I absolutely love Teams and the interconnection to other Office 365 Apps. Yes, it’s not perfect but what program is…

When you log on to Teams your start page might look a bit like mine and you are in plenty of Teams, maybe you host your own as well. I want to share two tips you might want to consider to help you manage your Teams and Teams space better.

Tip 1: Automated Welcome email when people join your Team

You can use PowerAutomate to send a welcome email when people join your Team on Microsoft Teams. This can be set up for open and private Teams. I use this Welcome email to share information about the Team, how to use the Team and include a few key links to other helpful resources. Thanks to the Office 365 connections it even personalises the email. For open Teams you might want to add a sentence on it being an automated message since it will send the email when a person joins – irrespective of when they join. For private Teams that require your approval you might not need this, since your approval will trigger the email.

I followed this instruction on the Serverless Notes blog for adding a Welcome email to Teams

Tip 2: Teams Group chat instead of a Teams space

You can add a lot of people to a group chat, according to the Microsoft website you can have up to 250 people in a chat. More than 20 will turn off some features. You can start with a few names and a post to get the chat started and then rename it to fit your topic. For example I have a group chat for all our members of the British Academy Early Career Researcher network with 34 members. You can also add people later with an option to decide how much of the previous chat they are able to see. With a group chat you get a files tab, and the option to add all the other Teams tabs to the chat as well. Setting up a group chat is less time consuming, helps limit emails to a particular group and keeps admin down for everyone.

What are your favourite features or tips for Teams?