With over 44 million daily active users—a 50% increase over just a few months ago—Microsoft Teams is the standard for workplace communication platforms and offers a variety of tools and integrations to make working from home seamless. If you’re just transitioning to working remote, or if you’re new to Teams, we’ve put together an overview of the features that will help you stay on track and productive.

First, some basics. A team is a group of people, files, applications, and other resources that make up a project. A channel is a discussion shared with the whole team. A chat is a one-on-one or group conversation not shared within the team group.

Get to know your dashboard

Your dashboard provides an overview of your projects, conversations, files, and applications.

Manage your profile

Add a picture to your profile to make it easy for your coworkers to find you and your messages.

View and edit your teams

Rename your teams and organizations in a way that works best for you. You can add members and channels, view and attach files, and easily switch between team channels or chats.

Start a conversation

Teams make it easy to stay in touch, no matter where you’re working.

Video conference calls

Stay social, even when you’re working from home. Start video calls with the click of a button and instantly connect with your coworkers.

Mentions and memes

Type @ before a team or individual name to notify them of your message. And for those times when only a meme will do, you can add stickers, memes, and GIFs to your conversations.

Organize your day

With native tools and a collection of addable apps, you can tailor Teams to the way you work to help you stay organized.

Activity and search

For a quick overview of daily activity related to any of your teams, head to your Activity tab. Need to find something quickly? Use the search function to locate people, messages and files.

Apps and integrations

Personalize Teams with integrations created to make the most out of the platform.

From analytics to workflow automation, Microsoft offers hundreds of apps to optimize your experience.

With so many features and customizations, it’s easy to see why Teams have taken over the virtual office. For more information, check out our online Microsoft Teams courses for more in-depth tutorials, tips, and best practices.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Office 365 Online (with Teams for the Desktop)

Enabling Microsoft Teams for Collaboration (MS-300T03)

Managing Microsoft Teams (MS-700T00)

Also, join us next week for our “Empower Yourself” Webinar series. The week-long event will have informative and engaging presentations from industry experts focusing on the key competencies and skills you need to drive your business forward through these uncertain times. We will have a Microsoft Teams-focused session that week.