Beginners Guide to Efficient Team Housekeeping

by HubSite 365 about Ellen van Aken

Pro UserTeamsLearning Selection

Unlock the full potential of Microsoft Teams with our easy-to-follow housekeeping guide for beginners, curated by Microsoft experts.

Guidelines for Teams Housekeeping For Beginners

The blog post, 'Teams Housekeeping for beginners', authored by Ellen van Aken, serves as an essential guide for enhancing productivity while managing Teams platforms. After roughly two years since COVID-19 spurred a noteworthy surge in Teams usage, many organizations grapple with underutilized Teams sites. Prudent housekeeping ensures an optimal Teams environment, streamlining communication and reducing unnecessary clutter.

Unfortunately, merely relying on Microsoft365 admins to delete unused Teams is insufficient to maintain a clean Teams workspace. Team Owners and users must step up and actively assess their Teams periodically. However, some users may lack the necessary digital skills or the required time for an effective cleanup.

For this challenge, Ellen presents an easy-to-follow housekeeping flowchart developed using Visio Online. Although this flowchart is somewhat skewed on account of the desktop version's superior "arrange nicely" feature, it conveniently provides user-friendly cleanup guidelines. For those desiring further clarity, Ellen provides a detailed, text-filled explanation along with relevant screenshots underneath the flowchart.

The teams cleanup process is broken down into two key steps.

Step 1: Review the Teams of which you're a member. This includes determining whether the Team is in use, the status of your membership, your role in the group, and other associated aspects.
Step 2: Assess the channels within each Team and determine their relevance. This includes the options to hide unimportant channels or even mute their notifications, leaving the important channels visible and easy to access.

Teams users can also deploy the Archive feature, converting a Team into read-only mode. This is a useful alternative for those wishing to preserve information from significant projects but are hesitant about deleting the Team entirely. However, archived Teams are seldom viewed and could potentially be deleted without much hassle.

All users should review their Teams at least once a year to maintain optimal performance. Once properly set up, Teams will only require minor adjustments to keep it clean and user-friendly. For more information on managing Teams, click here.

Further Insight on Team Management

In general, efficiently managing collaborative platforms is paramount for productive communication in organizations. Diligent housekeeping facilitates a clutter-free and organized workspace, enhancing productivity by making quick access to information possible. Therefore, all users should responsibility in maintaining their digital workspace clean, leads to improved user experience, boosted productivity, and reduced confusion. With well-structured directions and helpful tools, users can effortlessly keep their Teams well-organized and smoothly functioning.

Read the full article Teams Housekeeping for beginners

Teams - Beginners Guide to Efficient Team Housekeeping

Learn about Teams Housekeeping for beginners

Microsoft Teams is a collaborative workspace within Microsoft 365/Office 365 that acts as a central hub for workplace conversations, collaborative teamwork, video chats and document sharing, all designed to aid worker productivity in a unified suite of tools. However, maintaining your Teams environment can pose challenges, especially if you're new to the platform. Let's dive into some actionable tips and key learning points that can help you keep your Teams setup neat and organized.

To start, it's important to regularly verify your settings to ensure you're part of the necessary Teams. Once you've established this, you need to question: are these Teams still in function? Is your participation still necessary? Are the projects or tasks the Teams were created for still ongoing? If you find you're part of a Team that has grown redundant, or you're no longer involved in the project it was created for, withdrawing from the Team is a neat way to clear up your workspace clutter. This involves clicking on the ... next to the team's name and selecting the desired action from the popup.

Moreover, you need to inspect the individual channels within your Teams. What is their reputation? Can you streamline them or mute them to reduce the overall noise in your Teams setup? Depending on its relevance, you could either hide, mute, or pin the channel, thereby minimizing distractions and focusing on important conversations. Pinning important channels lets you keep them at the top of your Teams list, ensuring easy and quick access during your workday.

An essential determinant feature of Teams is the ability to manage notifications per channel. It might not be necessary to get pinged for every message on every channel. Do you like to keep track of every detail, or do you like to maintain focus on your work and only get disturbed for a crucial update? The Notification Settings in Teams lets you manage this aspect quite effectively. You can choose per channel if you want to be notified of all activity, or if you want to limit notifications to mentions only.

Naturally, there might be some Teams that you are unsure about. The best course of action for such a scenario is to hide the Team temporarily. Hidden Teams are moved to the end of your Teams list. If you later ascertain the Team's relevance, you can just click "Show" from the popup to unhide it. If not, you can finally choose to leave.

Lastly, you might want to consider the concept of archiving your Teams. An archived Team becomes read-only. It's a handy feature if you want to keep a successful project's data intact or if your organizational culture does not yet feel comfortable with deleting a Team altogether. Again, your colleagues could retrieve useful information from the archive kept.

To conclude, effective use of the platform requires regular upkeep and organization. If you're inundated with Teams and channels, a quick tidy-up might be all you need to enhance your productivity by staying focused on your essential tasks on Microsoft Teams.

Keywords

Teams Housekeeping beginners, Housekeeping guide, Beginners housekeeping teams, Teams housecleaning tutorial, Basic Teams cleanup, Team cleanup beginners, Team maintenance beginners, Beginners team management, Housekeeping rules beginners, Team cleanup guide.