Ten Tips for Maximising Productivity with Microsoft Teams
Microsoft
Frazer Lloyd-Davies
You’ve likely familiarised yourself with the basics of Microsoft Teams and found it’s already doing a good job of keeping everyone connected, especially if your employees are working remotely. But now that you’ve got the fundamentals nailed down, it’s time to see how the platform can do more for your business.
As it happens, Teams is packed with helpful features and functions designed to make your workday a whole lot easier. Here are ten of our favourite tips to help you maximise productivity with Microsoft Teams.
1. Personalise Notifications
Staying productive is much easier when you’re not constantly interrupted by notifications that don’t really need your attention. Microsoft Teams sends you alerts about all sorts of activity by default, but you can customise your notifications to suit what’s actually relevant to you. To do this, go to Settings and More > Notifications and Activity and select which alerts you want to receive and how you want to receive them.
2. Change Status to Focus
If you’re struggling to concentrate after adjusting your notifications, setting your status to ‘Do Not Disturb’ temporarily pauses all alerts. Just click your profile icon and select ‘Do Not Disturb’ from the status options. If there are certain people – like a manager or colleague – you don’t want to miss messages from, you can add them to your priority access list. Go to Settings and More > Privacy > Manage Priority Access.
Alternatively, the ‘Busy’ status doesn’t stop notifications, but it’s a polite way to let your team know you need some uninterrupted time to get things done and might be slower to respond. You can also set a duration, so Teams switches your status back to ‘Available’ automatically when you’re ready.
3. Only Follow Chats and Channels That Matter
With chats, channels and teams all in one place, Microsoft Teams makes it easy to keep collaboration flowing. But if your business creates a team or channel for every small project or conversation, things can quickly become cluttered. You might end up scrolling through irrelevant chats or hunting for files buried in channels you rarely use.
A bit of digital housekeeping goes a long way. You can sort through active and inactive teams and channels, keeping the most important at the top and hiding the rest. Simply drag and drop them into your preferred order. You can also pin a channel by right-clicking and selecting Pin.
For teams where your role is limited but the space is still active, click on the ellipsis (…) and select Hide to move it to your Hidden Teams folder. Don’t worry, you’ll still receive notifications for @mentions and tags.
4. Recap Meetings with AI
Meeting recordings are great for catching up on discussions you’ve missed, but setting aside the time to watch them in their entirety can be a big ask. Intelligent Recap in Microsoft Teams uses AI to generate notes, transcripts, follow-up tasks and highlights from your meetings. You’ll also be able to jump to the most relevant parts of the recording through personalised timeline markers. These are only visible to you and highlight moments when your name was mentioned, when someone shared their screen and when you joined or left.
You can access this feature by going to the ‘Recap’ tab in your calendar or chat view of a recorded meeting. It’s currently available with a Microsoft Teams Premium licence or through Copilot for Microsoft 365.
5. Use Live Transcriptions
Live transcription is a feature within Microsoft Teams that creates a written record of what’s said during a meeting, with a timestamp and each speaker’s name shown alongside their comments. The transcript updates in real time, which means you can follow the conversation as it happens. It’s especially helpful in noisy environments or if you want to double-check what was said without interrupting.
Unlike live captions, transcripts are saved and can be downloaded after the meeting. This means rather than taking notes, you can actually listen to what’s being said and refer back to the transcript later if you need to. To turn this on, go to your meeting controls and click More Actions > Record and Transcribe > Start Transcription. Everyone in the meeting will be notified, and transcription starts automatically if the meeting is being recorded.
6. Send Urgent Messages When Necessary
If something needs immediate attention, Teams lets you mark a message as ‘Urgent’. This notifies the recipient every two minutes for 20 minutes, or until they open it. To do this, type your message, then click the plus icon (+) > Set Delivery Options > Urgent. Your message will appear with a red header and desktop alert.
Used appropriately, this can help prevent delays on time-sensitive tasks. Just try to save it for when it’s really necessary so your colleagues know it means “act now” when they see it.
7. Use the Channel Cross-Posting Feature
Sometimes you may have an announcement or a message that needs to be shared across multiple channels, or even with multiple teams. Rather than wasting time manually posting the same message one-by-one, cross-posting lets you write it once and publish it everywhere it needs to go.
To use it, go to one of the channels where you want to post and write your message as usual. Then click Settings > Post In > Multiple Channels and choose where else you want it to appear. When you hit send, it’ll be published across all the selected locations.
8. Access the History Menu
When you’re switching between chats, meetings, files and channels all day, it’s easy to lose track of where you were. The History Menu in Microsoft Teams helps you quickly get back to what you were working on without having to dig through tabs. Simply hover over the back arrow in the top-left corner of the Teams window and a dropdown will show the last 10+ places you’ve visited. You can also use the forward arrow to move ahead again if you’ve clicked back too far. This small feature makes life easier by cutting down the time spent retracing your steps.
9. Archive Old Teams
Once a project wraps up or a team finishes its purpose, keeping that space active in Microsoft Teams can end up causing more confusion than it’s worth. Instead of letting old teams linger in your sidebar, consider archiving them. Archiving moves the team into an inactive state. You can’t post new messages or make changes, but all the messages, files and notes remain safely stored and searchable.
Archiving clears up your active view, making it easier to focus on the teams that are still in use without permanently deleting anything you might need later. If you do ever need to revisit or reactivate a team, you can restore it in just a few clicks. To archive a team, go to the Teams admin centre or ask a team owner with the right permissions.
10. Use Slash Commands
The search bar at the top of Microsoft Teams isn’t just for finding messages or files. It also works as a command tool that can save you time and clicks. Typing a forward slash ( / ) followed by a word or abbreviation, lets you quickly change your status, start a call or even view the latest weather report without navigating through menus. For example, typing /unread brings up all your unread messages – ideal for catching up after a meeting or your lunch break. To view all the available commands, simply type / into the search bar.
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Microsoft Teams can do far more than just keep your team in touch. With the right setup and a few smart changes to how you use it, it can help your business cut down on wasted time and keep projects moving in the right direction.
If you’d like help setting things up properly, managing your environment or just making sure you’re getting the most out of Microsoft Teams, we’re here to support you. Acronyms offers a full range of Microsoft services tailored to the way your business works – whether that’s Teams, Microsoft 365, Azure or the wider Microsoft cloud ecosystem.
For more information about our Microsoft services, get in touch with the Acronyms team today.