How to Create a Keyboard Shortcut to Insert the Windows Key Symbol

How to Create a Keyboard Shortcut to Insert the Windows Key Symbol

by | Jul 16, 2019 | Office 365, Windows

As a software consultant and trainer I am regularly creating content to help staff make use of the digital tools that they have available to them.

As we roll out Office 365 to our education staff I have been creating a number of documents supporting the use of Office 365 digital tools and wanted to add the Windows symbol for the Windows key instead of constantly typing out “use the Windows key + D to…….”.

Here’s how you can setup a keyboard shortcut to insert the Window’s Key Symbol into your documents.  (If only it was an emoji…. I could use Windows Key + .     to insert it here…..)

How to Create a Keyboard Shortcut for the Windows Key Symbol

The Windows Key Symbol is actually a character in the font – HoloLens MDL2 Assets – so to insert that character into your document you need to start by clicking the Insert Symbol icon on the Word Ribbon and select More Symbols

Insert Windows Key symbol

The fonts window will open – change the font to HoloLens MDL2 Assets and click the Windows symbol like shown below

insert windows key symbol

To create a Keyboard Shortcut to use whenever you want to insert the Windows symbol you select click the Shortcut Key Button, thern assign a key combination – in the image below you can see I have selected the ALT key in combination with the W key, so I hold down ALT and tap W and the Windows symbol is inserted into my document.

Windows Key shortcut symbol

For me it would be really helpful if the Windows symbol was available as a symbol in the emoji library – that way I could use the key combination – WIN key + . – and insert the Windows symbol in other applications…… like this webpage!

 

 

Microsoft Teams – Change the Name of your Free Organisation

Microsoft Teams – Change the Name of your Free Organisation

by | Jul 2, 2019 | Office 365, Teams

Microsoft offers limited free access to Microsoft Teams.  Yep, you can setup Teams as an organisation for free and at the moment add up to 300 Members including yourself to Teams.

I went ahead and did this, rushed through the setup just to see if it was true……… and then a few weeks later realised that the name of the Organisation I used was not what I wanted to run with.

If you ended up in the same spot as me – here’s how I was able to change the name of the Teams Organisation.

  1. login to http://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/
  2. use the Office 365 account used to setup Teams
  3. click the profile picture top right and make a note of the “admin@[yourdomain].onmicrosoft.com” login address (pity you cant copy it)
  4. use that address and login to https://portal.office.com (I had to reset my password)
  5. click the Admin icon
    Change Teams organization name free
  6. Login again using the “admin@[yourdomain].onmicrosoft.com” login address
  7. click the Show All link
  8. click Settings and Organization Profile
  9. Next to Organization Profile click Edit and complete the form – remember to click the Save button

There you go!  If that was helpful Tweet this for someone else!  🙂

 

 

How Microsoft Teams is improving the quality of our email

How Microsoft Teams is improving the quality of our email

by | Jun 22, 2019 | Office 365, Teams

Microsoft Teams Adoption

We recently rolled out Microsoft Teams to Staff in the support office of our organisation, Catholic Education Cairns. Our senior leaders made the decision to go with Office 365 as our single Collaborative Platform to reduce some of the friction that existed when we had a multitude of document storage spaces and document creation tools, without the advantages of strong collaborative features.

It has only been 9 weeks since we setup Staff computers and mobiles with Microsoft Teams, informally introduced the features of Teams and introduced staff to Team’s Chat and Team’s Conversations.

We could see the potential that Teams would make to staff working collaboratively and knew staff would appreciate the change to a single platform for document sharing.  But I didn’t expect such a positive response to Microsoft Team’s Chat and Conversation features from Staff who had been entrenched in email and document storage spaces.

Microsoft Teams Chat and Conversations

Since moving our support Office staff to Microsoft Teams two months ago we have seen a 300% increase in Microsoft Team’s Chat traffic, and a 100% increase in our Microsoft Team’s Conversations messages.  This prompted me to seek some anecdotal feedback from staff in our office on what differences they had noticed so far.

Staff say they are increasingly using Chat for internal communications instead of email and that the number of emails they are getting has reduced because of that. But the significant advantage – win! – is that the overall quality of email has increased.  Because Microsoft Team’s Chat takes care of the short email conversations they used to have in their email, their Inbox is reduced of clutter and long email threaded conversations.  So the overall Quality of their email has improved.

In the same way Microsoft Team’s Conversations has supported improving email quality.  Staff communicating in Team Conversations can see other staff responses to a conversation in context – not by scrolling past a dozen or more emails (and email signatures!) to get the conversation. Staff find it easier to “make sense of the conversation” because everyone’s replies or reactions are right there in the Teams Conversation.  “You can so easily see who has responded and how they have responded. It’s soooooo much easier”, one staff member commented.  The traditional “email to all reply to all – maybe” poor communication practice is starting to fade out.

Enhanced Communication and Collaboration Experience

In Teams conversations staff are also making good use of the emoji responses.  Simple clicks to indicate they have read a Conversation or Reply have helped people work smarter, simpler and with a bit more fun. Being able to express a bit of personality into a message using a Sticker, GIF or emoji has enhanced our conversations.

It’s really satisfying to see new digital tools being able to support staff in their work – actually making a noticeable difference that they can experience rather than just replacing one tool with another. We are a collaborative organisation by nature, it’s in our DNA, and Microsoft Teams is a digital tool which is enabling our collaboration much more effectively to help us work simpler, smarter and smoother.

 

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams – Sync your Teams Files using OneDrive

Microsoft Teams – Sync your Teams Files using OneDrive

by | Jun 3, 2019 | Office 365, Teams

After you have setup your OneDrive so that documents stored in the Cloud sync with your computer, you can setup Syncing between the Files section in any of your Microsoft Teams or Portal locations.

This just gives you an easier way to access those files which may also be more efficient for you depending on how you work with files.

To setup syncing between OneDrive and your Microsoft Team:

  1. Open Microsoft Teams and browse to the Team Files section
  2. click the Sync button

After setting up Sync you will be able to access the Files in your Microsoft Team using File Explorer or Finder (Mac) on your computer.

Open File Explorer and along with OneDrive – [your organisation name] – you will now see a corporate section just labelled – with the name of your organisation.

buy surface pro 7
Microsoft Teams – Pin a Chat for quicker access

Microsoft Teams – Pin a Chat for quicker access

by | May 31, 2019 | Office 365, Teams

Chat is one of the features in Microsoft Teams which gave us some quick wins when we rolled out Office 365 in our organisation. People have really taken to short messages to communicate with colleagues rather than having conversations over email.

In Chat you are able to Pin a chat, making it available at the Top of your Recent list of chats.

This is a really helpful feature making it easy to go back to regular Chat Groups or individual chats.

Microsoft Teams Chat pin

To Pin a Chat in Microsoft Teams

  1. Hover on the Chat message in the Recent List
  2. Click the elipses (3 dots … )
  3. Choose Pin
  4. To Unpin a Pinned Chat – simply click the elipses and select Unpin from the options

Microsoft Teams how to pin a chat message

A really simple feature which is easy to activate and helps you work more efficiently in Microsoft Teams.