Microsoft 365 top tips – Meetings

Problem: Organising meetings can be unnecessarily time consuming and difficult.

Solution: Microsoft Teams ‘Meetings’ tool

As we touched on previously in the series, Microsoft Teams has taken the world by storm, and its tools (designed around collaboration, communication, and productivity) are unrivalled. One of the main attractions of Teams is its audio/video conferencing capabilities which allow you to hold a meeting with up to 300 participants at once, and their ‘live events’ feature allows up to 20,000. Teams has the tools capable of keeping your workforce – no matter the size – connected at all times, no matter where they are located on the globe.

Meetings is a very self-explanatory platform, so let us have a more in depth look at some of the features you may have missed and explore tools that can change the way you and your team work both now and in the future.

Meeting Scheduling and the Scheduling assistant

Scheduling meetings can prove to be a challenge no matter the size of your workforce. Teams makes this task easier with its ‘scheduling assistant’ – let us take a look at how to use it.

1. You can access the schedule assistant by clicking the ‘Calendar’ option on the left.
2. Then click ‘New meeting’ in the top right of your screen.
3. A form will appear for you to enter all your meeting requirements.

Once having entered the names of all participants you are then offered suggested times (located just below the date and time section of the form). Teams cleverly analyses the schedules of every participant to the meeting and offers times that suit everyone – this feature alone can save you hours of organisation time.

Another part of the Meetings experience that is particularly good is the ‘In-Meeting’ chat feature.

In-Meeting chat is good for when an attendee of the meeting needs to ask a question or communicate with someone else. This is all possible without interrupting the meeting or the speaker by using this feature.

In-Meeting Chat

Here is how to access the In-Meeting chat feature.

To display the chat interface, select ‘show conversation’ from the menu of actions at the top right of the meeting window.

‘Raise your hand’ in meetings is also a nice feature. This is a tool that lets you get the speaker’s attention without interrupting, allowing for the meeting to run smoother and giving the speaker a choice of when to allow interruptions.

Raise your hand

Here are some brief instructions on how to use the Raise your hand feature.

1. Select the hand icon from the menu of actions, select ‘this action’, then * (star).
2. This action will then appear as a notification in the ‘show participants’ tab. Any attendee who raises their hand will have an icon displayed beside their name.

If Teams’ wide variety of revolutionary tools are used correctly your workforce will improve its levels of communication, collaboration, and productivity whether in the office or working remotely. I highly recommend taking some time to explore Teams and its wide range of features as you may well find one that really serves purpose within your business. You will soon discover that Teams has a lot more to offer than what you see on the surface.

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