There are three types of chat in Microsoft Teams.

1. One-on-one chats: to connect with people individually.

2. Group chats: to speak with a group of people at the same time.

3. Meeting chats: to ask a question without interrupting the speaker.

Many of you must be aware of these and use all three types of chat, but there are other features to chat that you may not be aware of, which we will discuss in this blog.

Start a Chat

To start a chat, click on the ‘Chat’ from the left navigation and select ‘New chat ’ to add then type in the name with whom you want to chat. You can also start a one-on-one chat from someone’s profile card. Open it by choosing their picture in a channel or by using search.

Once you’ve selected New chat and entered a person’s name, compose your message in the box at the bottom of the chat. To open formatting options, select Format beneath the box where you type your message.

Delivery Options

By clicking the ‘!’ button beneath the message while sending a conversation to an individual or small group, you can choose from three delivery choices. The possibilities are as follows:

1. Standard: The message will be delivered in the usual manner.

2. Important: The message’s title will be ‘Important,’ coupled with an exclamation icon.

3. Urgent: In addition to the headline being ‘Urgent,’ the receiver will be notified every 2 minutes for the next 20 minutes.

Posts in a channel have only one delivery option: ‘Important,’ with the same formatting as conversations.

Pin/Unpin chat

A conversation can be pinned or muted in the same way that we do in channels. To pin a conversation just hover over it and click on the ellipses ‘…’ and select pin.

The pinned conversation can be seen at the top, and to view the conversation in chat or unpin click on the ellipses ‘…’

Mark as unread

Mark a message as unread if you don’t have time to respond right away.

Save Messages

You can also save the messages by clicking on the ellipses and selecting ‘Save this Message’.

Messages you’ve saved are saved in your profile (accessed via your picture in the top right-hand corner).

Replying to a specific message

Within a conversation, users will be able to respond to individual messages in one of two ways. They may select “Reply” from the list after hovering over a message and clicking the ellipsis menu (…). Users may also right-click on a chat message and then select “Reply” from the context menu.

Create a task from the message

With the ability to create a task directly from a message in Teams, you can capture that important thought, to do item, or comment before it slips away. Convert any message into a task with the click of a button, and without the need for an additional app. Hover your mouse over any message in a Teams conversation and select the ellipses (…). On the pop-out menu choose More actions > Create task

In the new window, fill in the specifics of your assignment in the new window and adjust the parameters to match your requirements. The task will be put according to the Create in option.

a. If you choose Tasks, this will add the task to a To-Do list.

b. If you choose a plan name, the task will be added to a Planner plan.

With either selection, the task will also show up in the chat so others can see it too.

Share chat and channel conversations to outlook

You can send a copy of a chat and channel conversations as an email to Outlook from within Teams. Right-click on the message and select ‘Share to Outlook’

Choose the recipient, you can also add attachments or customize the message and then click ‘Send’ to share your chat.

Note: The Share to Outlook feature is currently not supported on mobile.

Final thoughts

In this blog, we have seen a few basic but very important features of the chat in Microsoft Teams. We think this might help you in a day of life with Teams. If you need any further assistance or if you need someone who can help you in the adoption of Microsoft Teams for your organization please email us at contact@beyondintranet.com

To install SharePoint Syntex in your Microsoft 365 tenant, you first need the required licenses by following the procedure below:

1. As a Global Administrator or Billing Administrator, log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center at https://admin.microsoft.com and go to Billing > Purchase services.

2. Use the search box in the right-hand pane of the Purchase services section, type in “Syntex,” and hit enter.

3. The search results in SharePoint Syntex. Click on the Details button.

4. The details page opens a purchase page where you can buy the required number of SharePoint Syntex licenses. Alternatively, you can choose the ‘Start a free trial option, which provides 300 SharePoint Syntex licenses for free for 30 days.

5. We chose the free trial option for this article. Once completed, go to Billing > Your Products in the Microsoft 365 admin portal to see the licenses. The 300 SharePoint Syntex Trial licenses should be visible on the Your Products page.

6. Each Microsoft 365 user who has a SharePoint Syntex capability needs a SharePoint Syntex license. This can be assigned from the Microsoft 365 admin center, under Users > Active Users.

7. Now that we obtained the necessary SharePoint Syntax licenses, we can configure the software in our Microsoft 365 environment.

Configure SharePoint Syntax in Microsoft365

1. As a Global or SharePoint Administrator, navigate to Setup in the Microsoft 365 admin center and click ‘Automate content understanding’ under the ‘Files and Content’

2. On the ‘Automate content understanding’ page, you’ll find “At a glance” and “User impact” information for automating content, as well as further information about SharePoint Syntex, which describes the three primary functions: Image tagging, Form processing, and Document understanding as you scroll down, click on the ‘Get started’ button from the page.

3. Choose your preferred form-processing options. Below, we chose the default option ‘Libraries in all SharePoint sites’. Then click Next.

4. The SharePoint Syntex ‘Document Understanding’ feature necessitates the creation of a content center’. In this example, we’ll name our content center as Syntex ‘content center’, which will generate a site name automatically like the following: https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/sites/SyntexContentCenter. Click Next.

5. You can make last-minute changes from the ‘Review’ tab. When you’re satisfied with your choices, click Activate.

6. It may take a few minutes for the setup to complete. Once it is finished, you should see the following notification.

7. When you finish the setup, click ‘Done’.

8. You will be redirected to the ‘Automate content understanding’ page, where you’ll select ‘Manage’. Click on manage to edit the settings you completed in the initial setup for both Form processing and Document understanding

9. Scroll down further on the page and you see the link ‘SharePoint Syntax settings’ under ‘Mange this feature’.

10. Like below, clicking the link ‘SharePoint Syntax settings‘ takes you to your newly formed Syntex Content Center.

It’s also worth noting that you can create several content centers for SharePoint Syntax in Microsoft 365. SharePoint Syntax is now licensed on( a trial basis) and configured correctly in our Microsoft 365 tenant.

Final Thoughts

This article focused on how to activate a SharePoint Syntax trial account, where to assign it to users, and how to configure it in a Microsoft 365 environment. Learn more about how to use SharePoint Syntax by contacting us on contact@beyondkey.com to receive a free demo of the product.