Top 20 Tips for Office 365 Productivity

Top 20 Tips for
Office 365 Productivity
Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Microsoft RD & MVP

Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
Microsoft RD + MVP
cbuck@collabtalk.com
www.buckleyplanet.com
@buckleyplanet

Pinned Channels in Teams
As the number of Teams and Channels
proliferates, one of the most common
complaints from end users is trying to
keep their navigation clean and
organized.
While the AI in Teams will automatically
“hide” Teams that are less frequently
used, the reality is that active Teams
users are often jumping between
specific, active Channels within multiple
Teams, scrolling and expanding to get
to the right place.
With the new Pinned Channels, you can
now “pin” your most active Channels to
the top of your left nav.
To pin a Channel, highlight the Channel
and either right click, or select the
ellipses, and then select Pin

Pinned Channels in Teams
Once pinned, a new Pinned section
appears at the top of your left nav,
providing a short list of favorites for
easier navigation.
To remove a pinned Channel, simply
reverse the process and Unpin the
channel.
blog

Pin your apps to the Left-Hand Rail in Teams
As Microsoft Teams rapidly expands within your organization,
one common complaint is that there is too much on the page:
too many teams, too many channels, too many alerts.
Microsoft has added features to help clean up the clutter and
help people get more organized: search filters, favorites,
pinning channels, and now – pinning apps.
You can now pin personal apps to the left-hand rail (also
known as the Teams app bar). Simply find the app, right-click
the app icon, and select “pin”. Even after you navigate away,
the app icon will remain so you can easily return to it.
Additionally, you can pin apps to relevant channels or chats
for easy access.

Your Teams Admin can also create group policies so certain
apps appear on everyone’s Teams app bar.
Learn more about Admin app pinning at
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-
blog/four-more-reasons-to-love-apps-in-microsoft-
teams/ba-p/1119114
Learn more about the admin capabilities at
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-app-
setup-policies

To pin an app to the left-hand rail, click on the ellipses (…) to
find your app.
What opens first is a list of your most recently added/used
apps, which you can select from, or click on More Apps to
see the full list of available apps.

Once you’ve selected your app, it will appear in the
left-hand rail, and any recent activity of the app will
appear on the right.

To remove or “unpin” the app, simply right click on the app and
select Pin. The app remains on your system, but when you
move away from the app (click on another left-rail item) it will
disappear from your left-rail.
If you are a Team admin and do not want an app used within
your Team, you can Block the app altogether.
You can also remove the app from your Team by selecting
Uninstall.
blog

Add an Office document as a tab in Teams
If you find that sending team members to a
document library to locate the file to which
everyone needs to contribute, there is a
better way…
If you want your collaborative content to be
more front-and-center so that people can
actively review and comment, add your
Office documents as a tab right inside of the
relevant channel in Teams.
This feature applies to any content uploaded
into your team, and found within Files.

To add your Office document, go into the relevant Team
and Channel where the content lives, and where you
would like to collaborate with team members.
From the top of your screen, select + to open a new tab.

The Add a Tab dialog box will open. Find and select the
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF or wiki on which
you would like to collaborate.

Once selected (in this case Word), navigate to the
right project or folder to find your content, and
select the file.
You can navigate to content in other channels, or
within other Teams – but remember that people who
do not have access to those other locations may not
be able to see and collaborate on this document.
Double-click on the item, or select the file and click
Save.

Once shared as a tab, you can then co-author, comment,
or review within a real-time chat much more easily than
sending someone to a document library and waiting for
them to respond with comments.
You can find out more about adding Office documents
as a tab in Teams at
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-
sharepoint-blog/4-topnotch-teamwork-tips-for-
microsoft-teams-plus-sharepoint/ba-p/864155
blog

Control who can email a channel in Teams
Within Teams, you have the ability to
collaborate within a Channel via email. For
some organizations, you may want to control
this access – restricting it to members of that
Team, or to specific domains, thus limiting the
capability for external users.

Control who can email a channel in Teams
To find the email address to a Channel,
right click or select the Channel ellipses >
Get email address
To control who can email the channel,
select Advanced Settings
Within the expanded view, select the
appropriate control and click Save.
Of course, admins can elect to shut off all
email access to the Team, either as part of
the Team provisioning process, or
through the Teams admin console in the
Office 365 admin center.
blog

Share mobile Stream videos directly to Microsoft Teams
Did you know that you can share video to
Microsoft Teams directly from the Microsoft
Stream iOS app?

Share mobile Stream videos directly to Microsoft Teams
Here’s how:

Aggregated view with Planner Hub
For project-centric organizations,
Microsoft Planner is a quick and easy
way to get organized.
Integrated within Microsoft Teams,
Planner provides list and card-based
collaboration (Kanban), with the
ability to create multiple Planner
boards within a Team, or to leverage
a single plan across multiple teams.
The problem becomes your
“portfolio” view of all of your Planner
boards and assigned tasks.
https://www.mirazon.com/tips-for-using-
microsoft-planner/

To see an aggregated view, log into
Office.com and select the Planner
app

Once in Planner, select the Planner
Hub from the left menu, and
navigate between Recent Plans
and All Plans.
For the more visual perspective of
your plans as shown here, select
plans as Favorites, giving you
visual cues into the health of each
Planner board/plan.

By selecting My Tasks, you can now
look at all of your tasks in an
aggregated view, allowing you to
group tasks by project, due date,
progress, etc.

Aggregated view in Planner Hub
By the way….
Another way to see an aggregated view of all-things-
Planner via your mobile device is through…
the To-Do app
blog

Planner and To-Do Integration
 Planner is your out-of-the-box Kanban-based
project management tool. Microsoft has finally
taken steps to align this great tool with Microsoft
To-Do.
 Users can see all of their tasks across Microsoft
365 in To-Do, including flagged emails in Outlook
and tasks assigned in Planner. View your tasks,
deadlines, and details, and plan to get more done
throughout your days.
 To get started, update your To-Do app and click
Show List when prompted to Track tasks assigned
in Planner.
 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
365/blog/2019/05/29/new-to-microsoft-365-
april-streamline-compliance-collaboration-
inclusive-engaging/
 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsof
t-To-Do-Blog/Planner-and-To-Do-integration-
bringing-you-a-more-cohesive-task/ba-p/552740
blog

AI-Powered To-Do Tracking in Word
Editor—Word’s AI-powered writing assistant—is
an indispensable tool for the written word. But
sometimes you need to leave a placeholder in
your document and come back to it later to stay
in your flow.
Word now helps users create and fill in these
placeholders without leaving the flow of their
work.
For example, type TODO: finish this section or
<<insert closing here>> and Word recognizes
and tracks them as to-dos. When you come back
to the document, you’ll see a list of your
remaining to-dos, and you can click each one to
navigate back to the right spot.

AI-Powered To-Do Tracking in Word
Once you’ve created your to-dos, Word can also
help you complete them. If you need help from a
friend or coworker, just @mention them within a
placeholder. Word sends them a notification with a
“deep link” to the relevant place in the document.
Soon, they’ll be able to reply to the notification
with their contributions, and those contributions
will be inserted directly into the document—
making it easy to complete the task with an email
from any device.
Over time, Office will use AI to help fill in many of
these placeholders. In the next few months, Word
will use Microsoft Search to suggest content for a
to-do like <<insert chart of quarterly sales
figures>>. You will be able to pick from the
results and insert content from another document
with a single click.
Currently in preview with Office Insiders.

Automating Microsoft To-Do with your Smart Speakers
 Households are increasingly using smart speakers and IoT devices to automate
various aspects of our lives and increase productivity, but did you know that you
can sync these services to Microsoft To-Do?
 To use Siri with Microsoft To-Do, you begin by connecting your Outlook.com or
Exchange account.
 Go to your iPhone's settings, select Accounts & Passwords and then Add
Account. Then select Exchange or Outlook.com and simply follow the
prompts to add your account.
 Once you’ve added your account, enable Reminders for that account by
selecting Accounts & Passwords once more and then either Exchange or
Outlook.com. Then make sure that Reminders is toggled on for that account.
 Once your Microsoft Account has been connected, set your default
Reminders list to one in your Outlook or Exchange account by opening your
iPhone's settings, tap Reminders > Default List and then select the desired
list.
 Once set up, all you need to do is say 'Hey Siri, remind me to...' and it will be
synced to your Microsoft To-Do list. Using Siri and Reminders with Microsoft To-Do
on iOS11 and iOS12

Automating Microsoft To-Do with your Smart Speakers
 For more details, check out the following:
 Using Siri and Reminders with Microsoft To-Do on iOS11 and iOS12
 Using Ok Google with Microsoft To-Do
 Using Apple Watch with Microsoft To-Do
 Additionally, there are many many many integrations available through services like
IFTTT (If This Then That) and Zapier to help connect your smart speakers and smart
phones to Microsoft apps and services, such as
 Connecting Amazon Echo To-Do to OneNote

Create content in Word with the new, improved Dictation
Save time and simplify work with improved
speech-to-text!
It’s now easy to create content with your voice in
Word thanks to a new dictation toolbar,
suggestions experience, and auto-punctuation
support.
You can also now work in six new preview
languages: Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Japanese.
The new Voice Dictation in Word for the web is
rolling out to all Office 365 users now.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
365/blog/2020/02/27/improve-collaboration-
apps-customize-experiences-new-to-microsoft-
365-in-february/

Visualize your data with Ideas in Excel
If you’ve used the Ideas option in PowerPoint and were
wondering when this fantastic, AI-driven feature would be
included within Excel, it’s here!
Excel Ideas helps users create high-quality documents,
presentations, and spreadsheets in less time.
Put simply, it uses AI to turn data into visualizations to help
you easily identify summaries, trends, and patterns.
In addition to getting recommendations from Ideas, you
can also directly ask questions about your data and narrow
down the Ideas by selecting only the fields you want to
see. When you choose fields and how to summarize them,
Ideas analyzes that data—speeding up the process and
presenting fewer, more targeted suggestions.

Ideas in Microsoft Excel empowers you to understand
your data through high-level visual summaries, trends,
and patterns.
To start using Ideas in Excel, select your data set, and
then click on Ideas on the top right ribbon.
A panel opens on the far right with different
visualizations of your data.

You can refine the options you see by selecting specific
fields on which to focus.
These options change the visualizations available to
you. The idea is to provide a jumpstart into these
visualizations – which you can tweak and adjust to
create the right view of your data and convey the right
messaging.
Once you’ve identified the visualization that works best
for your data, select +Insert PivotChart

A new tab is opened within your spreadsheet, with an
abbreviated set of data based on your selection, and
the related PivotChart.
From here you can cut and paste into a presentation, or
further manipulate the look and feel or the data.
To learn more about Ideas, watch this video.
To learn more about Ideas, read this article.
blog

Present like a pro with PowerPoint Presenter Coach
Now that you’ve made your content and
graphs look amazing, PowerPoint Presenter
Coach (in preview) helps you nail your
delivery.
For some, the art of delivering an impactful
presentation comes naturally, while for others
it can be a stressful experience.
Available through PowerPoint for the Web,
Presenter Coach provides real-time feedback
and suggestions to help you gain confidence
and improve your public speaking abilities.

Present like a pro with PowerPoint Presenter Coach
As you practice presenting, it offers alternatives
to filler words (e.g. “um”) as well as terms and
phrases for inclusive audiences. It also alerts you
when it senses you’re just reading the slides or
reading them too slow or fast.
When you’re done, you see a summary page with
insights on how to improve over time.
You can find out more about PowerPoint
Presenter Coach at
https://support.office.com/en-
us/article/Rehearse-your-slide-show-with-
Presenter-Coach-cd7fc941-5c3b-498c-a225-
83ef3f64f07b
You can also watch PowerPoint Presenter Coach
in action in this video.

Adding interactive Microsoft Forms to PowerPoint
While not brand new, Forms is an
underutilized resource that allows you to
quickly and easily publish surveys and snap
polls within your organization – or to
external users and partners.
Creating your surveys is easy, as is
changing the question types, adding or
removing answers, and rearranging the
layout before or after you push it live.
Additionally, as the survey author, you
have access to real-time stats, and can
share the results with your management
team or respondents.
https://forms.microsoft.com

 Microsoft Forms is now integrated with
PowerPoint for Office 365, providing a
seamless way for speakers, trainers,
and educators to connect and interact
with participants. As shown in a
Microsoft Tech Community blog post,
presenters can get real-time audience
feedback via forms and quizzes
without asking them to leave
PowerPoint.
 To get started, in PowerPoint under
Insert, click the Forms icon to create a
new form/quiz or insert one you’ve
already created.
 Please note that this feature is
currently only available for PowerPoint
Windows 32

To see the responses to your form or quiz,
sign in to your Office 365 account at
https://forms.office.com/
Open the appropriate form from your My
forms page, and then select the Responses
tab at the top of the page.

To create a quiz, check out the
article at https://support.office.com/en-
us/article/create-a-quiz-with-microsoft-
forms-a082a018-24a1-48c1-b176-
4b3616cdc83d
blog

Play My Emails in Outlook
Play My Emails delivers a seamless
experience with Bluetooth-enabled wireless
or wired audio devices such as headphones
or your car audio:
 Begins with a summary of your Focused
Inbox
 Begins with messages about meetings
and events
 Tells you how long ago a message was
received
 Cortana synthesizes the information in
the message header and meta data and
marries it with the insights about you
 You can say “Hey Cortana” to interrupt
the readout and provide simple
commands or reply to a message with a
short, dictated response.

Play My Emails in Outlook
To use this feature in Outlook mobile:
If you’re connected to an audio device (wired or Bluetooth),
select the ▶ Play icon in the notification that appears at the
bottom of the screen. Otherwise, open Outlook, swipe right
from the left side of the screen to open the side menu, then
select the ▶ Play icon.
Voice commands include
 Reply
 Next
 Previous
 Skip
 Pause
 Resume
 Archive
 Flag this email
 Unflag this email
 Mark as read
 Mark as unread
 Delete
 Exit
 Send Feedback
blog

Leverage the new Office App
As you’ve probably seen in the MASSIVE media
push, the new Office app for iOS and Android is
now available!
The big question: Does it replace your
standalone apps?
There is a great article by Jon Friedman, head of
Microsoft Office design, on the reimagining of
the app – and how Microsoft has more to come
https://medium.com/microsoft-
design/designing-the-new-office-app-for-
mobile-1ec1162a966
You can download the app from the store:
https://apps.apple.com/app/microsoft-
office/id541164041

The primary features include:
 Adding notes
 Snapping photos and videos
 Reviewing and editing documents and slides
The next layer down includes:
 Transferring files from phone to PC
 Converting image to text and table in Excel
 Creating and manipulating PDFs

You can search within existing cloud locations, including
your SharePoint and OneDrive locations, which means also
accessing O365 Groups-enabled Teams and Yammer
In some ways, the new Office app duplicates some of the
capability in the OneDrive app
You can quickly and easily add new cloud locations,
including a long list of 3rd party tools

Find content, review visual cards
Pin important documents
Search for content across connected libraries
Review and edit content in mobile format
…and preview in print view
View and edit metadata
Share files from your mobile device

Convert tables and graphs to Excel data
Convert text within images to usable text

Easily transfer images and files between your PC and phone
One caveat mentioned by fellow MVP Hal Hostetler: Office mobile has
an issue that Word, PowerPoint, and Excel mobile DO NOT have. It
insists that all data and its cache must be in Internal memory. The
three stand-alone apps allow data and cache to be placed in External
memory (your MicroSD card). If you have an older phone or a newer
one with limited memory (my LG G5 has 32 GB). its EASY to run out of
memory!! Outlook mobile has the same issue PLUS it has no "sync
slider" like the desktop app to limit memory load.
blog

Timeline feature in Windows 10
If you ever find yourself with a rebooted
machine and wondering what happened to the
last few documents that were open on your
desktop, leverage the Timeline feature in
Windows 10.
To enable this functionality, go into Settings >
Privacy > Activity History to select which
accounts to show, and whether you want to
make your history visible (store your history
locally) and/or share your history with
Microsoft.
https://joannecklein.com/2019/09/22/the-timeline-
feature-in-windows-10-a-hidden-gem/

Timeline feature in Windows 10
Once enabled, select the Timeline from the nav bar and then drag the slider on the right to go back
and select the documents, slides, or apps that you had open on that date.

Improve brainstorming with
Microsoft Whiteboard templates
If you’re looking for ways to improve your team
collaboration, it’s always helpful to start with a
template — whether you’re trying to brainstorm
your next big idea or get everyone on the same
page.
Within the Whiteboard app, there are now
templates (in preview) to help you run more
effective meetings with Kanban sprint
planning, SWOT analysis, project planning,
learning, & more.
Pre-created layouts provide an immediate
structure—with helpful tips for running activities—
and expand to fit all your content.
365/blog/2019/09/25/microsoft-365-web-desktop-productivity-
new-features-office/

Getting started in easy. Go to
Office.com and search for the
Whiteboard app for your device or
desktop (Windows 10).
The website will push you to the
relevant store, from which you can
download and install the app.

Once installed, select the + option from the
bottom navigation to see your menu of
options.

From here you can add the pre-built
(preview) templates.

In this case, I’ve added a Kanban list which I’ll
use with my team to organize our planning
for an upcoming event, leveraging my
Surface Pro to quick add and edit, and drag-
and-drop tasks as I project onto a screen for
the entire team.
This is a great free tool that anyone with
Windows (or iOS) can get started using
quickly and easily.
blog

Adding to OneNote Meeting Notes via Mobile
Within any new meeting, you have
the option to add OneNote meeting
notes to any outgoing meeting
invite.
From the Appointment menu,
simply select Meeting Notes.
Next, select either Share Notes with
the Meeting or Take Notes on
Your Own

Adding to OneNote Meeting Notes via Mobile
Within OneNote in the target
notebook, a new page is created
with your meeting information,
making this new notes repository
instantly searchable. And in seconds,
the same page appears within the
mobile application.
Once this new shared notebook is
visible from your OneNote mobile
app, you can add to it through your
mobile device. That means you can
quickly and easily capture audio,
video, and notes — which is a
*fantastic* and flexible way to add
context to your notes. The real-time
editing means that multiple people
can add or edit notes at the same
time. And if you lose your wifi
connection, it will sync as soon as
you’re back online.
blog

Making quick video recordings in OneNote
Let's say you want to create a quick video of yourself, either to let your team know something, or perhaps
just as a reminder to yourself to take care of some items. OneNote has a basic video recording function
built in, and it's perfect for those basic types of videos (not screen captures… just whatever your vidcam is
picking up). Here's how it works…
First off, go to your OneNote Options (File > Options), select Audio & Video, and make sure you have
the right audio and video devices selected to record yourself:

Once that's done, go to the Insert tab, add a new page, place the cursor where you want the recording to
be, and click Record Video:

The video will start recording immediately, and you'll have a Recording tab in the Ribbon Bar that will
have the controls to Pause and Stop the recording:

When you're done, just click Stop and everything is stored automatically. If you want to replay the recording, click Play:

What's also a nice touch is that you can also right-click on the video icon and save it to a different
location if you need it to reside outside of OneNote:

Build your own Learning Portal with Learning Pathways
Microsoft Sr. Product Marketing Manager Stephen Rose (@stephenlrose) shared a great post “5 steps for
boosting your digital transformation with Microsoft 365” https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
365/blog/2020/02/18/5-steps-boost-digital-transformation-microsoft-365/
Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways is a customizable, on-demand learning solution designed to increase usage
and adoption of Microsoft 365 services in your organization. This includes on-demand custom training,
SharePoint Online portal provisioning, and straightforward steps to provision, customize, and share your new
portal with users.

Read more about Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways at
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/
How to get started creating a learning pathways experience for
your environment:
1. Choose a setup option and provision Microsoft 365
learning pathways.
 SharePoint Online Provisioning Service Setup
 Stand alone learning pathways web part setup
2. Tailor learning pathways for your environment.
3. Share learning pathways with your users using our
adoption tools.

The learning pathways site is based on a SharePoint communication template, so it's easy to modify the site to
meet the needs of your organization. You can change the site name, logo, menu items, and the content on the
pages. Guidance for customizing learning pathways is provided in the Admin Success Center.
Read more about customizing the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/office365/customlearning/custom_exploresite

Plan your content for the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/office365/customlearning/custom_plancontent
Check out the adoption resources at https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/adoption/

Another resource shared by Stephen Rose in his article at
365/blog/2020/02/18/5-steps-boost-digital-transformation-
microsoft-365/
If you’re building a Learning Portal, this is where to begin by
reviewing the great content and examples that Microsoft provides
If you are NOT building a Learning Portal, you can still leverage
this content
Start with understanding how Microsoft 365 can improve
productivity in your specific role or industry using scenarios and
best practices with the Productivity Library. The Productivity
Library is available for a wide range of industries including
financial services, retail, and healthcare and gets granular for roles
like operations, sales, and human resources.
blog

Want more tips?
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020
“April Afflux”
Register at http://bit.ly/O365afflux

Christian Buckley
@buckleyplanet
http://www.buckleyplanet.com
Tom Duff
@Duffbert
http://OneMinuteOfficeMagic.com
…AND subscribe to us on YouTube at
YouTube.com/c/CollabTalk

Top 20 Tips for Office 365 Productivity

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