Microsoft Teams - Activity and Chat

Overview

The Activity feed shows a summary of everything going on in all the channels and each Chat has options. The Chat area is a place where private and group discussions take place in one channel.

Procedures

Activity

The Activity feed shows you a summary of things that occurred in the channels you follow. The filter option shows certain types of messages like unread messages, @mentions, replies and likes.

1. Click the Activity icon from the left navigation bar.
2. Click Feed and choose My Activity to view a list of everything that’s going on in Teams.

[Activity Feed (My Activity)  and Filter options (Mentions, Replies, Reactions, Apps]

The Activity icon will change with a number to let you know you have notifications like @mentions or a reply. NOTE: The notifications will stay in your feed for 30 days. After that time, they will expire and will no longer show in your feed.

Activity feed symbols

As feeds start to gather under Activity, unique symbols to different types of notifications appear. These symbols can be used to prioritize these feeds.

[Activity feed symbols]

Posts features in Activity

1. Each Post under Activity has options that appear when you move your mouse to the upper right of each post window and click on the three dots . . .

[Chat options]

References: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/explore-the-activity-feed-in-teams-91c635a1-644a-4c60-9c98-233db3e13a56#:~:text=Activity%20feed%20basics&text=Select%20Filter%20at%20the%20top,up%20to%20lately%20in%20Teams.

Chat

You can have private and group discussions in Chat.

Starting a Group Chat

1. Click the Chat icon from the left navigation bar.

2. Click the New Chat icon.

3. Type in the name(s) of the people you want to start your chat with and you may see a list below to choose from. A “New chat” appears under Chat.

[New Chat window with cursor on the To: Enter name, email group or tag line]

Once you have selected the people for the chat, to the far right of that person or group of people there are several icons that are available.

[Selected icons on the far right of the chat bar]

[Table showing chat icons: Video chat, Audio Call (not available), Screen Sharing, Add more people and Pop out chat window]

4. Type your message at the bottom of the page. Before you send this chat, you may want to use the many features on the bottom toolbar. Most used options are described below.

[Chat editor located at the bottom of the chat window]

[Chat editor icons and descriptions: Format, Set delivery options, attached files, loop components, schedule a meeting, stream, praise, approvals, updates, record a video clip, send]

Pin your chat to the taskbar

To find those important discussion easier, you can pin your chats which adds them to a pinned list. This brings the most important chats to the top of the list. NOTE: You can pin up to 15 chats.

1. While in Chat, click the three dots “. . .” to the right of a chat and choose Pin.
   

[Chat window with Pin, Hide and Notify when available selected from the more options]

This will automatically move this chat to the top of the chat window.

References/Links 

Explore the Activity Feed in Teams

Last Reviewed:   24-Feb-2023