Using the Command Line in Microsoft Teams

“Once you know what you are doing, productivity becomes your one true competitive advantage.” David Allen, the Getting Things Done guy said that. For our purposes, I am going to assume you know what you want to get done. My purpose here is to talk about productivity shortcuts coming out of the Microsoft Teams team that I find particularly useful. In my last blog, I wrote about five favorite Teams tips. Today, I’ll focus on the command line, that open box at the top of the Teams UI.

Slash and At ( aka / and @ )

There are currently seventeen slash commands. I am not sure that is their official name but to invoke them you type a “/”. According to the documentation, there are two such “commands” – the slash and the “@” command so a distinction is required.

Let’s get right to my five favorite slash commands and how they will help your daily Teams productivity.

/activity

When I am trying to find something one of my colleagues posted, I can often recall who posted, I just can’t remember where. That is the scenario this handy command covers. I type in /activity in the command line and the name of my team member and Teams will list me their recent activity, including where, what and when they posted.

/call

Yes, Microsoft Teams has speed dial. It is the /call command. Try it. type /call then the name of your teammate and hit return. You’ll start ringing them immediately. Faster than you can say “butt dial” you’ll be connected. This is a serious power tool.

/saved

You know that moment where you need to just dog ear the corner of a book so you can pick it back up later? Teams can do that for you with the bookmark feature. To retrieve those bookmarks, invoke the /saved command. It lists your bookmarks lickety-split and provides navigation back to those posts in context.

/files

Similar to my scenario for using the activity slash command, I can usually recall a file that I worked on recently, I just can’t remember where (again). Hitting /files returns me a list of recent files that I can choose from and dive back in.

/org

When you need to find someone, try /org. Type it in and then start typing the name of the person you’re looking for. This slash command has the comfort of the old company phone book, but faster and with the person’s place in the organization in an easily navigable form.

Keep in mind…

There are a dozen more slash commands. You can get to the command line quickly by using the keyboard shortcut, “ctrl + e“. These commands are desktop and web features and not yet available in the mobile app. The Teams team is very open to ideas, so if you have a thought for a command, drop them a note.

I’d be interested in how you use the command line. Please leave a comment or send me a note with your ideas. Thanks!