Understanding chats and meetings

Microsoft Teams' main features can be divided into two major sections: chat and meetings.

The chat feature takes a principal role in Microsoft Teams and allows you to communicate with your peers in a few different ways, using text. You can have one-to-one or group chats, which can be public or private.

One-to-one chats are always private, and you will be able to start a new conversation with anyone from your own organization (an internal user) or from other organizations (a guest user).

Group chats, which you start manually by adding people to the chat, are private, while group chats that you start in the context of channels are public and accessible to all team members.

Note

The chat feature is heavily used by Microsoft Teams users and has many functionalities that deserve to be explained in detail. Chapter 3, How to Use Microsoft Teams – Chats and Conversation, is exclusively dedicated to chats and all of its built-in features.

The meetings feature on Microsoft Teams provides a rich environment to collaborate with peers who are not in the same location as you. It allows you to bring people from all over the world into the same room in a matter of seconds.

Meetings uses high definition audio and video and allows each member to share video and audio. It even allows screen sharing—you can share your entire desktop screen or individual application windows with other users.

Meetings on Microsoft Teams can also be recorded and shared with other members of the organization in a matter of minutes using Microsoft Stream. If you have a conflict in your schedule and are not able to attend the meeting, you can always watch the recording.

Note

Chapter 4, How to Use Microsoft Teams – Meetings, and Live Events, is exclusively dedicated to meetings, and you will find instructions there on how to use its built-in features.

Now that we understand what chat and meetings are, we still have to manage our meetings and schedule. Let's see how to do so in the next section.