Tip #6 - Chats and Conversations the best bits

So we all know how chat works and can pretty much do it without thinking, but I figured it was worth putting together a list of basic and best bits for Chats and Conversations in Teams.

Chats - these are done via the Chat tab on the left hand menu and are more traditional chats where you can have 1 to 1 group chats probably best compared to a chat in domestic Skype.

Conversations - whilst on the face of it very similar to chats, this gives some structure to your conversation, to allow better collaboration in a more focused way. The interface is very similar to chat however with some subtle differences worth mentioning.

• Reply - The “Reply” option under each conversation should be used to add further points to that conversation.
• New Conversation - The bottom chat entry is used to start a new chat, this is the one most commonly used incorrectly to reply to the conversation above.
• Conversation on a Document - To start the conversation on an existing document, open the document in teams and then click “Start Conversation” at the top. To start on a new document simply click the paper clip and upload the document, this will start the conversation and upload the document to the files tab at the same time time.
• Subject - When creating a conversation it is good to add a subject - by clicking the “A” icon you get more edit options. Adding the title helps keep focus and context to that conversation.
• @mentions - Also when starting a conversation or asking a specific question its good to use the @mention functionality to either get the whole channels attention, by using the name of the channel, or a given team member name. The relevant people then get alerted to this new reply or conversation.
• GIFs - In both chat and conversation if it is enabled on your Microsoft Teams by the administrator you can brighten up everyone’s day and use the GIFs. Just click the GIF icon and have a look around, don’t blame me if it distracts you from your work for a while :)
• Praise - A great little option on the chat and conversation boxes is the small medal/badge icon that allows you to give open Praise to team members that appears in the conversations feed. Good for Team Morale!
• Meetings - I have already mentioned this earlier in the post, but worth a mention again - you can also click the camera icon here to either start a meeting now or schedule one for the future.