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Overview of the Teams Dashboard52.6 KB Overview of the Teams Dashboard - Solution
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Quick reference
Overview of the Teams Dashboard
Get familiar with the Teams interface, dashboard, menus, and commands.
When to use
It's important we understand the layout of the Teams dashboard so we can move around Teams and complete tasks effectively.
Instructions
Navigation Menu
The menu on the left-hand side is the primary way to navigate to the different parts of the Teams dashboard.
Activity
The Activity Feed shows all activity in Teams. We see mentions, new channel posts, new announcements, meetings, etc. here. Activity helps us keep on top of everything that's happening in our teams and channels.
Chat
In Chat, we can have private conversations with one or more people.
Teams
The Teams area shows our teams list. Any teams we have created or are a member of are shown in this list. By default, a new team will have one channel called 'General'.
Calendar
This is our team calendar. Anyone who is a member of the team can add items to the team calendar. The calendar also synchronizes with Outlook.
Calls
We can make or receive calls from here and forward calls to voicemail.
Files
This area contains any files shared amongst the team.
Tasks by Planner
Use the integrated Planner app to create and manage team tasks.
Approvals
Create new approval requests and view the status of current approval requests.
The Search Bar / Command Bar
At the top of the screen is a search bar or command bar as it's known in Teams. Type keywords or phrases into the command bar to search across teams, channels, conversations, people, and files. Execute common Teams tasks by using quick command shortcuts from the command bar.
Settings
Click the three dots in the top right-hand corner to access Settings. We can customize our copy of Microsoft Teams from here. Also in this menu, we can find a full list of keyboard shortcuts, download updates, and the Teams mobile app.
Hints & tips
- Press CTRL+E to jump straight to the search bar.
- 00:04 In this first lesson, we're going to familiarize ourselves with the Teams
- 00:08 interface or the dashboard, if you like.
- 00:11 And the purpose of this lesson is really just to get you comfortable with
- 00:14 the different areas of Teams.
- 00:16 So you know where to go in order to access things like chat, files, tabs,
- 00:21 search, all of those things.
- 00:23 And if this is the first time that you're opening Teams
- 00:27 then it might look a bit confusing first of all, so
- 00:30 let's completely demystify it and take a quick tour around the dashboard.
- 00:35 So when you open up Microsoft Teams, the first thing that's
- 00:38 immediately obvious is down the left hand side we have our main menu bar.
- 00:44 And this is really where all of the action happens.
- 00:46 It's where you access all of the different parts of Teams.
- 00:50 Now we're going to be going into each of these areas in a lot more detail,
- 00:53 than we're going to in this particular lesson.
- 00:56 But let's just briefly look at what each of these sections houses.
- 01:00 So let's start at the top, we have an activity button just here.
- 01:05 And this is basically a live feed of everything that's going on in your Teams.
- 01:11 So things like notifications will appear in here, conversations that you've had
- 01:15 will appear in here, meetings you've attended will be in here as well.
- 01:20 So it's really simply an activity log so you can get back to things quickly.
- 01:25 The next button is chat.
- 01:28 And this is where we go if we want to have a private conversation with one or
- 01:33 more people.
- 01:33 Now, private chat is very different to chatting with others in a channel or
- 01:39 a team.
- 01:40 Now, if you're a bit confused by that statement just there, don't worry it will
- 01:44 become clearer later on.
- 01:46 But if, for example, I just want to privately message one colleague and
- 01:50 not have my message sent to everybody that's a member of a channel,
- 01:54 I would come into Chat and post a message here.
- 01:57 The next button down is where we have our teams.
- 02:01 So this is going to show any teams that you're a member of or have access to.
- 02:06 Notice currently I have two teams in here and let's expand
- 02:11 Train IT Now Limited you'll see that I have two things underneath.
- 02:17 Now these are called team channels, and
- 02:19 team channels are basically where your conversations take place.
- 02:23 And we're going to discuss channels, a lot more later on.
- 02:26 But as you might expect when you add a team or
- 02:29 join a team, you can see the team channels are the parts of that team and
- 02:33 you can even create your own team channels as well.
- 02:37 And channels in general are where people go to talk about a specific topic but
- 02:42 as I said, more about that later on.
- 02:45 The next one down is a calendar.
- 02:47 So you will always have access to a group calendar in Teams.
- 02:52 And we can use this much like we use any other calendar.
- 02:55 We can schedule meetings and we can even join online meetings from here as
- 03:00 well using the meet now button in the top right hand corner.
- 03:04 The next button down is calls, so your call history is going to be
- 03:09 listed here and then underneath that we have files.
- 03:13 So currently you can see that I have a list of my recent files.
- 03:16 So these are files that I've shared within Teams.
- 03:20 And this list just gives me quick access to them and of course there's lots of
- 03:24 different actions I can take here by clicking on those three dots.
- 03:27 I can open, I can download, I can copy the link and send it to somebody else.
- 03:32 And we can access files from all different kinds of locations for
- 03:36 example, OneDrive cloud storage.
- 03:39 Next we have tasks, and
- 03:40 this is powered by the separate Microsoft application called Planner.
- 03:45 And this is like a to do list on steroids, there's a lot you can do in here and
- 03:50 you can create group to do list, group tasks, and assign tasks to others.
- 03:55 And then finally at the bottom we have approvals.
- 03:58 And again this is something we're going to discuss in more detail later on but
- 04:03 it might be that you've set up and
- 04:05 approval that goes to your manager to get them to sign off on a document.
- 04:10 And this is where all of your approvals live,
- 04:12 and you can see if that's been approved, cancelled, or rejected.
- 04:16 Underneath that we have these three dots,
- 04:19 which is a little bit mysterious until you click on them.
- 04:22 This is where we can extend the capabilities of Teams by adding other
- 04:27 applications.
- 04:28 Similarly at the bottom we have an apps area again where we can
- 04:32 browse other applications and also help at the bottom here as well.
- 04:37 So each of these sections that you go into has its own interface and
- 04:41 we'll be exploring all of these in a lot of detail as we go through the course.
- 04:47 The final thing to mention here is right at the top we have a search bar or
- 04:51 a command bar.
- 04:52 And this really serves two purposes, it allows you to search for
- 04:56 documents, people, conversations, messages from here.
- 05:01 And you can also execute commands from here as well using
- 05:05 slash command shortcuts, really useful, more about that later.
- 05:10 Over on the right hand side we have three dots again,
- 05:13 this is where you're going to find things like your settings.
- 05:16 You can also access a list of all of the keyboard shortcuts available in Teams
- 05:20 from here.
- 05:21 You can download the mobile app onto your device, and you can also check for
- 05:26 updates in Teams.
- 05:28 And I will say that Teams is being updated at a really rapid rate at the moment.
- 05:32 So I always find it's worth coming in here and just checking for
- 05:36 updates fairly frequently.
- 05:38 If you click on your profile picture,
- 05:40 this is where you have access to your profile information as well as some other
- 05:43 things which we're going to explore in this course.
- 05:46 And then finally in the top right hand corner we have those standard Microsoft
- 05:51 buttons to minimize, maximize, and close.
- 05:54 Now, the final thing worth noting here is that I'm using the Teams desktop
- 05:58 application.
- 06:00 You could use Teams for the web via your Microsoft 365 account.
- 06:05 Now both of these versions are pretty much exactly the same but
- 06:09 if I'm in my office, I tend to like to use the desktop application as
- 06:13 opposed to the web application.
- 06:16 So if you are logged in via the web and
- 06:18 you notice a couple of little differences, that's probably why.
- 06:22 The good news is, it is very simple to download the desktop application when you
- 06:27 are logged into the online version.
- 06:29 So if you want to ensure that what you're looking at is exactly the same as mine,
- 06:33 then make sure you are using the desktop version of Teams.
- 06:37 In the next lesson we're going to talk more about using Teams as a guest, so
- 06:41 I will see you over there.
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