Microsoft Teams Scavenger Hunt: Owner Foundations
Welcome to the third and final hunt in our series of three Microsoft Teams scavenger hunts!
This foundations level scavenger hunt is designed for people managers and/or groups of colleagues who are actively using Microsoft Teams, but who have realized that more structure, norms, and good practices should be established before further collaboration makes your chats and channels too chaotic to be sustainable.
Get started by downloading the Microsoft Teams Owner Foundations 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, share our Beginner and Intermediate Microsoft Teams scavenger hunts with your colleagues. Don't forget to use Yammer to share what you learned about Teams with a broad group of people.
FOUNDATIONS ANSWER KEY
Create (or Audit) Teams and Channels
If your working team suddenly jumped into using Teams, have you provided them with a designated place or team(s) in which to work? Teams are like folders, or themed discussion forums. Every team has, by default, a General channel. To help teammates understand what belongs where, create separate channels to mirror various workgroups, workstreams or shared objectives that need to be separated under the main topic. Be careful not to overwhelm by creating too many channels; you can always add more, but it's hard to cut back. Click "join or create a team" on the left rail to designate a place for your group to work – if a team doesn't already exist.To reduce clutter, consider deleting existing channels that aren't used regularly. Determine:
- The last time the channel was used
- How often the channel is used
- How many members on the team are using the channel
Be sure to find a new home for any important files shared in the channel. We suggest posting a notice in the team's general channel about an impending deletion, if it's warranted.
Edit Team Name and Description
A team name and description helps users to understand its purpose and expectations. From the ellipsis menu next to your team, choose "edit team" to adjust the team name and description. Easy peasy - but so important to keeping your collaboration in the right place.
Manage Members and Permissions
Choose "Add Member" from the team drop-down menu to add individual members to a team. To determine who can create and update items on your team, navigate to Manage member permissions in Manage Team > Settings. Use the "Manage Channel" options to decide who can post on each individual channel. While channels are meant to be collaborative, some may be better suited for reading, rather than posting, by the masses. If this doesn't apply to your team - can you help educate Internal Communications or IT about the difference?
Add a Unique Team Avatar
Image is everything. The left navigation bar of the Teams app can be overwhelmingly neon if it’s not customized! Teams assigns a default icon of the first two letters of the team name in a colored square to any team, but our highly visual brains would likely prefer a visual reminder of a team's purpose.Use a logo or a symbol that represent your team. Be creative and make this visual an extension of your culture, too. Find this in Manage team, then put your mouse over the pencil in the icon to upload an image.
This example is a red moon icon of a customized avatar for the Teams Change Managers (TCMs) team.
Add Group Tags
We all probably know that we can @ mention individuals and entire channels, but it may be helpful to create subsets of people to be notified about certain posts. In Teams, you can align a hashtag to a group of people to help create notifications based on content, not people. For example, in this "Marketing Team" tag, two users are included. They will be notified when this tag is used. Users can be added or removed from tag groups at any time. To edit or create new tags, choose "Manage Tags" from the ellipsis menu next to your team. Note: this is a new paradigm and one where broad sharing of norms and practices should be shared on Yammer with your overall community.
Connect a Yammer Community
Does your team have a place it makes its work accessible to other employees at your company? Maybe you report out quarterly results and achievements or publish bi-annual employee survey results? A Yammer community is an excellent way to advertise and grow awareness, ask for input or ideas from other business divisions you work closely with and more.First, be sure the Yammer community you want to connect into any of your Team’s channels already exists. Then navigate to the channel’s top menu and click the + sign at the top.When you click the + next to the Wiki option, add the Community app, and search to find and connect that particular Yammer community. If you find you can’t do this, check with your Administrator.
Decide When to Use a Channel vs. Chat
As the Team Owner, it’s important to help your team understand the difference between working transparently in channels vs. privately in chat. As a general rule of thumb: if a conversation (before Teams) would have happened in a 1:1 email or a Skype for Business chat, use chat. These conversations are transactional and can be deleted at the end of the day. If a conversation would normally happen in a group email, or in Yammer, use a channel. Keep in mind that a benefit of communicating in channels is that it allows for simultaneous editing of files, while chat requires that different file versions are exchanged.
MORE SCAVENGER HUNTS:
Beginner: For people who are fairly new to Teams. This hunt is designed to familiarize you with the platform's most basic functionalities, creating "aha!" moments when you master the tool.
Intermediate: For people who are familiar with Teams and want to dive deeper into features available during live Teams meetings.
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.
