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(719) 355-2440A typical workday requires you to connect with various people, tools, and content you need to do your day-to-day work. Luckily, Microsoft Teams brings everything together into one centralized workspace, allowing you to access what you need to work more efficiently. However, as teams grow, there are more and more conversations throughout the day and more files to reference. Eventually, it can be difficult to remember where everything is located and if you talked to so-and-so about that marketing project.
With Microsoft Teams’ search functionality, you can easily navigate through the Teams application and find chat, channels, conversations, documents, people, files, and other info shared in Teams. It is accessible from all five navigation areas (Activity, Chat, Teams, Meetings, & Files) and is quite handy.
With the basic menu bar search tool at the top, typing in a keyword will automatically display Teams and Channels that contain documents or conversations with the keyword.
When you want to be more granular and restrictive in your search, Microsoft Teams’ powerful filters can help. When using the search box to find something, the results section consists of three tabs – Messages, People, and Files. After entering your search terms into the search box, use the tabs above your results to refine your search. For example, if you select Messages, you can then filter by subject, date, team/channel, from, has mentions @ and has attachments, and for files, you can narrow down your search to a specific team, file type, or even the last person to modify the document.
You can also filter your activity feed with Microsoft Teams search functionality. You can filter the activity feed by choosing the “Activity” icon in the left bar, then clicking the “filter” icon. Enter a word or phrase to filter the feed based on that. Select more options to show certain messages, such as unread messages, @mentions, missed calls, replies, and likes. To only look at your activity, select Feed at the top and then select My activity.
For more advanced searches in messages, you can use the built-in Keyword Query Language (KQL). Here are the modifiers that Teams supports. Note: there’s no space between the colon and the search terms.
The search bar in Teams also doubles as a command bar to help with more advanced search queries. According to Microsoft, the command bar was designed with four key functions in mind: querying for data, taking quick actions, multi-tasking, and being extensible to other apps. It allows you to search for and access data, start tasks without losing context, and navigate to different features of Teams to get things done in fewer steps.
You can take several key actions with the command bar that will help improve your productivity and make you a Microsoft Teams pro. There are two commands you can use:
Some common commands you can use include:
Search operators on Microsoft Teams only work when searching for files, not messages.
You can also use the shortcuts Ctrl+F (cmd+F on macOS) to search for messages within a particular chat or channel in Teams.
If you have any questions about Microsoft Teams or how to streamline your technology, Colorado Computer Support can help. We provide comprehensive IT support services designed to help Colorado Springs organizations leverage technology to boost productivity and efficiency and drive business growth. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and discover how we can help align your technology to your business goals.