Online team collaboration is the new standard as organizations distribute their workforce around the world. Unlike older times, where businesses relied on group emails, teams are now working in real-time through an instant chat-style interface that allows employees to join from any location.
Microsoft Teams is one of the most popular collaboration tools out there. It is aimed at bringing office workers together in a unified platform. Keep in mind that it’s not used for chatting with family or friends. Instead, it offers an excellent platform for document sharing and editing, real-time discussions, video conferencing, and a lot more for all types of companies.
What Is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a chat-oriented workspace designed in 2016. It is targeted towards users who subscribe to the Microsoft Office 365 Business and Enterprise plans, thus this software has succeeded Microsoft Skype for Business. It was a replacement for Microsoft Classroom service Office 365 Education.
Teams became available for public use in early 2017 for all Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. There’s a free version too that became available in mid-2018 and came with subscription-based features while restricting user count and storage capacity.
Teams is divided into five components:
- Chat – Team members can engage with each other through private chats.
- Team – A virtual building where you can invite members so they can collaborate.
- Channel – An individual room in a building that can be joined by any team member. Admin can develop more than one room with specific purpose, such as Accounting, HR, and Editorial.
- Channel Tabs – Enables you to pin apps, files, posts, and more for each channel you use.
- Activity Feed – Links all channels making it easy for you to receive replies, mentions, and other notifications.
First, administrators build a team followed by individual channels. When it comes to larger companies, it’s necessary to create multiple teams with a few channels. The client provides robust support for multiple teams, enabling members to access more than one team via a user-friendly and integrated interface.
Although most of the input is communicated through instant messaging, members also conduct video conferences and dial VoIP calls. You can add as many as 10,000 participants in a video conference call. There are also other useful options like speed dial and even a voicemail feature.
Those who are part of a team can access shared documents by clicking on the “Files” in the client, including any video or image that is uploaded in the channels. Members can also use browsers to view files, generate a link to share it with others, or download them into their PCs. OneDrive feature allows users to create PowerPoint presentations, Excel workbooks, Word documents, and shared folders.
Features in Teams
Microsoft Teams include the following features:
- Audio and video calling options.
- 10GB storage for all teams as well as an extra 2GB storage to each user for personal storage.
- A wide array of app integrated
- Searchable and unlimited chat messages
- Real-time content creation with online Office apps.
Create Charts in Microsoft Teams
You can generate charts in Microsoft Teams by following these steps.
- Click the Configure button in the Data Viewer.
- Choose the data source. You can pick from OData, Microsoft SQL Azure Database, SharePoint Lists, and Business Connectivity Services.
- Choose the Display as either a Chart or Grid view.
- When you are done with configuring your data source, choose the columns that you want to display.
- Choose the chart type you want to build and adjust the properties, such as trend lines and color.
- Hit the Save button.
There are a wide range of charts supported in Teams including Area, Line, Column, Pie, and Donut. You have the flexibility to adjust their settings.
Exporting the Chart
Chart Admins have two methods to export a chart from Teams.
- Export the chart in a text-only format, employ a backup, or make updates to it so you can import it into again in Teams.
- Export the chart in text and image format, so it can be used with Microsoft Visio.
Here’s what you need to do.
- Go to the Teams navigation and identify the Chart you plan to export.
- Locate the icon next to the chart’s name and click on it. Next, choose “Export Chart” from the menu.
- On the Export Chart screen, you can pick from multiple formats options. Choose accordingly and hit the “Download” button.
After the file is downloaded, you can go for any of the following options.
- If you chose Export for Chart backup option, you have a backup that can be used for restoring the Chart structure. You can also use this file if you wish to make edits to a chart which can be updated after you import the file again in Microsoft Teams.
- If you chose export for Visio option, you can proceed to importing your chart in Visio.
If you find it hard to create and use charts in Microsoft Teams, visit this link and get in touch with us. For instance, if you want to send pie charts via Teams, you can follow this guide.
