Howdy folks, and welcome back to these here Tech Tips blog posts! …translation: Hi, welcome back to our Tech Tips: Work Smarter, Not Harder blog posts. 🙂

Summers are always a slower time of year at the College with less programs running, and less students around. But, that didn’t mean that the posts stopped over the summer!

So, for those that missed our summer posts, here’s what you may have missed:

• Marking Teams Messages as Unread
• Pinning Teams Chats
• Muting a Teams Chat
• Pinning in HUB
• Formatting Messages in Teams
• Scheduling a Post in Teams
• Important Teams Messages

Side Note: Happy 3-year anniversary to the blog!

Important! This blog post is important!

First, because this will be the last blog post of our Teams theme.

Second, because this blog post is about marking messages in Teams as important.

How to Mark Messages as Important in Teams

1. Draft your message
2. Then select the plus + icon to the right of the text box
3. In the drop-down menu, select “set delivery options”
4. A new window will pop up where you can select:
   • Standard – this is how all Teams messages are sent
   • Important – messages are given a red exclamation mark and a “important” label
   • Urgent – recipients are notified every 2 minutes for 20 minutes about the message

Muting Teams Chats

Now that we’ve taught you how to mark messages as urgent – where recipients are notified every 2 minutes (for 20 minutes), let’s remind you how to mute Teams chats!

Tech Tips blog post on Muting Teams Chats

Sometimes you know you need to send a message, but, the timing just isn’t right. Perhaps you remember in the middle of the night something that you need to send to the group, but don’t want to potentially wake anyone up who may have their phone on. Or perhaps you want to wait to send a message until after class, or at the end of the work day.

Well no problem! You can draft that message, and schedule it to be sent at a later time.

How to Schedule Send a Teams Message

1. Draft your message
2. Then select the plus + icon to the right of the text box
3. In the drop-down menu, select “schedule message”
4. A new window will pop up where you can select the date and time you’d like the message to be sent at.

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Last week we took a short break, but now we’re back on our blog post theme of Teams!

Do you ever accidently hit enter, and send a message, when you just wanted a new line or paragraph? Then you’re scrambling to edit the message before anyone sees it? Happens to us all of the time… So what can we do?!

Formatting Options

Open the formatting options in the text box! With the formatting options open, you are able to format your message in a variety of ways:

• Bold text
• Create a list
• Change font size
• Change font color
• etc…

But most importantly, now when you hit enter, a new line will be started! No more accidently sending messages before you were finished!

How to Open Formatting Options in Teams

From within the textbox, select the format icon (a captial letter A with a pen).

You can also use the keyboard command of CTRL + Shift + X

Last blog post we spoke about pinning chats in Teams. Now this week we’re going to talk about pinning items in HUB. While these may be “small” or “simple” changes, they help with organization and may even save you time!

How to pin Items in HUB

1. Sign into HUB
2. Locate the “launchpad” – it should be on the left-hand side of your window
3. Navigate through your applications until you find the one you want to pin
   • we suggest pinning applications you use often – for example: LEARN or Office 365
4. To the right of the application, there is a push pin icon – select the push pin to “pin” that application. It will now appear at the top of the launchpad in a “pinned items” section.

How to unpin Items in HUB

1. Locate the application you wish to unpin – it should be in the top “pinned items” section
2. Select the push pin icon to the right of the application

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View this past Tech Tips: Work Smarter, Not Harder blog post on Subscribing to the Blog!

Do you ever find yourself distracted by the constant notifications from a chat in Teams?

Ding. Ding. Pop-up. Pop-up.

Since we use Teams for work or school, it might not be practical to just up and leave that Teams chat. It could send the wrong message. Or you could miss important information.

But the dinging or pop-ups are distracting you from the task you are trying to work on. What do you do? Mute the Teams chat!

How to Mute a Teams Chat

1. Go into the chat
2. Select the ellipsis (three horizontal dots) – “More Chat Options”
3. Then select Mute

How to Un-Mute a Teams Chat

Follow the same steps, but this time select “Unmute”

Continuning with our theme on Teams…

Do you have a lot of Teams chats? Are some more important than others? Do you find it frustrating to scroll and search when needing to message someone? Are there certain people or groups that you often message?

If you said yes to any of the above, you should try pinning Teams chats!

How to Pin a Teams Chat

1. Locate the chat in your list of chats (the list on the left side of Teams)
2. Select the ellipsis (three horizontal dots) icon next to the chat you want to pin
3. Select “pin”

Ta-da!

How to Un-Pin a Teams Chat

Follow the above steps and then select “unpin”.

Another ta-da!

A previous blog post titled “Read or Unread Emails” wrote about some reasons why you might want to mark an email as unread:

• Forgetting to respond unless it’s marked as unread
• Reading an email, but not having time to respond

Or maybe you use unread emails as a reminder of things that you need to do. Regardless of the exact reason, marking emails as unread may be a useful strategy. But, where else could you utilize this strategy?…

Well, the title of this blog post did give it away… but you can also mark Teams messages as unread!

How to Mark Teams Messages as Unread

1. In teams, right-click on the message you want marked as unread
2. Select the option to “Mark as Unread”

Theme on Teams!

Stay tuned for more upcoming blog posts on Teams!

“Snooze” or “snoozing” refers to napping or sleeping. It’s a common phrase to say “I snoozed my alarm this morning” to mean that you pushed that alarm back so you could sleep more. In a set amount of time, that alarm will go off again.

What does “Snoozing Emails” mean?

Snoozing an email would then mean that we are pushing that email back. It’s not time to deal with that email. But, want to be alerted to that email later.

When you snooze an email, it is removed from your inbox (and placed in a “snoozed” folder). At a selected time, the email is moved back into your inbox. You can also go into the snooze folder and move emails back to your inbox if needed.

Why Snooze Emails?

Some examples of why you might want to snooze emails include:

• You are focussed on another task, and don’t want to switch to respond to that email
• You are working with a “zero inbox” (no unread emails), and won’t have time to respond to that email for some time
• The email refers to a project you have already set time aside for
• You have a set time of day where you read and respond to emails

How to Snooze Emails

• Open Outlook
• Select the email you want to snooze
• Either right-click and then select snooze or select snooze from the top ribbon
• Select when you want to be reminded of that email

Enjoy your little nappy-nap email!

Perhaps you caught our previous blog post on Microsoft’s Editor, and love how it’s built right into Office applications such as Word and Outlook. But also perhaps, you were left wishing it was available in more places… that it was available, say, in Edge?

Well, it is!

There is an Editor Browser extension available in the Edge Add-ons store, and it’s free! It works in both Edge and Chrome browsers… though if you’ve been following the blog for awhile now, you’d know that there are plenty of reasons that we suggest Edge over Chrome.

• Tech Tips blog post on PDF Files in Edge
• Tech Tips blog post on Collections in Edge
• Tech Tips blog post on Tab Groups (in Edge)

Download the Editor Browser Extension

Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker – Microsoft Edge Addons

Requirements

Certain features of the Editor extension require you to have a Microsoft account. Though, never fret! Your RRC Polytech academic email is a Microsoft account! When you first open the Editor browser extension, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your Microsoft account (academic email).

Resources

For more information check out this Microsoft Support Article on the Microsoft Editor browser extension.