I recently came across a Microsoft Blog post that outlined some of their commonly used keyboard shortcuts when in Microsoft Teams. When I realised that I had not actually used any shortcuts myself I set upon finding out what fun could be had with them and how handy they may actually be.

• Navigation

I found that I was able to easily navigate through my tools using the Ctrl+(1-7) shortcuts. These work by assigning the apps in descending order. For Example Ctrl+1 took me to my activity feed while Ctrl+5 took me to my calls. This has reduced my clicking time significantly.

I also found that Ctrl+/ was a useful shortcut, providing me with a list of all available commands in Microsoft Teams that i could then scroll though to select the option that I needed.

• Calls

I thought the obvious use for shortcuts would be within calls or meetings so found that using shortcuts such as Ctrl+Shift+S to answer an audio call ( or A for a video call ) was much smoother than fumbling around with the mouse. While in the call or meeting audio can be muted by using Ctrl+Shift+M and video can be turned on/off using Ctrl+Shift+O. Your screen can be shared using Ctrl+Shift+E Unfortunately there is no shortcut that I could find to activate the new ‘Raise Hand’ Feature or that ended the call.

• A Bit of Fun

I also found that during chats when you use the colon key ( : ) and start to type a word Microsoft Teams will display a list of relevant Emoji’s which is fun. However I did find that there were some issues with using the well known emoji combo’s it was using them as default ( :S for example ) so i had to begin typing the word and then put the : at the front. This could be my fault for not typing fast enough so if anyone manages to figure that one out please leave a comment 🙂

For a full list of the shortcuts available when in Microsoft use Ctrl + . and they will be displayed.

I hope this has been helpful, thank you for stopping by.