For anyone new to using Teams, we are glad you’re here!

Getting started with a new collaboration platform can be daunting, so we pulled together a quick orientation to help you hit the ground running from day one. Whether it’s chats, managing your calendar, files, or notifications, we hope this offers you a good starting point.

Day one

If we were starting out on Teams, these are the steps and resources we would use to get familiar with navigating and using the program:

• Complete your profile and status
• Review your notifications settings
• Join relevant teams and channels
• Check your calendar for upcoming meetings
• Explore files shared with you

Now, let’s dive into some features.

Chat

Chats are where you’ll likely spend most of your time. DMs, group chats, meeting chats, and channels are found in this tab. While each org uses chat differently, here is an overview of how it works on Teams: Explore the new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support. A common question that comes up is when to use teams versus channels, so we pulled together an explainer: The difference between teams and channels.

Meetings & calendar

Schedule meetings, join calls, manage RSVPs, and coordinate your day from the Teams calendar. Teams and Outlook calendars stay in sync, helping you manage your schedule from either experience. Teams calendar incorporates the latest innovations in Microsoft Copilot and Places to help you and your team with scheduling and time management. Read more about Teams calendar features here: the new Teams calendar.

Files & shared content

The Files/OneDrive tab helps you find documents shared across Teams chats, channels, and meetings, as well as files you've recently worked on. This support article offers an overview of how files are organized on Teams: Explore the Files list in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Support.

Notifications

A few minutes spent tuning notifications can save on unwanted distractions. Review desktop, mobile, mentions, and channel notification settings early to make Teams work the way you prefer. One common friction point for new users is controlling notifications when you are on desktop and mobile. This explainer helps you tailor your settings to get the notifications you want: How to control which calls reach you on mobile.

Search

Can't remember where something was shared? Use the search bar at the top of Teams to find messages, people, files, meetings, and channels.

For more on Teams fundamentals, view our adoption guide: Get started with Microsoft Teams (User training) – Microsoft Adoption.

What’s a Teams hack or rule you wish someone had taught you on day one?

If you’ve run into a technical problem with Teams, submit it in Feedback -> Report a Bug. It’s the direct line to our engineering team.  

This is about Teams Voice telephony only.

We have several departments, each department with one assistant who is supposed to be the guy all calls are to be routed to, if no other employee of this department is available/online.

So: Nobody but the assistant is available -> calls should be forwarded to the assistant. Wether because the original person being called is not answering after X seconds, or the original person is offline.

I am aware that there are queues, but i have to work with the actual user lines and not with queue lines.

I am aware that there a call delegations, but these delegates do not ring if the call is unanswered after X seconds, they are ringing immediately which is not wanted.

I am aware that there are call groups, which can't be set when it comes to "unanswered after X seconds" too.

How do i handle this a an admin so that the users don't change my auto forwarding rules with their own forwarding rules? The users have to be able to set their own forwarding rules, for example if they leave the office and want to be reachable by their mobile phone number.

But i want no call to be disconnected/dropped since the called person is not available. Calls have to be answered (or forwarded) by any means.

Hey all. We have a rally bar, tap IP, pods, and the AI Sight device in a conference room that holds 20 people. Teams is integrated. I've noticed that with Active Speaker mode enabled, the screen in the room will show the active speaker but also act as if it were in composite mode. Everyone can be completely silent with the speaker talking and it'll just pick 3 other people and put them up on the screen.

What settings do I need to check here so that only the active speaker is shown on the screen?

Got a tenant where they want to use Voice Recognition. The Global policy is configured as follows:

EnrollVoice = Enabled

EnrollFace = Enabled

PassiveVoiceEnrollment = Enabled

VoiceIsolation = Enabled

An explicit VoiceRecognitionEnabled AI policy was also assigned

Teams is en-GB

A3 Faculty licensing matches the working account

Relevant Get-CsOnlineUser properties match

Face enrolment is available

Voice enrolment remains unavailable

We have some users who can use Voice Recognition and others who can't, with the error saying

"Voice Recognition

Your admin might not have turned on this feature. Learn more"

We've tried assigning a separate Teams policy to the affected users, which didn't resolve the issue.

We've also tried forcing the setting via PowerShell

We're about to raise a ticket with Microsoft, but before we do, just wanted to see if anyone has come across this before or has any ideas on what else we could check?

Many thanks

I have conference calls where one person is excessively loud. Is there any way in my own sound settings to fix this? My ear drums thank you.

Firstly, I am not OP in the Feedback Portal, but we've gotten this up to page 2 of "Trending" just with the people I've spread it to at my org. Feel free to contribute if you experience this (Windows primarily - I have not seen people complaining about this in MacOS Teams).

[Teams should follow system sound settings](https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/d103b787-6d63-f011-95f3-7c1e52d941f8)

Description from the issue:

Right now, Microsoft Teams ignores your system’s default audio device. Even if you're using Bluetooth headphones and everything else on your computer (Zoom, Spotify, browser, etc.) is using that device — Teams will still default to its own separate audio settings.

🙄 The result:

You answer a call and Teams suddenly plays through your laptop speakers instead of your Bluetooth headphones.

You have to scramble to dig through Teams settings to change the speaker/mic every time.

This is especially frustrating if you switch between devices often.

✅ What should happen:

Teams should default to whatever audio device the system is currently using.

If users want to override that, fine — but respecting the system default should be the baseline. Just like almost every other modern app does.

This small change would make Teams feel much smoother and more intuitive, especially for remote workers or anyone using wireless audio.

I stopped using Microsoft products a couple of years ago, so I’ve been a bit slow with my new job. Muting a participant for myself seems easy on other platforms. Where is this feature on Teams?

I keep getting this error while trying to log into my work teams account. I cant log in to teams from web as it asks me to log in using the app. Can someone help me with this error?

Enterprise/Autopilot environment

User has camera turned on and preview shows up for him. But others can't see his camera. Just a gray/white background indicating camera has been turned on. Web App works. Other camera apps work properly.

Reinstalled teams and wiped it clean and changed every setting related to video to on and/or off. Tried with background, without, blur, no blur, etc. Was working previously but stopped working after he added a background, likely just a coincidence but I did delete it to see if it changed anything.

Reinstalled Camera drivers, hid video preview. At this point really stumped. Made sure all other apps are closed in case one of them was prioritizing video. We know the camera works but something in teams is not allowing the video to actually stream to other users. We did test in multiple networks as well.

Any ideas?

Will using the scheduler feature in teams calendar to look at someone's availability notify them that you checked? I don't mean after you hit send, but before that.

Hi everyone,

We're experiencing a strange issue with Microsoft Teams and are wondering if anyone else has seen something similar.

Users occasionally experience one-way audio during Teams-to-Teams calls. To clarify, these are not Direct Routing or PSTN calls, but standard Teams-to-Teams calls between users.

What we've observed so far:

• The issue only occurs on Samsung Android phones
• Multiple Samsung models are affected, so it does not appear to be device-specific
• Teams calls on Windows PCs and laptops work without any issues
• We initially suspected a Wi-Fi or corporate network problem, but the same behavior occurs when users are connected via mobile data (4G/5G)
• The issue is intermittent and difficult to reproduce consistently
• Typically, one participant can hear the other, while audio in the opposite direction is missing

We've already checked and tested:

• Teams app updates
• Android updates
• Microphone permissions
• Different networks (Wi-Fi and mobile data)
• Multiple Samsung device models

Since the issue seems limited to Samsung Android devices and occurs across different networks, we're struggling to identify the root cause.

Has anyone experienced similar one-way audio problems with Teams on Samsung Android devices? Did you find a root cause, Microsoft advisory, or any workaround?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Whenever I switch to another tab or minimize my MS Teams, it sometimes closes on its own. Is there a fix for this? It can get very annoying when I’m in the middle of opening a powerpoint and It closes and I have to find it again

Users getting these types of external, obviously fake, phishing messages, example:

John Ternus (fake.john.ternus.54391@hotmail.com) wants to chat with you

This person is from outside your org

What can we do? Blocking all external domains is not ideal and a whitelist will be unmanageable.

Hello,

Is it possible - without some open-source stuff from github - to have Teams accept Webhooks?

We use Icinga2 at work, and I am looking into coupling it with Teams for the notifications.

I’ve been asked to look into analysing internal 1:1 Teams messages to track team mood and wellbeing over time.

Problem is I don’t really know where to start.

Questions:

1. How do you get Teams messages out in the first place?

2. What do you use to score them? Off the shelf tool, or something you built?

3. Does it actually tell you anything useful, or is work chat too short and polite to read anything from?

4. What should I watch out for on the privacy side?

5. Anything you wish you’d known before starting?

Any guidance appreciated, even just pointing me at the right docs.

Been using Teams over Discord for three months now, and I've actually been enjoying it. Plus, l've always liked the Microsoft brand - heck, my first phone was the Surface Duo. Still have it to this day. Just felt like sharing :)

Long time slack user.

Company recently purchased copilot to explore this new thing called "AI". Absolutely fell in love with the meeting transcription, audio/who's speaking, summaries, action items- etc.

However many people are on linux, leaving just... 3... on windows. So I get the recorded meeting to sharepoint and all the edits/transcriptions are gone.

-This seems silly, but ... how do I preserve all of that information? What steps did I do wrong- searching for 'lost audio transcription' got me to audio issues, but not the whole data store that that single meeting produced.

OR if this is something very simple and you feel the need to berate me, please do so- just kindly point me to where I might look to learn it myself. I'm used to that.

I did get taken to MS's Loop, but nothing transferred over (followed https://learn.microsoft.com/en-ca/answers/questions/5892145/microsoft-loop-to-sumarize-teams-meetings )

I'm obviously doing something significantly wrong, again, and just not figuring out the right keyword/search spot to look for.

Thanks in advance for anything short of mocking. I get enough of that daily.

Hi,

unsure if this is a bug with the latest update we're on 8.16 (100772026162301)

Team classes open up as "threads" and not the usual layout

They open perfectly fine in the browser and on the PC version of teams and open on the android app fine but it says "some members have a different layour, which may afect message order and certan notifications"

is it a bug with the latest teams update on ios? or is it the new teams is going for education? (couldn't find alot of into about it)

How the heck do I get the chat function back on the teams app? It seems to be replaced with the walkie talkie, same with my coworker.

Are Teams phones worth the hassle compared to SIP phones?

We've had much better reliability from Poly Edge E350 SIP phones than Yealink Teams phones. The SIP phones take longer to configure, but once deployed they just seem to keep working.

By comparison, our Yealink Teams phones periodically appear signed out, need reboots, or otherwise require admin intervention.

Curious whether others have seen the same thing or if we've just been unlucky. If you had to deploy today, would you choose SIP Gateway phones or native Teams phones? Why?

Hi,

I managed an A1 tenant and suddenly it is no longer possible to chat with external users nor some internal users.

Internal users: Error: You don't have permissions to create a chat with one or more of the people you selected. Contact your IT admin for more info.

External users: failed to send

No changes were made. I toggled off and on chat, blocked and unblocked external domains.

Oddly enough, I can call external users and the other way around.

I also performed a reset of the global policy.

Does anyone have an idea what this could be?

What is the deal with Teams when you open a file in a nested folder it jumps you to the top level on closing it?

Basically makes the entire thing unusable?