Teams Private Chat

Quick reference

• 00:05 Here we are on the Team's Posts page, where a lot of team activity happens.
• 00:08 But let's say you want to have a private chat with Lidia, your Product Manager.
• 00:12 And looking at your choices, you can see here on the left,
• 00:15 that there is a Chat option.
• 00:17 When you click on Chat, you can see your previous chats, which is a great feature,
• 00:22 as you can easily review, and even search for important details.
• 00:26 So, this is great for conversations that have already happened, but
• 00:29 we want to start a new conversation.
• 00:31 And, in fact, this is an FAQ because you can look around and
• 00:35 you can see it's not obvious how to begin.
• 00:38 Turns out, this pencil icon, if you hover over it at the top of your screen,
• 00:44 here is the main way that you start a new chat.
• 00:47 When you click on it, a new item appears in your Recent list, called New chat, and
• 00:51 the To field appears.
• 00:53 Here, we can begin to type the name of the person we want to chat with.
• 00:57 In this case, Lidia.
• 00:58 All we have to do is type Lid, and that matches Lidia Holloway.
• 01:03 When we click on her card, that populates the To field with her information,
• 01:08 and we're ready to begin a conversation.
• 01:11 Now, let me show you what this looks like from both sides of the chat.
• 01:15 Megan will start a chat with Lidia saying, hey,
• 01:18 are we ready to proceed with the new launch?
• 01:24 And press Enter.
• 01:25 And now Lidia will receive a notification that Megan has started a chat with her.
• 01:29 She can click on the alert, or go to Chat to see what's going on.
• 01:36 And if she wants to reply, she says, sure.
• 01:40 Do we need Irvin, as well?
• 01:45 And you can see over on the left,
• 01:47 that there's a status that Lidia is actually responding in real-time.
• 01:52 And then Lidia gets a pop up in a chime, saying that Megan has responded.
• 01:57 Now we get both these pop ups on the same computer in this case because we're
• 02:00 in a training environment where both users are signed on to the same desktop.
• 02:03 In practice, these pop ups would appear on each person's computer or
• 02:07 mobile device independent.
• 02:08 Now, notice, that you can reply right in the pop up.
• 02:11 So, there's no need to go into Teams.
• 02:13 You can just do it right there on the screen by simply saying,
• 02:17 in this case, sure, let's loop him in.
• 02:20 And now we're seeing that pop up as if it were to happen on Lidia's side.
• 02:25 Now we're in a place where we want to invite Irvin into the conversation.
• 02:29 Megan can do this directly in the Teams app by clicking on the + Add people icon.
• 02:36 And we're going to add, Irvin.
• 02:38 In this case, on your system, you won't have a third user,
• 02:41 but this is what it looked like, exactly.
• 02:44 So you click Add Irvin, and
• 02:46 now we have all three people in the conversation at the same time.
• 02:51 In this way, you can have multiple people involved in a conversation,
• 02:55 dynamically, in real-time.
• 02:57 In some cases, you may want to switch to a real-time call.
• 03:01 Let's do this with voice.
• 03:05 Let's do this with voice, he says to everyone.
• 03:08 And can initiate a phone call by clicking on the Audio Call option.
• 03:13 If cameras are available, you can also click the Video Camera icon,
• 03:18 and start a video chat, as well.
• 03:21 By clicking on Audio Call,
• 03:22 he'll be able to automatically invite everybody into the call.
• 03:26 This is what it looks like when you receive an invitation to a call.
• 03:30 The pop up occurs and you can answer the call or decline the call.
• 03:34 If you don't do anything at all, your voicemail will answer.
• 03:38 So, returning to our setup where we have Megan on the left, chatting with Lidia,
• 03:43 and Lidia on the right chatting with Megan.
• 03:47 We can see that Megan is online, according to this indicator, which we call Status.
• 03:53 The Available status means that Megan is both online and available.
• 03:58 Now, she may decide that she wants some private time.
• 04:01 And she can do this by setting her status to Not Available.
• 04:04 Do this by clicking on your personal icon, and then clicking on your Status and
• 04:09 setting it to the status you wish for it to be.
• 04:12 The Available statuses are managed for you in some ways.
• 04:16 In the sense that if you're not in a meeting, and you're online and
• 04:19 you're active, your status will show to everybody as Available.
• 04:22 If you're in a meeting or in a chat, your status will show as Busy.
• 04:28 If you're leading a meeting, you will be set as Do not disturb.
• 04:33 If you don't want to be interrupted, you can set your status to, Do not disturb.
• 04:37 And this will change to the Do not disturb status.
• 04:40 Now, she'll see that you're set to Do not disturb.
• 04:44 If she doesn't notice this and tries to talk to you, anyway,
• 04:50 You'll get the chat message, but no pop up appears.
• 04:54 And that way, if you're sharing a desktop or a screen, or
• 04:57 you're in a meeting sharing a PowerPoint, you will not be interrupted with a pop up
• 05:01 that says, hey, why didn't you show up for lunch?
• 05:05 Or some other equally embarrassing anecdote.
• 05:07 An interesting advanced tip is that you can change your status when you have
• 05:12 the Microsoft Teams desktop application installed from the icon on the bottom
• 05:16 of your taskbar.
• 05:17 If you hover over this icon, you'll see the status indicators here.
• 05:21 So, she can change her status back to Available, anytime she wants,
• 05:25 by simply clicking on that icon.
• 05:27 One more quick tip about Status.
• 05:29 You can click on your icon, and then click Set status message, and
• 05:33 type in a message that will appear to everyone just before they text you.
• 05:38 And then you can set the check box to, Show when people message me.
• 05:43 And then set the time for this message to expire, and then Done.
• 05:47 And so, now, when Lidia, in this case, goes to chat with Megan,
• 05:51 she can see the status message that Megan has posted before she even begins to chat,
• 05:57 and maybe think twice.
• 05:59 In addition, if you hover over someone's contact card,
• 06:02 you can also see the message here.
• 06:04 This is a very useful tool when used properly.
• 06:07 So, in review, with Teams, you can have private chats with individuals or groups.
• 06:11 Chats are journaled for later reference.
• 06:14 You start a new chat by clicking the New Chat icon.
• 06:18 Real-time alerts happen to keep you up to date when chats are initiated with you,
• 06:22 and whenever you initiate chats with others.
• 06:26 You can reply directly in the alert, and jump into a voice or
• 06:29 video call whenever that's convenient.
• 06:32 Your online status is set automatically, and can be manually updated.
• 06:37 And you can actually publish a status message to inform people about your
• 06:41 availability or travel plans.
• 06:42 In our next lesson, we'll talk about working with documents in Teams.

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