Here’s what you can do in Teams: you can make a voice or video call to a person, or you can have many people join your online event. You can chat with one person or with a group of people. You can collaborate on documents in real time. You can share files. Those are the basics. Perhaps an easy way to think about Teams is as a combination of Zoom and Google Docs, but with integration with all those Microsoft tools you likely use, including Outlook Mail & Calendar, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
The hardest part about Teams is that it is called ‘Teams’. It makes it hard to talk about. For example, I’m in a team on Teams that has as its subject matter, Teams. Well, maybe the hardest part about Teams is just getting started. For me, getting started was accelerated by that pandemic that is becoming a more distant memory. Since those times, I can’t imagine working without Teams. If you are among those folks I encounter that somehow have managed to avoid Teams, I have an offer for you for a gentle introduction: I want you to send me a chat in Teams. Or even call me in Teams. Go to spartan365.msu.edu. You might need to log in to MSU.
Eventually, after all that signing-in business, you should come to a page that has the Teams icon on the left. That will open the web version of Teams. There is an app to download to your computer or your phone, but we can leave that for now. Now that you are in the web version of Teams, you should see a button on the left called ‘Chat’. Select that. In the window that opens, you should see the word ‘Chat’ in bold. To the right of that, there is a series of icons. Click the one that looks like a paper and pencil. This will open a new chat. In the ‘To’ line, begin typing my name: David Howe. I’m the David Howe with the email address davehowe@msu.edu. I’ll leave the rest for you to figure out. Send me a note, and then we can chat more about Teams, just the two of us. Or even better, we can have a video call. I promise to respond to every chat I receive.