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Teams (How To) Manage Contacts and Chat
This article will provide instruction on managing your contacts and chat in Microsoft Teams. Topics covered include; creating contact groups, adding internal contacts, adding external contacts, and chatting.
Contact groups are a useful option for sorting your contacts and keeping your work space organized.
- After you open Teams, click on the button in the left side bar for Chat.
- In the chat column you will see two categories; Recent and Contacts.
- Click on the button for Contacts
- Here you will have one contact group already made for you; Favorites. You will also have the option at the bottom of the page to create a new contact group.
- To make a new contact group click on the button for Create a new contact group.
- Enter a name for your new contact group.
- Click Create.
Adding Internal Contacts
Before adding a new contact, you first need to determine which group you would like to add your new contact to.
- Click on the ellipse (...) button of the contact group you would like to add your contact to.
- This will bring up three options:
- Add a contact to this group
- Rename this group and
- Delete this group
- Click the button for Add a contact to this group. This will bring up a search bar.
- In the search bar type the name or username of the internal contact that you wish to add. This will auto-populate suggestions as you type.
- Select the name of the contact you wish to add.
- Click the Add button
- Now you have added your first internal contact to your new group.
- Continue this process for each contact group until you have added all of your desired internal contacts.
Adding External Contacts
You can also add external contacts who use Office 365 for their email user. To do this first decide which contact group you would like to place your external contact in or create a new contact group.
- Click on the ellipse button next to the group in which you would like to add your external contact.
- Click the button for Add a contact to this group.
- In the search bar type the full email of the external contact that you wish to add.
- Choose the option to search for the email that you typed in externally.
- Click the Add button.
- Now you have added an external contact.
- Continue this process for each contact group until you have added all of your desired external contacts.
Chatting
Microsoft Teams allows you to instant message or chat with your teammates.
- After you open Teams, click on the button in the left side bar for Chat.
- In the chat column you will see two categories; Recent and Contacts.
- Recent shows you all of your most recent chats in chronological order.
- Contacts shows you your various contact groups.
- It doesn’t matter if you start a chat with one of your contacts from Recent or from Chat.
- Click on the contact you would like to chat with.
- This will open the chat window for that contact
- At the bottom of the window in the text box type your message.
- To send the message press the send arrow on the bottom right of the text box.
Note: You can also send a message by pressing the Enter key on a Windows computer or Return key on a Mac.
- Notice that below the text box there are various options for actions that you can take in your message:
- Standard Message will be sent as usual.
- Important Message will be marked as important.
- Urgent Recipient notified every 2 min for 20 min.
- Format which allows you to format the message text and style. This is similar to the formatting in Outlook.
- Set Delivery Options which allows you to change the importance of the message to one of the following:
- Attach which allows you to attach documents to the message.
- Emoji which allows you to send emojis to your teammates, because who doesn’t like emojis.
- Sticker which allows you to send stickers to your teammates.
- Schedule a meeting which allows you to schedule a meeting with your teammate directly from your chat. This will sync with your Office 365 Calendar.
- Messaging extensions which allows you to add additional extensions to your chat.
- Continue these steps each time you would like to chat with a teammate.
- Click on the button for Contacts
- Here you will have one contact group already made for you; Favorites. You will also have the option at the bottom of the page to create a new contact group.
- To make a new contact group click on the button for Create a new contact group.
- Enter a name for your new contact group.
- Click Create.
- Your new contact group is now created and can be found in the Contacts chat column.