Microsoft Teams Meeting Attendee’s Toolbar

Child Support Services uses Teams for collaboration, and you may feel confident that you know your way around a Teams meeting. This quick Help and How To article might have some information about a tool or setting that you wish you knew about. Read on.

When you receive a Teams meeting invite in Outlook 365 the meeting will automatically appear in the Outlook 365 Calendar  and the Teams Calendar. You can tell if you have not replied to the invite because the little bar on the left side of the Calendars’ schedule for the event will be striped.

Once you accept the meeting invite the stripped bar will change to solid.

To join a meeting, you can select the meeting in your Outlook 365 calendar, or, you can go to Teams Calendar and click on Join.

When you click “Join,” you will get a ‘preliminary’ meeting window where you can:

Once in the meeting you may or may not be muted. You will want to check your tool bar to determine this. You can find your “mute icon” on the Toolbar.

The Toolbar  contains icons that allow you to do a few things. You can mute or unmute your ambient sound. If the dog starts barking or the baby is crying use this button. To mute click the microphone shaped icon. To unmute, click the microphone icon with the diagonal line through it.

The arrow button beside the mic icon gives you additional microphone settings.

You can choose your mic, adjust the volume, choose the speaker the sound of the meeting will come through, toggle noise suppression, and more.

The Camera Icon allows you to turn your camera on or off.

If the icon has a diagonal line through it, your camera is turned off. If your camera is on and you want to turn it off, just click the icon and the diagonal line will show you your camera is off. If your camera is on and you want to turn it off, just click the icon and the diagonal line will show you your camera is off.

The arrow button beside the camera icon gives you additional video settings.

You can choose your camera, virtual backgrounds, adjust your brightness, touch up your appearance, and access additional effects and settings.

You might want to share what is on your screen.

Let’s imagine you are chatting with a colleague in a Teams phone meeting about a case. You decide it would be helpful if you showed your colleague what you were talking about. Press the Share Icon.

You will have a choice of which screen you want to share. Select the view you want to share and click on it. Teams will show you icons of the view you want to share. You may think you have lost your meeting, but the shared screen will show up after a few seconds.

There are 3 little dots, also called an ellipsis, in the tool bar. Clicking on this will open a drop-down menu of more options you can choose.

In the More menu you can find options to record or transcribe the meeting, turn on live captions or Speaker Coach to help you fine-tune your public speaking skills, see meeting information that you can share with others, turn on video effects and change video settings, including virtual backgrounds, change your audio settings, assess the health of your connection, prioritize the screen of the designated sign language interpreter, and mute notifications.

If you want to record the meeting, first make sure someone else is not already recording because only one recording per meeting can be produced. Press the recording button to start. A note will be presented to attendees that says recording has begun. Don’t forget to stop the recording! The recording will save in the chat of the meeting. It can be found in the Files tab for the meeting.

If you want to respond to a question or make a comment and you don’t want to interrupt the speaker by unmuting and speaking up, you can use Chat.

In this tool there is a little space at the bottom of the chat window where you type your comments. Under the area where you type your message you have a few choices: You can format your message; tag your message as standard importance, important, or urgent; attach a file; add an emoji to a comment someone made or to your own message; add a gif; or place a sticker in the chat. The little arrow that resembles a paper airplane icon is the send button. You can press that, or you can just press enter to send your chat message.

Clicking on People opens a list of those who are present in the meeting, plus others who were invited.

Clicking on the Raise button will raise your hand to ask a question or comment you want to make verbally instead of typing in the chat.

Your name will then appear at the top of the list in the People panel and a hand icon will appear beside your name and on your video. You will need to press the Raise button again to lower your hand.

React  is a tool to use during a presentation. You have options to share your feelings and quick thoughts by using a thumbs up, heart, clapping/applause, big smile or surprise emoji.

Clicking on View gives you many options for how to view others in the meeting.

The Notes button opens the Meeting Notes panel on the right side of the meeting screen. You may have to request access.

To leave a meeting, press the Leave button.

If you should happen to click on the Teams menu on the left of the screen – for example someone sent a chat message to you in one of your Teams and you click on it to see what they say – your Teams meeting will seem to have disappeared. To go back to your meeting hover your cursor over the Teams Icon in the Taskbar at the bottom of your screen (unless you intentionally moved it to a place on your monitor that is better for you). The Teams application you just went to and the Teams meeting will pop up. Click on the meeting image and you will be back in your meeting.

Using these tools will help you have a good meeting experience. If you want more information about using the toolbar see Microsoft’s Use the toolbar and be sure to select some of the topics on the left of the screen. If you are a meeting facilitator, see the CS Quest article Microsoft Teams: How to Facilitate a Meeting.