Microsoft Teams Release Processes - Why do I not see a feature but my colleague does? Martin Rinas on 08:00 AM At Microsoft Teams, we frequently hear the question, “I am running the same version as my coworker, but they have a feat. Jan 23, 2019 Microsoft Teams Rooms Console. Add nearby meeting room. Proximity based meeting join, for an available Microsoft Teams Room, the Microsoft Teams client on your PC and mobile has a proximity sensor that detects the room and you can add the room easily to the meeting from your pre-join screen on your client. Once you add the Tasks app to Teams, you'll find. My tasks: Which includes most of the lists from your To Do app, including tasks you've added in To Do and Outlook, and tasks that have been assigned to you in Planner. Shared plans: Which includes the Planner plans that have been added to Teams. You can also use the Tasks app to: Add a plan to a Teams channel.
Updated on March 28th 2020 to clarify that this relates to the “teams” part of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is not a new product, but there’s still quite a bit of confusion about what it is, and how it can improve workplace productivity. Some people think that it is just a chat app. Some think that it’s just an upgraded version of Skype for Business. The truth is that Microsoft Teams is an extremely powerful application that can be used to enhance teamwork through enriched collaboration and communication. Unlike other Office productivity applications that have a legacy to preserve and millions of users to consider, Microsoft Teams is built from scratch with the modern workplace in mind. This also means that Microsoft Teams introduces a new work behavior, that many people – especially those that are used to email – might find difficult.
“Teams” in Microsoft Teams explained
How can you explain the “teams” part of Microsoft Teams in a way that your organization can quickly understand? When I describe teams in Microsoft Teams, I use an illustrative analogy that most people can relate to. For those of you who have Storyals Lite or Storyals Pro, you will see me explain this in the “Enhance teamwork” introduction video. For the rest of you, I’ll share my description in this blog.
1) Think of a “team” as a house
In Microsoft Teams you work in different “teams”. You can think of each team as a house where you work together with others. Everyone who is a member of the house will be included in everything that goes on in the house.
Even if you can “walk between different houses”, it’s a bit confusing and tiring. Similarly, in Microsoft Teams you don’t want to create or be a member of too many teams. For organizations that don’t have any governance in place, or for end-users that haven’t received any guidance, the number of teams created can easily grow out of proportion. This is not good for end-user productivity. When you start using Microsoft Teams you should think through how various groups within your organization collaborate with one another. Think through how to create teams so that the collaboration will be as efficient as possible.
2) Think of a “Channel” as a room
When you first build your house it only has one room. In Microsoft Teams this corresponds to the “General” channel.
In this room, you can hear what everyone says -whether or not you are in the room at the point in time it is said. Everything is noted down. In Microsoft Teams this relates to “Posts”. Conversations, announcements, replies, everything is visible in the “Posts” window. Everyone in the team sees everything in the channel posts.
You are not limited to just talking to each other in the room. You can use facial expressions and body language! In Microsoft Teams you do this using reactions, emoticons, GIFs, memes, stickers and much more. By being able to express yourself more freely in the digital workplace, it’s easier for people to let their personalities shine through. You can create a more fun and inclusive culture, where the ones not physically located in the same place can still feel involved and as part of the team.
As you start working on more projects and more initiatives, different constellations of people in your house will break out and start working in different rooms. In Microsoft Teams a new room corresponds to a new “Channel”. As of November 2019, you can select if a channel should be “Standard” or “Private”. You can think of a Private channel as an invisible room that only selected people in your house can see and have the key to enter.
3) Think of the “Activity Feed” as the hallway
In the middle of the house you have a hallway. You can stand in the hallway, open the doors to the rooms you are most interested in, and hear all the conversations going on in the various rooms – without leaving the hallway!
In Microsoft Teams, the hallway corresponds to the “Activity Feed.” Opening the door to a room corresponds to turning on “Channel notifications”.
You don’t have to worry about missing out on anything that is being said in the rooms with closed doors. At any time, you can walk into the room and get up to speed on everything that has happened in the room. In Microsoft Teams, this corresponds to going to a channel and seeing what’s been posted in the “Posts” window. Also, if someone in a room wants your attention – even if the door is closed, they can just get your attention using a megaphone. In Microsoft Teams, this relates to an @mention. Whenever someone @mentions you, you will see it in your “Activity feed” whether you have turned on channel notifications or not.
4) Think of “Chat” as private conversations by the coffee machine
Sometimes you might want to have a private conversation with one, or a few people in your house. A conversation that is not heard by everyone else. In Teams you do this using “Chat” or “Calls”. Whatever you write or say here is only for the ones present. If you frequently have private conversations with a group of people, you can create a group chat.
Private conversations are great for social talk or for things that aren’t of interest to the others in the room. Such as, “I’m running late”, or “shall we meet up for lunch?”
But it’s important that you don’t use private chats for business-related discussions that could be of interest to others in the channel. Those discussions should be in the channel posts – where they are visible to others.
5) Think of “Tabs” as posters pinned on the wall
In your various rooms, you can pin things on the walls. This helps the ones in your room focus on what’s most important and it helps them find what they need. In Microsoft Teams this corresponds to “Tabs”. Here you can pin things of importance – such as Excel spreadsheets, shared notes and other apps.
Succeeding with Microsoft Teams
Understanding how Microsoft Teams works is an important step in order to succeed with your Microsoft Teams adoption. But it’s important to acknowledge that Teams drastically changes the way people work, and changing behavior is difficult. I recommend you read our previous blog post or see the video, How to succeed with Microsoft Teams to get more insights, and also check out our other blogs on Teams. Good luck with your adoption and feel free to reach out to us if you need help! Or click on the “Book a demo” button below if you are interested to see Storyals in action!
-->Overview of Tasks
The Tasks app brings a cohesive task management experience to Microsoft Teams, integrating individual tasks powered by Microsoft To Do and team tasks powered by Planner in one place. Users can access Tasks as an app on the left side of Teams and as a tab in a channel within individual teams. My tasks and Shared plans in Tasks let users view and manage all their individual and team tasks and prioritize their work. Tasks is available in Teams desktop, web, and mobile clients.
Note
As we roll out the Tasks experience on Teams desktop clients, the app name will initially appear as Planner to users. The name will then temporarily change to Tasks by Planner and To Do, and later on, it will be renamed to Tasks. On Teams mobile clients, users will always see the app name as Tasks. There may be a short delay in the availability of the mobile experience after the desktop experience is available.
For organizations who want to streamline task management for Frontline Workers, Tasks also includes capabilities that enable you to target, publish, and track tasks at scale across your Frontline Workforce. For example, corporate and regional leadership can create and publish task lists targeted to relevant locations, such as specific retail stores, and track progress through real-time reports. Managers can assign tasks to their staff and direct activities within their locations, and Frontline Workers have a prioritized list of their assigned tasks on mobile or desktop. To enable task publishing, you'll first need to set up a team targeting hierarchy for your organization, which defines how all teams in the hierarchy are related to each other.
What you need to know about Tasks
Tasks is available as an app and as a tab in a channel. Keep in mind that the app comprises both individual tasks from To Do and team tasks from Planner whereas the tab shows only team tasks.
With Tasks, users get a desktop, web, and mobile experience. If Tasks is installed on the Teams desktop client, users will also see it on their Teams web and mobile clients. The exception is guest users. It's important to know that guests can only access Tasks as an app from the Teams mobile client. Guests will see Tasks tabs on both Teams desktop and web clients.
My tasks shows a user's individual tasks. Shared plans show tasks that the whole team is working on and includes any task list that's added as a Tasks tab to a channel. Note the following:
Task lists that a user creates in the Tasks app will also appear in To Do clients for that user. Similarly, task lists that a user creates in To Do will appear in My tasks in Tasks for that user. The same is true for individual tasks.
Any Tasks tab that's added to a channel will also appear in Planner clients. When a user creates a plan in Planner, the plan won't show in the Tasks or Planner app unless it's added as a tab to a channel. When a user adds a new Tasks tab, they can create a new list or plan or choose an existing one.
Set up Tasks
Important
Settings and policies that you configured for Planner will also apply to Tasks.
Enable or disable Tasks in your organization
Tasks is enabled by default for all Teams users in your organization. You can turn off or turn on the app at the org level on the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin center.
In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Manage apps .
In the list of apps, do one of the following:
- To turn off Tasks for your organization, search for the Tasks app, select it, and then click Block.
- To turn on Tasks for your organization, search for the Tasks app, select it, and then click Allow.
Note
If you can't find the Tasks app, search for the names in the first note of this article. The app could still be in the process of being renamed.
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Enable or disable Tasks for specific users in your organization
To allow or block specific users in your organization from using Tasks, make sure Tasks is turned on for your organization on the Manage apps page, and then create a custom app permission policy and assign it to those users. To learn more, see Manage app permission policies in Teams.
Use an app setup policy to pin Tasks to Teams
App setup policies let you customize Teams to highlight the apps that are most important for users in your organization. The apps you set in a policy are pinned to the app bar—the bar on the side of the Teams desktop client and at the bottom of the Teams mobile clients—where users can quickly and easily access them.
To pin the Tasks app for your users, you can edit the global (Org-wide default) policy or create and assign a custom app setup policy. To learn more, see Manage app setup policies in Teams.
A user's My tasks is visible if the user is licensed for Exchange Online
If you don't want a user to see My tasks, you can hide it. To do this, remove the user's Exchange Online license. It's important to know that after you remove an Exchange Online license, the user no longer has access to their mailbox. Mailbox data is held for 30 days, after which the data will be removed and can't be recovered unless the mailbox is placed on In-Place Hold or Litigation Hold.
We don't recommend this for information workers, but there may be some scenarios where this could apply, such as for Frontline Workers who don't depend on email.
Task publishing
With task publishing, your organization can publish task lists targeted to specific locations (teams) across your organization to define and share a work plan to be completed at those locations.
- People on the publishing team, such as corporate or regional leadership, can create task lists and publish them to specific teams.
- Managers on the recipient teams can review the published task lists and assign individual tasks to team members.
- Frontline Workers have a simple mobile experience to see tasks assigned to them. They can attach photos to show their work when appropriate and mark their tasks as completed.
- Publishers and managers can view reports to see assignment and completion status of tasks at each level, including by location (team), task list, and individual task.
Users create, manage, and publish task lists on the Published lists tab in the Tasks app. This tab only shows for a user if your organization set up a team targeting hierarchy and the user is on a team that's included in the hierarchy. The hierarchy determines whether the user can publish or receive task lists and view reporting for received lists.
Example scenario
Here's an example of how task publishing works.
Contoso is rolling out a new food takeout and delivery promotion. To maintain a consistent brand experience, they need to coordinate consistent execution of the rollout across over 300 store locations.
The Marketing team shares the promotion details and the corresponding list of tasks with the Retail Communications Manager. The Retail Communications Manager, who serves as the gatekeeper for stores, reviews the information, creates a task list for the promotion, and then creates a task for each unit of work that needs to be performed by each of the affected stores. When the task list is complete, she needs to select the stores that must complete the work. In this case, the promotion only applies to stores in the United States that have an in-store restaurant. In Tasks, she filters the store list based on the in-store restaurant attribute, selects the matching United States locations in the hierarchy, and then publishes the task list to those stores.
Store managers at each location receive a copy of the published tasks and assign those tasks to their team members. Managers can use the Tasks experience to understand all the work required across their store. They can also use the available filters to focus on a specific set of work, such as work due today or work in a particular area.
Frontline Workers at each store location now have a prioritized list of their work in Tasks on their mobile device. When they finish a task, they mark it complete. Some may even choose to upload and attach a photo to the task to show their work.
Contoso headquarters and intermediate managers can view reporting to see the assignment and completion status of tasks at each store and across stores. They can also drill down to a specific task to see the status within different stores. As the launch date gets closer, they can spot any abnormalities and check in with their teams as needed. This visibility allows Contoso to improve the efficiency of the rollout and provide a more consistent experience across their stores.
Set up your team targeting hierarchy
To enable task publishing in your organization, you have to first set up your team targeting schema in a .CSV file. The schema defines how all the teams in your hierarchy are related to each other and the attributes used to filter and select teams. After you create the schema, upload it to Teams to apply it to your organization. Members of the publishing team, such as the Retail Communications Manager in the example scenario, can then filter teams by hierarchy, attributes, or a combination of both to select the relevant teams that should receive the task lists, and then publish the task lists to those teams.
For steps on how to set up your team targeting hierarchy, see Set up your team targeting hierarchy.
Power Automate and Graph API
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Tasks supports Power Automate for To Do and Graph APIs for Planner. To learn more, see: