Microsoft Teams Scavenger Hunt: Beginner Level
Welcome to the first in our series of three Microsoft Teams scavenger hunts!
This beginner level scavenger hunt is designed for people and work groups who are brand new to Teams – that is, you've probably already started poking around the platform, but everything is still new and maybe a bit overwhelming. The tasks in this hunt are simple, everyday activities that you will need to do to efficiently collaborate with your working team on the platform.
Get started by downloading the Beginner Scavenger Hunt below.
Share it with your working group during a team meeting. Then, get ready, set...go! See how long it takes you to complete. Come back to the bottom of this post to get answers. Then, reach out and let us know – how did you do?
When you're done, complete the Intermediate Microsoft Teams Scavenger Hunt for more of a challenge. And, the Microsoft Teams Foundational Level Scavenger Hunt is for teams who need help setting expectations and organizing your well-intentioned but slightly chaotic collaboration practices.
BEGINNER ANSWER KEY
Write a Post to Your Team
This is easy but for newbies, it will teach you habits to make sure you post in the right place. Here’s the scenario: It’s the start of your day and you’re checking Activity (bell) notifications (which means you’re in your Feed). You see the label 'Posts' at the top and 'Start a Conversation' at the bottom of your feed. Ready to share, right? Not necessarily. Be sure to click the Teams button to find the right team you want to post into. If you just use the one in your feed, it will go the team and channel that has the most recent activity above (as you were responding to a notification, originally).
Format your Post
Visuals are powerful. Images are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than words. Is there an image you can use to engage your readers more quickly? The little A with the pencil icon hides a big variety of great editor functions to know about: colors, hyperlinking text, bullet points and more…
Mark a Post as Important
In the create a post editor you used above, find the Important toggle under the choices listed when you click the ellipsis on the far right.
Show Teams Shortcut Commands
That Search bar and its many shortcuts is just waiting to be discovered. Type “/” into the bar at top for a glance of some of the shortcuts that you can dive into. Set your status to away? Check! See an org chart, or get the latest Teams product updates? Two keystrokes will do it. Note…shortcuts are not all of the activities you can do in Teams, but they are common actions that you might find yourself needing over time.
Download a File
Teams’ minimalist design anticipates that you’ll notice things by brushing over its pixels with your mouse or finger (mobile). If you go into the Files section of a Team, the key is to move your cursor over the left rail and discover that each file has a hidden circle that appears only upon hovering. Once you've selected the file by checking the circle, the option to download a file appears.
Schedule a Meeting
This isn’t particularly hard; click on the calendar and you’ll see on the top right what you need to do – meet right now, or set up a new time. The twist here is to think more deeply about the uses of channels and where and why you might set a meeting up in one of them. Teams are groups of individuals. Channels can be dedicated to different projects, deliverables, workstreams or sub-team efforts where the outputs vary and may not involve everyone on the team.
Pin Favorites
Are you the popular kid on the block who keeps getting invited to everything? Being in a lot of teams and channels may be necessary, but you can keep your most-used spaces close at hand by pinning them to the top of the list. Click on the ellipsis menu to discover your options.
Set Notifications
Let’s talk about notifications. Hopefully you’ve gone in and configured them for the desktop app (you do have the desktop app, don’t you?) We highly recommend you download the Teams app (free) from the Microsoft app store.Log in to Teams, go your profile photo, then choose Settings > Notifications and set the sliders to on or off for the types of activity you want to hear about. It's up to you, but we recommend focusing on mentions and optimizing emails to be light (assuming you're in Teams most of the day).
MORE MICROSOFT TEAMS SCAVENGER HUNTS
Intermediate: For people who are familiar with Teams and want to dive deeper into features available during live Teams meetings.
Team Owner Foundations: For leaders of small working groups who have some experience with Teams, but who now need to set clear norms and foundations so that everyone is on the same page about what to share and where.
Talk Social to Me has over a decade of experience building engaging employee collaboration programs, and we know exactly what works. We’re effective at creating engaged, happy, productive employees through the intelligent use of social collaboration tools like Microsoft 365, Teams and Yammer. Ready to help teams work better together? Reach out to our CEO Carrie Marshall at carrie@talksocialtome.com for more information.
