Hello Readers, hope you’re well.
A new batch of cool features landed in Microsoft Teams yesterday.
- Announcements – make an announcement that stands out from the rest of the conversations and really be heard
- Message Reactions – now you can like, love, laugh and more with additional message reactions
- Message actions – Conduct a Polly Poll right in a message
Announcements
It’s easy to lose a thread in among all the other conversations happening in a channel. Especially when you get a dozen new threads that were replies to your thread.
Now you can start a thread that truly stands out.
Simply start a new conversation
1. hit the rich text button
2. When it expands, use the drop down in new conversations
3. Click announcement to change it from a conversation to an announcement
Enter the announcement headline
Choose a background colour
Or upload an image
Now enter the rest of the message
Then send to post your announcement in the channel
Message Reactions
Liking a message is great. But if you’ve ever thought you needed more ways to express your sentiment, you’re not alone. It’s now possible to choose from 6 reaction types including like, love, laugh, surprise, sad and angry.
Personally, I think a thumbs down (dislike) would be a great addition.
Just hover over the top right of a message to see the new reactions. Tap the menu ellipses for more options like save, edit, delete (if you wrote it) & immersive reader.
If you click a reaction, it adds a badge to the message and collects every reaction type and quantity.
You can react to any message, message reply and even announcements independently.
Message Actions
There’s only one right now. But if you click the ellipses menu and go down to more actions, you have the option to conduct a Polly poll for a message.
This opens up the new poll screen which automatically adds the contents of the message as the question you want to use for the poll.
You can change the question type from multiple choice to a 1 to 5 (high/low), agree/disagree or open ended
You can change the duration from days to hours
And adjust settings like whether the results are made public and voter anonymity
Once you’re done, click create poll
And you’ll see a preview of the poll. If you want to change something, click edit to go back to the editor. If you’re all set, just click send to send the poll to the channel.
Then start voting. If you chose the option to make the results visible, they will be displayed in real time
Wrap up
Teams is improving all the time and it’s little things like this that are very welcome additions.
Microsoft doesn’t just decide themselves what to add of course. They listen to the public. If you want something, ask for it in Microsoft Teams Uservoice and get your community voting. I can assure you that Microsoft does listen.
Don’t believe me?
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading 👍😊
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