6 minute read

There are several ways to log on to Teams. One way is to go to office.com and click on Teams. Then log in with your Office 365 account - the account that you use to access your computer.

If you are already logged into Office 365, you can also jump into Teams by clicking the navigation pane in the upper left corner and selecting Teams.

Note that Teams is also available as an installed program on your computer - click here to see more.

To log into the program use your Office 365 account.

Your first look at Teams

Teams' main navigation is in the left side of the window, allowing you to choose between Activities, Chat, Teams, Meetings, Calls and Files.

• Activity shows all the latest activities in Teams - this may be mentions by colleagues, updated files or new posts
• Chat is home for conversations with contacts. If you have previously used Skype for Business, the chat area will seem familiar, yet new.
• Teams contains the various working groups that you are part of. Here you can collaborate on files, discuss what's on the lunch menu and access an ocean of ​​work tools
• Calendar shows you your calendar and the meetings and appointments that you have in it. Of course, you can also create new appointments here without having to switch to Outlook.
• Calls lets you call the world - both audio and video calls. And in our solution you can even call ordinary telephone numbers as well. You can also check your voicemail, see call history and more.
• Filer show you the latest files you worked on in Office 365. You can edit a file directly in Teams, or choose to open and edit it in the appropriate application.

In the upper right corner, you can manually set online status and pills for settings such as when you want to get notifications about activity in Teams. In the upper left corner you have access to the rest of Office 365.

The area Chat

To start a new chat, click the pencil icon in the top bar.

Or, you can jump into an existing chat by selecting it from the list under Recent or Contacts. In Teams, chats are persistent - that is, in a chat you have access to your entire historic conversation with the person.

Of course, you can also write with several people in the same chat. You do this by entering the names in the To field or - if the chat has already started - by clicking Add more people in the upper right corner of the chat.

This is also the place to quickly turn the chat into an audio or video call.

The area Teams

The focal point of Teams is (perhaps not surprisingly) a team. A team is made up of people, chats and tools - all in one place. Imagine that you stand together in a room where you can talk to each other and where all the tools and documents you need for the task you're solving are at hand.

Under the Teams page tab, you can see all the teams that you are a member of. By clicking Join or create a team at the bottom of the list,  you can become part of more teams.

By clicking a team, you go into it and at the same time fold out the various channels that exist in the team. A channel is an area that somehow addresses the same topic.

For example, in a company developing a new type of cinnamon croissant, you could imagine a team called The New Recipe with a variety of channels such as Yeast Type, Baking Temperature and Launch Party (who brings cake?).

In each channel there are a number of collaboration tools in the top menu. Channels are born with the tools Conversations, Files and Wiki, but you can add more to the channel by clicking the plus sign. This might be a Planner board to keep track of the tasks, a website that is central to your work, or a single Excel sheet that you work on together.

The tools that you add here will become available to all team members in that channel.

There is also an information panel for each channel where you can describe channel. You can access it by clicking on the little information icon in the upper right corner. The information panel also contains information about the members and recent contributors.

Additionally, the information panel displays any pinned messages. You pin a message by clicking the three dots and selecting Pin.

The area Calendar

By clicking Calendar, you plug into your Outlook calendar. Here you can see your work week and the appointments you have in it. You can also view details of each meeting by clicking them and create new calendar appointments by selecting New meeting.

The area Calls

Here you can make calls to your contacts and indeed everyone else on earth who has a phone number. With our solution you have a telephone dialpad in the Calls area. Of course, you can also place a call using Speed ​​Dial, Contacts or History.

The area Files

Clicking Recent will find a list of all the files you touched last. Across teams and tools.

Clicking on a file will display it. If you want to type in it, just click Edit in the upper right corner. If you click on the list arrow next to it, you will be able to choose in which application you want to edit the file.

By default, the Files area Cloud Storage comes with your OneDrive listed, but you can quickly and easily add other file repositories, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

To do this, click Add cloud storage.

The three dots

Just below the Files area are three dots. You probably know them from other places in Office 365. The dots contain the other apps that you've added to Teams. One of the things that makes Teams really strong is that you can add other tools into it.

You may need your Planner tasks right there in Teams? Og maybe reports from MailChimp?

Alright, now you know the head from the tail in Teams.

Maybe you should just go ahead and create a team and start inviting your colleagues?