Take charge of communication in your Team and get started with Microsoft Teams. This video will guide you through your first few steps with Teams using the simple example of a building at 81 Military Road​:

Figure: Bad Example - You shouldn't look for files on network shares

Figure: Good Example - You can use the files tab in Teams (without leaving the app)

The great thing about having conversations next to the file is that it is always in context. Also, future users can view the conversation when they open the file in teams.

Figure: Good Example - You can have a conversation about a file

Behind the scenes, storage is provided by a SharePoint site; so that is there if you want to use it. As an added bonus thanks to this; you can take the files offline by syncing with OneDrive for Business and by default each channel gets its own folder.

Figure: Good Example - You can open the files in SharePoint

Figure: Good Example - You can sync the files in SharePoint with your current machine through OneDrive. A toast notification should popup indicating that files will be synced.

Note: You can add other cloud storage providers for file storage e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, etc
This is not recommended - as they aren't first-class​ citizens i.e. if you want to share files from them, you need to go to the provider's sharing settings outside of Teams

Warning: By using Teams instead of SharePoint, you are losing a number of key features:
- No full fidelity support for Metadata in Document Libraries e.g. can’t add extra columns into the “Files” tab
- No support for private channels e.g. you will need a team per subset of users with different permissions
- No direct access to version history from Teams UI (still exists on SharePoint UI)
- No access to the cross-office365 Search feature e.g. SharePoint search is better (see video: https://youtu.be/TiWzzdASVWE​)
- No access to external content in the search feature e.g. can’t search rules.ssw.com.au
- No access to SharePoint designer workflows (although the new way to do it is Microsoft Flow)​

What separates Teams from other chat programs, such as Slack and Skype, is the ability to add Tabs to your conversations.

The number of tabs is really broad and starts with the standard Microsoft products such as Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. You can also create tabs using Trello, YouTube, Zendesk, and more. The usefulness of this feature cannot be understated – it is so handy to have all your work items in one place.​​

Figure: There is a virtual smorgasbord of tabs to add the conversation – aggregating all your necessary work parts into one easy, accessible location

Figure: Beyond our "​​conversations", we have 4 tabs – our "files", our "VSTS backlog", our "workflow notes", and our "stakeholders in Excel"

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​Figure: Bad Example - asking someone to do work in a conversation

​Figure: Good Example - task is added to the backlog

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​TODO: Have the bot listen in on the conversations to remind you about the rule

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Bad Example: Default tab – Wiki. There is no offline mobile application

Good Example: Use OneNote. Now you can use the normal OneNote Desktop and Mobile app for iOS and Android (including offline support)
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​Note: Rename the tab to show that it is a OneNote Tab. E.g.:​ "OneNote - SSW Reno Sydney"​​

A "team" is a great way for teams to communicate and have a persistent forum to share information and discuss project related topics. The extensibility of a team also allows the addition of tabs that integrate with 3rd party applications to bring timely and relevant information into the team site. This allows team members to see at a glance what has been happening on the project.

You can also add Bots to communicate on your channel, or, even better, Apps! You can add Apps that let you, for example, be notified of any # uses in Twitter that you want to monitor, or Facebook Pages that you want to follow. This is great for the Marketing team!

To: All Developers
Subject: What’s been happening on SSWTimePro in the last couple of weeks

Hi Devs,
I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. Can you tell me what’s the latest?

Teams can keep you abreast of all the events happening on your project.

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Good example: See that a record of team conversations, builds, and deployments

​Hiding teams works well enough for end users but doesn't help administrators figure out which teams are actually in use. You should "Archive" unused teams instead – making the team unavailable read-only.

Figure: Bad example - Lots of old and test teams

Figure: Good example - Old teams are archived

To archive a Team, follow these steps:

• Click on "Manage Teams"
• Choose the team you want to archive (you must be owner of that Team)
• Click the "..." (ellipsis)
• Click "Archive team"​
  

Figure: Clicking "Manage Teams"

Figure: Clicking "Ellipsis" | "Archive Team"

Note: Archived teams can be restored at any time to be made available again.

​Bad Example: Client team without the "Client –" prefix

Good Example: Well prefixed Teams make Client-related teams easier to identify

If you start typing in the search box, you will see all Teams and Channels that matches your query:

Figure: Search results for "Training". The 1st two results are Teams, the 3rd one is a channel.

Teams only show up with their title, while channels show with the name of the associated Team underneath

Figure: Teams result

Figure: Channel associated to a Team result

Warning: If you hit enter, you will be redirected to the Messages, Files & People results. To see the Teams/Channels matching your query, simply click the search box again

Once you've hit "Enter", you can search through the different tabs to find messages, people or files that match your query across all teams

Figure: Use the 3 built-in tabs to search through the different categories

You can also use built in filters to refine your search, by clicking the "Filter" icon in Messages or Files tabs: 

Figure: Built in filters for Messages (see #3)

Important: Even though Teams search gives you quick access to all your messages and documents; the search is scoped to ONLY Teams, which means you cannot search for files hosted on SharePoint, OneDrive, other Office365 products (i.e. Delve/UserProfile) or external sources (i.e. Sugarlearning.com, Rules.SSW.com.au etc...). For this reason, it is advised to use the SharePoint Search instead.

Related Rule​

• ​Do you know how to use SharePoint Search?​​

How to make a Teams Meeting

To setup a Teams meeting, simply navigate to "Calendar" and then either "Meet Now" or "New Meeting".

​Figure: Creating a new meeting 

Figure: Meeting options

You can select a Channel to meet in and by doing so, members of the Team in which this channel lives will see a Channel activity that you can click to directly jump in the meeting.

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Figure: meeting channel activity

Microsoft Teams will also send out an email invitation email for the meeting - this is especially useful when inviting people outside your organization.​

Related rule​

• ​Do you make your team meetings easy to find?​​
  

Which is the best corporate solution?

The solution that allows the best collaboration with Developers, Project Managers, and other stakeholders is SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. It is super easy to create, upload and share documents with others.

What stuff do you need to store?​

For most projects you need to quickly store and locate important details and documents such as:

• Server details (Dev, Test, Production)
  
• Change-log documents
  
• Upcoming features (most often in Word or OneNote)
  
• General documents e.g. Requirements/Specifications (Note: it is possible to share documents from Microsoft Teams externally, but not from Teams directly... just open it in ​Office Online or a specific Office app first)​
  

Figure: Bad example – It might be easy to use File Shares, your Local C: or emails – but don’t. They don’t work in a team environment as they aren’t easy for others to access

Figure: Bad example – SharePoint integrated into TFS is not supported via Visual Studio anymore

Figure: Bad example – even though this is using SharePoint - this is using a Team Site with a Document Library - it is better to use Microsoft Teams which uses SharePoint under the covers

Good example: Use Microsoft Teams and it will automatically create a Site for the Team (and that includes a document library which you can connect to with OneDrive)

What does not get stored in Microsoft Teams? 

1. For developers, the 6 important documents should be stored in Azure DevOps (was TFS/VSTS).​​.. or instead use Markdown with the Wiki
2. For designers with large files, OneDrive is a better choice. See: Do you know the best Source Control for Designers?

What about usernames and pas​swords?

Documents with user names and passwords should not be stored in Microsoft Teams. Security is very important for everyone and every company. Use Azure KeyVault or KeePass to store usernames and passwords. KeePass keeps all passwords in one database locked by a master key, which should be accessible only by the few people you trust.

​At SSW we have a custom property for each client that stores the Teams URL:​​​

Figure: Live CRM | Company/Account Form – added Teams URL field

To get that URL, simply click the ellipsis next to your Team name and click "Get link to Team"

Figure: get the Teams URL

This process can even be automated using Azure functions and Graph API to provision a new Team every time a new client is created in CRM.

​A SharePoint page can also have dynamic content such as Document Library views, Youtube players, and much more. You can even embed your own custom web parts, rendered in Teams with full fidelity.​​

Bad Example: Details sent via Email

Good Example: Details set as a SharePoint page, visible in a Team’s tab

To set up a SharePoint Page as a Tab in Teams, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to SharePoint:

Figure: Navigating to SharePoint from Teams

2. Create a SharePoint page

Figure: adding a new SharePoint page

3. Customize it

Figure: Customizing the page using the different controls

4. Publish it (tips: you can even share it via Email or Promote it as a News)

Figure: Publishing the page​

Figure: several options available once the page is published

5. Go To Teams and Add new Tab

6. Select “SharePoint”

Figure: Adding the page as a tab in Teams

7. Select the page you just published and hit “save”

Figure: picking the page from the menu

An easy and fun way to alleviate this issue and boost user adoption to Microsoft Teams is to use Emojis in your channel names (using Windows Key + .)!​

Bad Example: Channel names without emojis

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Good Example: Channel names have emojis​​

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Figure: When people chat with you, they can see what you’re up to

More information​

To update the status message, follow these steps:​​​

• On the top right, click on your photo
• Click on the pencil icon to edit the status message​
  

Figure: Edit the Teams status message each day

The status message is helpful when it contains: ​

• Project: xxx (the product/project you’re working on) | yyy (the tasks you’re working on)
• Need: xxx (team members that you’re working with – use @mention to tag these members)
• Location: xxx (where you’re working from e.g. Home, SSW Melbourne, CBA, etc.) 

• Enable “Show when people message me”
• For “Clear status message after”, select Never (to prevent Microsoft from deleting the status message)
• Click Done once complete
  

Figure: Edit the status message​

Related rule

• Do you do Daily Scrums (aka stand-up meetings)?​