Coworkers chatting around a water cooler. With Microsoft Teams, you can set-up an online space for your team to connect and converse.

Fun with Teams! Emojis, Fun Filters and a Virtual Water Cooler – Tech Tip for July 28, 2020

To wrap up our July theme of additional Microsoft Teams tips and tricks, we thought we would share suggestions on how to have some fun with Teams.

Discover New Emojis with “:word”

Emojis are great for expressing a mood or sentiment in a chat. However, it can be difficult to find the best emoji to express an emotion, even if we know it exists somewhere. Did you know that in the Microsoft Teams message box you can type a colon “:” in front of a word, and quickly find corresponding emoji? For example: “:airplane” Airplane emoji in Microsoft Teamsor “:ambulance” Ambulance emoji in Microsoft Teams to insert the emoji you need. Here’s a #ProTip: make your query more specific with an underscore (_) sign like “:airplane_arriving” Airplane arriving emoji in Microsoft Teamsor “:airplane_departure” Airplane departure emoji in Microsoft Teams

Use Snapchat Filters

If you really want to have some fun with Microsoft Teams, Snap Camera is the way to go. As you might recall, Snap Camera was the culprit when a company boss turned herself into a potato and couldn’t figure out how to get back to normal. The result is the now infamous hashtag, #PotatoBoss. #PotatoBoss aside, you can add your own funny filters to use with Microsoft Teams by downloading  Snap Camera. As you might have guessed, this has been created by Snap Inc., the developer of Snapchat. To learn how to use Snap Camera with Microsoft Teams, check out this video from TechRepublic.

Create a “Virtual” Water Cooler

Who says you can’t hang out in an online space? By creating a “virtual” water cooler you can create a place where spontaneous socializing can bring your team together. To get started, create a company-wide Team as your water cooler space and then encourage your team to take breaks and hang out there.

Use Chat to Tell a Story Line by Line

Once you have your virtual water cooler set up, get everyone engaged with a game. Did you ever play that game in elementary school where your whole class made up a story line by line? The chat feature in Teams makes this game super easy to play. To get started, have one person write one line to start, then, in turn, each person can add a line to create a story. There can be a cap put on the number of lines, and everyone can contribute whenever they have a free moment throughout the day!

As always, to learn more about Teams, head over to Microsoft’s Teams Help & Learning or contact TechWise Group.