Join Teams and Start Video and Audio Calls

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About this lesson

Learn how to join or create a meeting and chat with other team members via video/audio.

Quick reference

Join Teams and Start Video and Audio Calls

Create and Join teams and use video and audio to communicate with team members.

When to use

We start video or audio calls whenever we want to discuss ideas/communicate with team members face-to-face.

Instructions

One of the main ways to communicate in Teams is via Audio and Video calls. We can start an ad-hoc meeting or we can schedule a meeting in advance. 

Schedule a Meeting

  • From a teams channel, click the drop-down next to the Meet button
  • Choose Schedule a Meeting
  • Complete the meeting details
  • Add Invitees
  • Click Send

The meeting will be sent out to all invitees and added to the team calendar in Teams. 

Meet Now

We use the Meet Now feature whenever we want to start an ad-hoc meeting. For example, if we are having a conversation with other team members via Teams chat, we could decide to continue the discussion in a meeting. Meet Now allows us to start an immediate meeting without the need to schedule in advance. 

  • From a teams channel, click the Meet button
  • Choose Meet Now
  • Adjust the meeting settings as required

  • Click Join now

Once in the Teams meeting, we have a menu bar with different meeting options. 

Chat - Open a chat panel

People - Shows the meeting participants

Raise - Allows participants to get the host's attention by raising a hand

React - Send a reaction

View - Switch the Teams View

More - Advanced Teams meeting options

Camera - Toggle your camera off/on

Mic - Mute/Unmute your microphone

Share - Share your screen, application, whiteboard, PowerPoint, or Excel Live

Invite People

We can invite more people to the meeting. 

  • Click the People button to open the Participants pane
  • Type the name of the person to invite
  • Click Request to Join

Leave a Teams Meeting

When a meeting is finished, we can choose to leave the meeting or end the meeting. If we leave a meeting, the meeting still carries on but we are no longer participating. If we end a meeting, the meeting is stopped for all participants. 

  • Click the Leave button
  • Choose End meeting

To take part in audio and video calls with team members, we need to be a member of the team. We can join existing teams or we can create our own teams. 

Join a Team

  • Click Join or create a team

Public teams will show in the list. We can join any public team without approval from the team owner. 

  • Click Join team

Create a Team

  • Click Join or create a team

We can create a team in several ways: from scratch, based on a M365 group, or from a template. 

Create a Team based on a Microsoft 365 group

When we create a team based on a Microsoft 365 group, it will carry across the same settings as the Microsoft 365 group including group members and permissions. 

  • Click From a group or team
  • Click Microsoft 365 group
  • Select a group
  • Click Create

Hints & tips

  • Ad-hoc and Scheduled Meetings can also be started directly from within the Teams calendar
  • Scheduled meetings will also be posted to the channel conversation feed
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  • 00:04 Now, one of the biggest uses of Teams is for video and audio meetings.
  • 00:09 So as you might expect,
  • 00:10 there are many different ways that you can access meetings from within Teams.
  • 00:14 So, I'm currently clicked on the Design channel,
  • 00:17 notice in the top right-hand corner, I have a Meet button.
  • 00:20 Now, if I click the drop down, I have two options, I can Meet now, or
  • 00:24 I can Schedule a meeting.
  • 00:26 Now, the difference between these two is that Meet now is kind of like an ad-hoc
  • 00:30 meeting.
  • 00:30 So, if you imagine I'm in this channel,
  • 00:33 maybe I'm having a conversation with the other members, and
  • 00:36 we decide on the fly that this would be better discussed in a Teams meeting.
  • 00:40 I don't have to schedule anything, I can simply click on the Meet now button.
  • 00:44 Alternatively, if we decide that maybe next Wednesday we should catch up and
  • 00:49 have a proper discussion about this, I could choose to schedule a meeting.
  • 00:53 So if I click on Schedule a meeting,
  • 00:56 it's basically going to allow me to create a calendar invite from within Teams.
  • 01:00 So I've added a quick title, I've invited a couple of members,
  • 01:04 I can schedule the time and the date.
  • 01:06 And notice here, it's going to post it to the Mark 8 Project Team > Design channel.
  • 01:11 I can then click on Send.
  • 01:13 So, that's going to send that out, much like an Outlook meeting invite, and
  • 01:18 it's going to schedule it in the Teams calendar.
  • 01:21 And you can see, there it is.
  • 01:23 Also notice from the calendar view, we have a Meet now button in here as well, or
  • 01:28 we can choose to schedule a meeting like we just did.
  • 01:31 Now if we click on Meet now, and then Start meeting,
  • 01:35 that's going to jump us directly into an ad-hoc meeting.
  • 01:40 We can change the title of the meeting if we want to,
  • 01:43 we can decide if we want our camera turned off or if we want it turned on.
  • 01:47 And then we can simply click on, Join now.
  • 01:50 That's going to jump us into the Teams meeting,
  • 01:52 and we now have all of these different options.
  • 01:55 So we can open up the Chat panel and have conversations.
  • 01:59 We can show all of the participants in this meeting.
  • 02:01 Currently, that's just me.
  • 02:03 If I want to invite other people, I can simply type their name in up here.
  • 02:08 For example, let's invite Adele, and I request that she joins this meeting.
  • 02:13 We can raise our hand in a meeting.
  • 02:15 So if you want to get the organizer's attention, you could click on that button,
  • 02:20 to get this little hand icon next to your name.
  • 02:22 We can send a reaction, so
  • 02:24 if you're really enjoying something that somebody is maybe presenting,
  • 02:28 you could choose to send them a heart, and that's going to show on their screen.
  • 02:32 We can change our view, we can add different applications.
  • 02:35 And then underneath the More drop down, we have things like Record,
  • 02:39 if we need to record the meeting.
  • 02:41 We can add background effects and settings.
  • 02:44 And we also have control over if we want our camera and
  • 02:46 microphone turned off or on.
  • 02:48 And then the final button we have is the Share button.
  • 02:52 So, if you need to present some content, whether that be a PowerPoint presentation,
  • 02:57 or a Excel spreadsheet, or maybe you're just showing something on your desktop,
  • 03:01 you have all of those options within here to share your content with all of
  • 03:05 the other meeting participants.
  • 03:07 Now, this isn't a Teams training session,
  • 03:10 there is a lot more we could go into, but hopefully that gives you an idea
  • 03:14 as to how meetings work if you've never used it before.
  • 03:18 And when you want to leave, we have a Leave button at the top here.
  • 03:21 I'm going to say, End meeting.
  • 03:23 Now, the other useful thing to note about meetings is if you check out the Design
  • 03:28 channel, notice here we also have that meeting that I scheduled showing in
  • 03:32 the actual feed, to make it easy for people to join.
  • 03:35 Now, let's talk a little bit more about the connection between Teams and
  • 03:39 other parts of Microsoft 365.
  • 03:41 Now, if I want to create a new Team, I can click on the Join or
  • 03:45 Create a Team button at the bottom.
  • 03:47 Now, you can see here, I've got a few different options.
  • 03:49 The Friday Lunch Club at the end here, notice as I hover over,
  • 03:53 I get the option to join a Team.
  • 03:55 So, this is a public team that's being created, which is open to everybody.
  • 04:00 And if I want to join that team, I can simply click, Join team.
  • 04:04 So you might see lots of these within your organization,
  • 04:07 and you're free to join them if you want to.
  • 04:09 As soon as I join, that team appears in my list of teams, and
  • 04:13 I can then access any conversations that are going on in here.
  • 04:16 Now, if I want to create my own team, I have the option here to create the team.
  • 04:21 Now, this is the interesting part, I can choose to create a team from scratch,
  • 04:27 or I can create a team based off of a Microsoft 365 group.
  • 04:32 So if I select this option, I'm going to say, create it based off of a group.
  • 04:37 Notice here, I now get access to the two groups that I have in Outlook.
  • 04:43 So if I want a new team for Project Alpha, I can choose this, and
  • 04:47 the team in Microsoft Teams is going to be created with the same settings and
  • 04:52 permissions as the Outlook group.
  • 04:54 So it's basically going to bring across all of the members and
  • 04:58 save me quite a bit of time.
  • 05:00 So there we go, there's the team, I can see it in my Teams list.
  • 05:03 And if we take a look at the members by clicking on Manage team,
  • 05:07 you can see that it's ported across all of the members of that Outlook group.
  • 05:12 And if you recall, when we were talking about Outlook groups,
  • 05:16 I told you that setting up an Outlook group doesn't automatically
  • 05:20 create a team in Microsoft Teams.
  • 05:22 So if you want to link them together, this is the way that you need to do it.
  • 05:25 Create the Outlook group first, and
  • 05:27 then you can create a team based off of that Outlook group.

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