytime you type kind of you

start typing. It gives you a dropdown of matching commands.

In this case it kind of tells you that this will set your

status to do not disturb you hit enter and then shown kind of

underneath #2. It tells you your status of being set to do not

disturb and further it goes on to say you're not going to get

notifications except for. Urgent messages and if you click on

that change settings you can control who's important enough

to breakthrough the do not disturb status. The reason that

I like this one is it's easy to do, you know, slash DND when

you're in a meeting and then you don't get pinged it, you're

automatically set to do not disturb status when you share a

PowerPoint, but do you know? I don't think it automatically

sets you to do not disturb status when you share your

screen for example.

Yeah, that's right. So yeah, so that's a good example. If you're

sharing your whole screen, you know it's fine. If you don't

mind notifications popping up, but sometimes maybe you don't

want to share certain notifications, so doing this

slash DND when you're sharing your screen is good and you

know. So once again, if you know the bby right back, that's you

know good and other ones are self explanatory. The only thing

is is sadly there's not.

A slash Reset Command and so after using one of those

commands, you probably want to go and use what showing is

number 3 is you click on your avatar on the upper right corner

and then you know you kind of. Scroll down and where it says

the current status. So in the example that shown on this slide

it's do not disturb and I click on the you know, the greater

than sign and then I get the pop up and I pick reset status and

the reason you want to do that is 'cause when you reset your

status. Then your status. For example, if you have a meeting

on your calendar, it's automatically set, whereas if

you say slash busy, it'll never.. It'll keep you busy forever, and

while that looks like you're super productive, it'll never go

back to kind of the available status. So maybe if Microsoft's

listing, or maybe we could do a user voice thing, maybe there's

already one to suggest there's a slash reset command, so those

are the status commands. Pretty

handy. A quick way to you know to do that as opposed to

navigating to your avatar and clicking the status. OK, so the

next one that I'm going to talk about is the slash test call

command.

I like this especially when you have an important call

and you're interested. Or maybe you're saying, well, I'm going

to try to use little USB speaker puck and I wonder how I sound in

this room versus using like a

headset. And so if you do slash test call, then like a bot

basically says the message there to test your call quality record

a short message and then your message will be played back to

you and then it goes beep an you talk for a few seconds and then

it plays that back to you. So you hear how your audience will

hear you. Then as well it gives you this test call results as

shown by #3, and that's good because it's telling you like

which microphone and speakers and camera are being used. And I

mean the camera is kind of self evident. The speakers you can

you know that's on your side, but occasionally if you have

like a USB device plugged in, it still could be using for

instance. Like it's doing here, like in this test call results

is saying that it's using the microphone array that's built

into my laptop, so I'm wearing a headset and I think it's working

terrific, but maybe you know it hasn't picked that up or I

haven't switched so and then on that box if you see stuff that

you don't like, you can go to device settings and control

that, so that's the test call command. Once again I use that

often before important calls or recordings if you want to hear

how other people are going to

hear you. And with that, do you know you're going to cover a

couple of commands as well?

Thanks so another great command that I like is the what's new.

Command which you start typing.. What's new, you'll start to see

it appear and you can.

Top hat or just hit enter on it and it's going to immediately

take you to what you would see if you went to the help option.

What's new as well in the teams client in the bottom bottom left

so this one allow. Basically just shows you what is coming up

and what features are coming up or have been released in teams.

So right now this is a current list at the time of this

recording and you can see that.

You know there's something else been about Internet Explorer 11

not being supported and. September 4th SharePoint lists

was the latest feature that was just released on teams who

haven't tried that will. We should talk about that in

another episode. Some information about whiteboard an

you know, real time status, updates. They've improved status

updates and teams to be a little bit more responsive and more

real time. So great way to find net new information that's

being published in teams so.

Courage you to try the what's new command.

The Next One I'm going to talk about is slash saved, so saved

allows you to find messages that you've previously saved in

teams. So how do you save a messaging team is the obvious

question, so if you're in a message thread or in a chat.

And you click the ellipsis or the three dots. You can say save

this message and messages that are saved or notated with that

little banner. Kind of looks like a ribbon to me. Like you

want a prize and so I've saved a few messages and then if I do a

slash saved it will quickly retrieve all of them and you can

see below note notated in two years. It's showing 3 messages

that I've saved. I can you know?

Remember, you know I wanted to remember a conversation I had or

something that had some valuable information. You can save, and

so I find this valuable if I.

Tend to have to go back to info that I need to look up time and

time again. I just I save them.. And of course you can clear

these later on as you need them.. You just repeat the same thing

you would find that same message hit the ellipsis and say unsaved

this message so. Great little tip there in terms of saving

messages and then retreiving him with the with the slash saved

command. Hey Dino, just what's your experience been because I

know you say you you do that in a quickly brings up the

messages, but like I found like if I've got ones that seem to be

saved from I don't know. Like a year ago or whatever like it

seems like it chugs for awhile.. Like if you notice that. Yeah,

well, that just means I have noticed sign and it just.

And I can't really pinpoint why that might be. I mean, some of

these messages were.

Not that old, but.

I think the first one in my list is fairly old. I find the same

thing when scrolling back and channels and looking for older

messages as well. Sometimes it takes awhile to load up.

So hopefully that's something that improves. But yeah, I think

you might. You might find that if if you have a lot of them

saved, you might encounter that.. Hopefully that's something that

we see improved. Yeah, and certainly I think we've seen

that, you know, we know the. Microsoft Teams engineering team

is working very diligently and the performance just keeps

getting better and better man.. So yeah, maybe I'll do some more

tests and maybe it's already improved so.

OK, I will turn it back to you to close this off. I

believe so. Thanks again for tuning into another episode of

turbocharging teams. Well, I hope you found this valuable and

I think we're going to continue to go through more of these

slash commands. And that future episodes. And as always, if you

have anything you'd like to learn more about, or any

feedback you know where to reach us. Until next time, thanks

for tuning into Turbocharging Teams. have a great one.