Mobile access to the company’s communication platforms is convenient – and you can use Teams on your Android or iOS device. A training class or a trip out to a customer’s site no longer means you are disconnected from the day’s routine discussions. But sometimes I want to disconnect – watching my daughter’s gymnastics performance, my husband’s birthday dinner, listening to a band at the local club, painting en plein air at the local park. Oh, and certainly dark-o-clock when I’m sleeping. Configure “quiet hours”!

Tap the hamburger menu in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

Tap “Notifications”

Tap “Quiet hours”

Move the “Quiet hours” slider to ‘on’

Select the times when you want Teams notifications to stop and resume. If you want to disable Teams notifications for entire days (regularly scheduled days off or temporarily for vacation days), tap “Quiet days”

Move the “Quiet days” slider to “On” and tap the days during which you wish to suppress notifications.

Return to the menu and you will see that quiet hours are scheduled.

During quiet hours (or days), the notifications logo will indicate that notifications are disabled and tell you when notifications will resume.

The hamburger menu on the Teams app will also indicate that notifications are temporarily suspended.

 

Microsoft Whiteboard, in Teams, is currently a public preview. Like other previews available in the Office 365 ecosystem, there will be glitches and things that don’t work properly. If something isn’t working quite right, turn off the preview and verify the problem persists before reporting an issue. You can submit feedback directly to Microsoft through their UserVoice site, but previews are not supported by Microsoft.

Now that the warning bit is out of the way – we’ve been using the Whiteboard for a week and the only oddity I’ve encountered occurs when both a Whiteboard and desktop are shared simultaneously. You must keep minimizing the Whiteboard to view the shared desktop.

How do you use a Microsoft Whiteboard in your meeting? When you are in a meeting, click on the “Sharing Tray” in the meeting tool bar.

In the “Whiteboard” column, select “Microsoft Whiteboard”

A whiteboard will be opened and shared with everyone on the call. To draw on the Whiteboard, select “Inking mode”

Click on a pen (or the eraser) along the right-hand side to select a pen color.

Draw on the screen. Click on the blue check-mark to leave inking mode. To close the whiteboard, click “Stop presenting”.

After the meeting, how do you access the Whiteboard? Visit https://whiteboard.microsoft.com – the Whiteboard will be stored for the person who initiated the Whiteboard in the meeting. To share it with others who had attended, click the ellipses on the Whiteboard preview.

Select “Invite”

Select “Create sharing link” and paste the link into the Teams meeting chat.

Team members can use the link to view the Whiteboard.

Whiteboards from Teams meetings are also available through the Whiteboard app. The app expands on the basic Whiteboard functionality available in Teams or online. In the app, you can select text ink and convert it to more readable text. Use the lasso tool to select a region of text ink.

Click on the magic wand

Voila, more legible text!

Click the hamburger menu in the upper right-hand corner of the screen for additional options — including “Export” which will create a PNG or SVG image from your Whiteboard data.

You will now be alerted in Teams when Planner tasks are assigned to you – this is another step toward making Teams the single hub for collaboration. Task assignment only creates activity when the Planner is a tab in one of your Teams spaces. If you create a Planner board that does not appear as a tab in a Teams space, new tasks assigned on that board will not create activity in Teams. To start getting Teams alerts for a board, just add it as a tab to a Teams space.

You’ll see an alert in your “Activity” feed

And in “Chat”. The card contains the task title, the name of the individual who assigned the task to you, the Teams space where the Planner is stored, and a link to view the task.

Click “Open Task” and you’ll be brought to the Planner board within the appropriate Teams space. The task will be open and ready to edit.

* If you have the mobile Planner app installed, you will receive push notifications in addition to seeing the task in your Teams activity.

 

I’ve mentioned before that we can send e-mails to a Teams channel – forward a message in my mailbox to a channel so we can discuss it. But did you know Teams channels can receive e-mail from outside of our Exchange Online environment too?

That doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing advertisements for low cost (and dodgy) prescription drugs or entreaties from the purported prince of far-far-away show up in your channel conversations. Until someone gets an e-mail address for a channel, it doesn’t have one.

To associate an e-mail address, click the ellipsis next to a channel name and select “Get email address”

Copy the SMTP address. If you want to control which domains can send e-mails to the channel, click “advanced settings”

By default, anyone can send e-mails to the address. Simply select the appropriate radio button for the restrictions you want. “Only members of this team” lets members forward messages from their personal mailbox for discussion.

Selecting “Only emails sent from these domains” allows you to enter the list of domains from which you want to receive messages. Click “Save” to save your changes.

Send an e-mail message from an approved domain. Voila – a message from my home domain delivered to the Teams channel.

You can have monitoring systems, vendor ticketing systems, all sorts of e-mail sources deliver messages right into your Teams channels.

 

Holding a meeting in a Teams channel allows channel members to attend if they have time and are interested in the meeting – it also lets Team members access meeting artifacts easily.

But when you schedule a meeting in a channel, only direct invitees see the meeting in their calendar. This is great for people who aren’t going to attend, but I end up joining the call ten minutes late because I didn’t see the meeting when I check my calendar to see what’s coming up.

But you can add a channel meeting to your calendar – if you decide to attend the meeting, click the ellipses on the meeting item and select “View meeting details”

Click “Add to calendar”

Voilà! Now the meeting appears in your calendar.