Teams: Calling

There are two main ways to make calls from your Teams account.

1) Calls button

a) Click on the Calls button, which is located in the left-hand menu in Teams:

b) To make a call, type the name (or internal number) of the person you would like to call in the box provided:

c) As you start to type, matching names will appear below the search box for you to click on and then call.

2) Search box

a) Using the main search box at the top of the Teams window, begin to type the name of the person you want to call. Matching names will apear below the search box and you can select the correct one from this list:

b) This will open a chat window for the selected person and you can choose to either send a message via chat or select the phone or video call icons (top-right) to call them directly:

Availability

Note: When you can see the person's identity icon, there will be an availabilty dot in the bottom-right corner:

 

Speed dial:

Clicking on the Calls button in Teams will take you to the Calls page where you can see people you have previously communicated with.

You can also create speed dials to make it quicker to contact specific people in future.

On the right-hand side of the screen is a Speed dial and Other contacts pane.

Hovering over the Speed dial area will show a pop-up button that allows you to search for and add contacts:

 

 

If you want to check the status of your personal tutor or a fellow student, you can do this by going to Calls and then clicking on Contacts.

All of your contacts should appear or you can start to type their name and select them from the list that appears:

When you can see the person's identity icon, there will be an availabilty dot in the bottom-right corner:

 

Using the main toolbar in Teams, you can do the following actions:

Toggle your audio on and off

To speak in a call/meeting you will need your microphone switched on. Hit the microphone icon to toggle audio on and off. If you are in a call with multiple people, you may want to mute your microphone when not talking as this reduces the amount of background noise going into the call:

Toggle your video on and off

To video chat, you simply click on the video button and if you have camera setup on your device Teams should be able to detect it and show you to the others in the call/meeting:

 

Whilst you would often have your video switched on when talking to another person or a small group, you may want to switch your video off if you are having any difficulties seeing or hearing the other person/people as this can improve the call quality.

See who is in the meeting/call

Clicking on the People icon will show you a list of everyone who is attending the current call/meeting. You can toggle this on or off as required:

 

Access the text chat panel

Open the text chat panel to leave comments or to share content such as URLs and documents. A call/meeting that includes any interaction with the Chat panel will automatically create a new Chat thread back in the main Teams window so you can refer back to it even after the call has ended.

 

Raise your hand

If there are a few people in the call and you want to make a point or join the conversation without directly interupting someone - raise your hand so the current speaker can see that you want to speak:

Hover over the Raise Hand icon and a new set of options will pop-up. Click on the Hand symbol to raise your hand (which will show as a raised hand against your video or profile in Teams. Click it again to lower your hand:

The other options in this popup allow you to express your agreement, love, shock, etc. for anything that is being said by otherss. The chosen icon will simply float up everyone's screen before fading away. You do not need to toggle these reactions off. 

Share your screen or an application

You may want to share your own screen or an application (i.e. PowerPoint presentation) with others in the call. This is easy to do, but is often lease confusing if you are working on two screens.

Click the Share Screen button: 

This will drop down a new panel that allows you to choose what you want to share. In this example I have two screens to choose from and twelve separate windows. Clicking on a screen will automatically share that screen with everyone else on the call. Clicking on the Window option will expand to show me all of the programs I have open - I can choose one of the programs to share and everyone on the call will be able to see just that window as it is displayed on my computer.

To stop sharing - simply click on the Share screen button again.

Screen Sharing in Teams - Video Tutorial

You may need to login to Microsoft Stream to see this video - use your University of Cumbria username and password.

More options

The the-dots menu icon provides access to lots more tools including device settings (if you're having trouble with audio or video), meeting notes, live transcripts (of what is being said), call/meeting recording (where this option is allowed by the meeting creator) and more...

 

Leave the meeting/call

Click on the big red Leave button to log out of the current call: