Wait! You may not need a new Team… Let’s talk about ✨Channels✨

Now that the new year is well underway and you and your colleagues are finding yourselves embarking upon new projects, you may be tempted to create a series of new Teams to help you organize your content. But before you click “Create” on those new Teams, consider if you may be better served creating a channel within an existing Team.

About Your Team Groups

Open Teams on your desktop and look for an app in the app bar similarly called Teams. These “Teams in Teams” are a workspace tool for you and your colleagues, connecting anyone who is a member or owner together in a Microsoft 365 group. These Teams are a great space for you and your coworkers to access shared content and collaborate using a variety of tools.

By the way, to avoid confusion, I am going to refer to these as Team groups here to distinguish them from the broader Teams application.

Using Team Groups for Work Projects

Team groups are a natural go-to tool for work projects, and for good reason. They reduce the never-ending back and forth of emails and the inevitable duplicate files this creates, they make sharing simpler, and they can even incorporate some additional apps, like Microsoft Lists and Microsoft Forms, to help you stay organized.

“So,” you think to yourself, “my colleagues and I are about to embark upon a spring project, I think I will create a new team to keep us organized.” Great thinking! But before you do, I have one consideration for you…

Team Channels

Channels are created within a Team Group to help you further organize content intended for the same Team Group membership. Within your Team group, look on the lefthand menu for the existing channels in your current Team.

Each Team group comes with at least one channel, called General.

Channels allow you an additional level of organization within your Team. You will notice, as you navigate between channels, they each have unique posts, files, and tab structures. So, they can be customized to be highly unique from one another.

New Channel vs. New Team

Okay, back to your situation, you are embarking on a spring project, do you make a new Team or a new Channel within an existing Team?

Who is involved in the project?

Here is my advice: think about who is involved in this project. Are the collaborators all people who are already members of an existing Team with you? If so, the organization strategy for this project might be better served with a channel within an existing Team.

Think about your Team group as your virtual office space. You would probably not look for new physical office space for each new project with the same colleagues… You would likely use the same storage spaces and meet in the same conference rooms to handle a variety of projects. The same concept applies for your virtual office spaces, like Teams groups.

At their heart, Team groups are intended to identify a specific group of people who regularly work together, by nature of their position or across divisions in collaborative projects. So, these groups are all about the people who should have access to the content, not the content itself. The channels, on the other hand, are all about the content.

Side note

Are there exceptions? Of course! Is this a rule? Do you have to create channels instead of a new Team? No way! But I did want to remind you about channels, because there is a tendency to create a new Team group when using an existing Team might simplify things and keep your ever-expanding Team list a little more manageable.

Creating a Channel

Creating a channel is easy, and it is something we do together in both Teams Essentials and Teams Advanced training.

1. Open your Team group and look for the more (…) menu next to your Team group name.

2. Select Add Channel.

3. You have a variety of customization options, and I will leave most of those to the full trainings, but one that may interest you is the ability to create a Private channel. A private channel is only viewable by certain specified members of your Team.

Upcoming Training Opportunities

If this has inspired you to learn more about Team Channels, you might be interested in attending Teams Essentials and Teams Advanced training.

Visit myTraining for available times and to sign up for a session. Also, I mentioned Microsoft Lists as a fantastic Teams tool: look for Microsoft Lists Essentials if you are interested in learning more (this one is super cool, and a lot of people don’t know about it).

Microsoft Cloud Power User Digital Credential

Coincidentally, all three of those trainings will get you halfway to WSU’s Microsoft Cloud Power User Digital Credential . Just saying…

New Digitial Credential Available: Microsoft Cloud Power User 🎉

WSU Microsoft Cloud Power User Digital Credential

Happy New Year, Friends and Colleagues!

Now that nearly 300 WSU employees have earned the Microsoft Office Power User credential, I am so excited to announce a new digital credential for WSU employees: 🎉 WSU Microsoft Cloud Power User 🎉

This badge is available to faculty and staff at WSU and is designed to empower you with vital knowledge about Microsoft OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint. If you are still looking for a New Years resolution, how about this for an idea?

Just imagine displaying this badge below your email signature:

WSU Microsoft Cloud Power User digital credential badge

More Details

If you would like to learn more information about the WSU Microsoft Power User programs and their requirements, please visit wichita.edu/poweruser (login required)
To browse the calendar and sign up for sessions, visit myTraining
For questions, contact me any time at ali.levine@wichita.edu

I hope to see you soon!

Scheduling Polls in Outlook: Goodbye to Doodle

Scheduling Woes

A familiar scenario: you are trying to find a meeting time that works across a variety of calendars and organizations. So, you log into a free online scheduling software like Doodle and set up a scheduling poll. You make several compromises in doing so:

First, you notice several features are turned off unless you pay an additional fee.
Second, you and your recipients are faced with an advertisement-laden webpage in which to place your votes.
And third, this third-party application is now privy to your calendar availability.

The next time you need to set up a scheduling poll, before you turn to Doodle, please take a look at the new Scheduling Poll tool in Outlook.

This tool will address all three of these concerns, while offering a more user-friendly experience to boot.

An Introduction to Outlook’s Scheduling Poll

Here is a demo of the tool and some basic instructions for setting up your own scheduling polls in Outlook.

Note that you can click on the video title to view the content in a larger screen.

Asynchronous Outlook Training Available

Speaking of Outlook, did you know there is interactive asynchronous Outlook training available in myTraining?

Excel Fans: New Functions Alert! 📢

Nothing is more exciting than new functions in Excel, and if you agree with me on this, I have two pieces of good news for you today.

One is called GROUPBY and one is called PIVOTBY, and I think you are going to fall in love with both of them.

Microsoft 365

One word of caution: you will need to be using Microsoft 365 to have access to these functions. Unfortunately, these are not available in older versions of Excel.

Exercise File

If you would like to try out these functions on the data example I am using in my screenshots, I will include a workbook below. That said, there are many potential uses for these functions, so I am hoping this also inspires you for your own workbooks!

Exercise File: GroupByPivotBy

There are three sheets in this workbook: one sheet contains a space for you to try out these functions, and the other two contain the solutions for you to check your work.

GROUPBY

Excel’s new GROUBY formula will allow you to summarize a data set by category; most commonly this could be a sum of values, but you are not limited to this: you could just as easily use another function for calculation, like average, or count.

Here is an example with some data you were introduced to in Excel Pivot Tables sessions: a fictional student list.

From this list, I wanted to summarize the scholarships by college, so I built a simple GROUPBY function to accomplish this task:

Here is a closer look at that GROUPBY result:

Construction

The official syntax of this function is:

GROUPBY(row_fields,values,function,[field_headers],[total_depth],[sort_order],[filter_array],[field_relationship])

With these new functions there are always copious options, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the potential number of arguments in this function.

My Example

In this example, I built the formula with only the first three values: Row, Values, and Function. You can click on this image for an enlarged view.

I built the function in cell F2 (yes it lives in one cell, more on this in a moment): =GROUPBY(B2:B40, D2:D40,SUM)

This translates to:

B2 to B40: row fields
D2 to D40: the values to calculate
SUM:the function I want Excel to perform with those values.

From Microsoft

Here is some additional guidance from Microsoft. Note that only the first three fields are required. The rest are extras (although also worth checking out): GROUPBY function – Microsoft Support

PIVOTBY

PivotTables will always have a place in our hearts, but sometimes you prefer (or need!) to work with a formula. Now you can pivot without the table with the PIVOTBY function.

Here is that same starting data again:

Here is a PIVOTBY Function, with “college” set for rows and “sports team” set for columns:

Here is a closer look at that function result: a PivotTable without the table! 😲

Construction

The official syntax of this function is:

PIVOTBY(row_fields,col_fields,values,function,[field_headers],[row_total_depth],[row_sort_order],[col_total_depth],[col_sort_order],[filter_array],[relative_to])

My Example

I built this function in F2: =PIVOTBY(B2:B40,C2:C40,D2:D40,SUM)

Notice how it starts similar to GROUPBY but has an additional argument for column.

This is how this translates:

B2 to B40: row fields
C2 to C40: column fields
D2 to D40: the values to calculate
SUM: the function I want Excel to perform with these values

More detailed explanation of each potential argument can be found here: PIVOTBY function – Microsoft Support

As is the case with GROUPBY, not all fields are required. For instance, I only completed the first three in mt example: Row, Column, and Values.

Reminders/Tips for Working with New Functions

Here are a couple reminders for working with new or unfamiliar functions.

Function Arguments

After you create your function, but before you have entered values, go to the function arguments key (signified by “fx” next to your formula bar):

This is a great tool to walk you through unfamiliar fields, or just to allow you to explore the full field options. With both GROUPBY and PIVOTBY there will be a scroll bar with additional options.

Array Functions and #SPILL

Both GROUPBY and PIVOTBY are array functions, so you build them in one cell (F2 for instance), but they will spill into surrounding cells.

This means that, if something is in the way where Excel needs to spill content, you will see a #SPILL error. Deleting the content that is blocking the array to spill will resolve this error.

New Functions: Training Available

If this has inspired you to learn more about the new functions available in Excel 365, visit myTraining and look for a new course called Excel 365: New Functions.

This asynchronous course covers the new 365 functions XLOOKUP, UNIQUE, SORT, SORTBY, FILTER, and TEXTJOIN. It is designed as a supplement to the Excel: Advanced Formulas live sessions that are also listed in myTraining.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Simplify Scheduling with Microsoft Bookings

Bookings: Your Personal Scheduling Assistant

If you ever wished you had a personal assistant to help you with booking and managing meetings, or if you are currently using a third party app like Calendly to help you manage meetings, you will definitely want to hear about Microsoft Bookings.

Faculty, you might think about this as an option for creating bookable office hours with students; this would work for both virtual or in person meetings, depending on how you set up your meeting types.

You can find Bookings in your Microsoft 365 app launcher:

In Bookings, you can set up a personal Booking Page with one or more meeting types. These meetings will display specific, predetermined times for people to book appointments with you.

When your colleague selects a time, this triggers an Outlook invitation to both you and the person booking with you. If you have configured this to be a Teams meeting, a Teams meeting link will automatically be generated.

Scheduling a meeting in Bookings

Bookings will also manage the meeting from there: either you or your colleague can cancel or reschedule this meeting through Bookings.

Booked meeting with options to cancel

Take a look at the video below for more detailed information and to learn how to set up your Bookings page and create different types of meetings for your colleagues.

Note: If you are having trouble viewing the embedded video, hover your mouse over the video and click on the title to see the content at the source.

PowerPoint: Help with Immovable Shapes in the Designer Templates

Selection Pane: The control room of your slides

It is possible that you have been creating PowerPoint presentations for years and still never encountered the Selection Pane.

That said, if you use PowerPoint’s Designer feature frequently, I bet you have encountered some frustration with immovable shapes and designs… Why can’t you move or delete some of these shapes? Is there a way that you can you recolor or reshape them by hand like you can with content you insert yourself?

Allow me to introduce you to your Selection Pane! This feature will give you access to every element in your slide… even content that seems to be impossible to access. Think of the Selection Pane as the control room of each slide.

Video: Help with Immovable Shapes in Designer

Watch the quick video below to learn about the Selection Pane, and to see how to use it for a simple fix for common frustrations with Designer templates.

(Note that if the content of the video is too small on your monitor you can hover your mouse over the video and click on the link at the top of the video to open in a larger screen.)

Thoughts?

Does this solve any of your PowerPoint Designer woes? I would love to hear from you!

Generate Captions from a Video with Microsoft Stream 📽️📃

If you have been working with videos and recordings recently, you may have been asked to generate captions, or procure a “vtt” file with captions for a video. There are services, like rev.com, that you can hire to create these caption files… but before you do that, you may want to check out this option that you already have in your Office 365 suite in an application called Microsoft Stream.

Note: For WSU Faculty and staff: you can also utilize Panopto to export captions. Contact the Office of Instructional Resources for more information.

Before we jump in, thank you to Rebeca for her question about this and for inspiring this Byte!

Warning: AI Ahead

This application uses Microsoft’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate captions; it is the same software you use when you use captions in PowerPoint or Teams.

If you have ever used this feature in those applications, you may have noticed that the translations are not always perfect, and sometimes, unfortunately, Microsoft has trouble generating captions at all… long story short, be sure to double check the file that is generated from this process for accuracy.

Microsoft Stream

1. To access Microsoft Stream, first log into your Office 365 account. There is a shortcut in the upper right of your myWSU screen:

2. Once you have logged in, click on on the waffle at the upper left…

3. And find Stream in the app list. If you don’t see Stream here, click on More Apps at the bottom of the dropdown.

Upload a Video

1. In Stream, in the ribbon at the top, select the My Content dropdown, and Videos.

2. Look at the upper right of the screen for options to either click and Drag the videos into your stream, or Browse your machine.

Important: the default for videos you upload is to make them Public to anyone at WSU. If you would like the video to be private, toggle the Permissions arrow, and deselect Allow everyone in your company to view this video.

3. Your video will take several minutes to process, and you will receive an email notification once this process is complete.

Downloading Caption File

1. Once your video has finished uploading and processing, click on the Pencil next to the file name to access details of the video.

2. On the right side of the screen, under Options, and Captions, select Download File.

3. This will generate a VTT file for your video, and an excellent starting place for your caption file. You can double check these for accuracy and make alterations, as needed.

4. Now… how to apply the VTT file to your video will vary depending on your video application, but look for a symbol that looks like a word bubble or the letters “cc”. Below is where the feature lives in Window’s free video application.

Playing the Video in Stream with Captions

It is worth mentioning that you can also play your video within Stream with these captions applied.

Revisit My Content, Videos and select your video from the list to play it.
You may have to toggle on the “cc” button at the lower right for the captions to appear on the video.

Thoughts?

I would love to hear how you use this feature! Are the captions fairly accurate for you? Did this save you any time or money? Feel free to drop me a line.

Word Editor Tools: Refine Essays and Check for Similarity to Online Sources 📃

Hey the semester is almost over! Whether you are a student working on a final paper, or a professor about to read one (or twenty), you might want to check out Word’s improved Editor Tools.

About Office 365

You will need Office 365 to have this feature, and even within 365 there are various update schedules, so the feature may look a little different.

Here is a hack: if your desktop application of Word does not have the Editor tool, or it is pared down from what I show you below, try uploading the document to OneDrive and opening it in your browser, or if you can alternatively upload the document to Teams and open within the Teams application to see the full feature.

Editor

You can find the Editor tool on the right side of the Home tab and on the Review Tab.

When you select the Editor, a menu will appear on the right side of your document.

In addition to the old Spelling and Grammar checks that you know and love, there are a ton of new goodies to help you refine your document. Scroll down to look at refinement suggestions, like Clarity and Formality.

Speaking of Formality, you can set the level of writing to Formal, Professional, or Casual, to see varying suggestions.

Details and Settings

Select the suggested Refinements to see further explanations and choose to change or ignore the suggestions.

While reviewing refinements, you can also change Settings and ask Word to check (or not check) for specific Refinements.

Check for Similarities to Online Sources

There is a new ability to check the similarity between a Word document and content on the web.

In the Editor pane, scroll down to the Similarity section. Select Check for similarity to online sources.

The document below, for instance, has some potentially problematic text.

Review the similarities to see where Microsoft has found similar content online.

Document Stats

One more feature worth mentioning in the Editor tool is Document Stats.

Take a look at the Document Stats to see Readability Statistics, like counts, averages, reading grade level, passive sentences, and Flesch Reading Ease.

Thoughts?

Are you planning to use the new and improved Editor tools? I would love to hear from you! By the way, this is a feature you will want to keep an eye on; there will be more to come in future updates. Until then, have a fantastic end of semester, and happy writing!

Top 5 Microsoft Office Tools for Students 💻

As a Microsoft trainer who is also a returning adult student, I have been meaning to write about this topic for ages… Here are my top 5 favorite tools in Microsoft Office for students. These are in random order, because there was no earthly way to pick a favorite!

1. AutoSave Important Documents

Have you ever spent hours typing a paper without saving? Sometimes we get away with this sort of thing, and other times… Word, or your computer, might “encounter a problem,” leaving you stranded, with nothing to show but lost time and effort.

Consider using the AutoSave feature in Word by saving your paper to OneDrive.

Open up an Office file (for example Word). You will notice an Autosave slider at the upper left of the screen.

When you toggle that on, you will be prompted to save your file to OneDrive.

Once you do this, your document will constantly save automatically every time you make a change.

Also, by saving your document to OneDrive, you will be able to access your file from any computer or mobile device. Win Win!

2. Dictation Tools

Think about those classes where you have to do a lot of reading and are trying to simultaneously take notes while reading.

Take a look at how quickly I was able to take notes for my fictional CARB101 class, below:

Here is how you can try out this feature, and one caveat, you will need Office 365 for this one:

Open up a Word document (or some versions of OneNote). On the right side of the Home tab, click on Dictation.

As you are reading your textbook, read out loud the passages that you would like to include in your notes.

Pro Tip: there are commands within the dictation tools for punctuation, moving to the next line, and so on. If you want to see those, click on the question mark next to your Dictation tools:

3. OneNote: Organize Class Notes and Documents

There are so many ways you can utilize OneNote as a student. In fact, I had so much to say about OneNote that this was difficult to summarize, but here goes:

Note Taking: Most obviously, OneNote is an excellent way to organize your class notes:

Files: You may also find OneNote to be a handy place to organize class handouts, syllabi, and so on. Try inserting content as a File Printout (Insert Tab):

This will serve to attach a file to your notebook, with the addition of a handy readable printout within the note itself. Here is my fictional syllabus, as an example:

Printout File Options: This printout method will work with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files. Maybe your professor has shared a series of PowerPoints, for instance. Insert as a printout!

Search Features: OneNote has robust Search features, particularly the Windows desktop version of OneNote.
- Bonus: when you insert documents as a printout, the content within the attachment is also searchable. Search tools are either found on the upper right of your OneNote screen, or on Mac and online versions, at the upper left via a spyglass.
- OneNote also has OCR technology, meaning it can search the text within pictures.

There is much more to say about OneNote, but this will get you launched!

4. Word: Citation Manager

You may have heard of EndNote and Zotero, but did you know that Word has a built-in citation manager? Word’s citation manager will allow you to save sources, cite sources in a variety of formats, and also create an instant Works Cited/Bibliography in a variety of styles.

Bibliography dropdown

I have an entire entry on the Citation Manager in Word here: Word: Citations and Bibliography.

Fair warning: You do still have to double check yourself for typos!

5. Word: Style Sets

Will you be writing copious papers for one class, with specific formatting guidelines that will apply to all of these papers? For instance, “all papers must be in Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced.” You could set up each paper with these settings one by one, or you could utilize Word’s Style Sets so that you can apply all these special settings to future papers with a click of a button.

Step 1: Changing Existing Styles

Open up a blank word document. Instead of changing text by hand, in the Home tab, Styles group, right click on the Normal style.

Select Modify.

In the popup screen that appears, make the various font customizations: in this case, Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced.

Note: you can do more advanced formatting in the Format dropdown in the lower left.

… like hanging indents, spacing, etc.

Step 2: Save the new style

Go to the Design tab, Document Formatting group, and click on the arrow at the lower right.

Select Save as a New Style Set.

Choose a name (perhaps the class name), and click Save.

Step 3: Access the style

Going forward, you can apply these exact font settings to a new Word document:

Go to the Design tab, Document Formatting group, and click on the arrow at the lower right.
You now have a Custom section with your presets ready to apply to the new document.

In other words, with just a couple clicks, you can jump right in to typing your paper with the exact prescribed formatting.

Thoughts?

Do you think you will use these tips as a student? Or even as a non-student? I would love to hear what you think!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Deana Beek

Daniella Blair

Cheyenne Dealy

Janise Eck

Shelly Ellis

Word: Translation Tools

Do you need to translate a document in a hurry? You might check out Microsoft’s translation tools… you have an array of languages at your fingertips. Let’s take a look.

How to Translate a Word Document

Here I am looking at a fictional syllabus for my fictional class. The syllabus is written in English, and I would like to translate it into Vietnamese.

1. Start in the Review tab of the ribbon. Select the Translate dropdown. You will see options to either translate a selected portion of your document, or the entire document. Here I chose Translate Document.

2. The Translator menu will appear on the right side of the Word screen. Here you can select your starting language (or allow Auto-detect to determine this), and then your translation language.

3. Once you have selected languages, click Translate.

A new word document will appear in front of your original document with your translated content.

Note: No translation is perfect, particularly machine generated translation, so it is possible there will be some mistakes or imperfections in the results.

More Applications

You will see these Translation tools in your other Microsoft Office applications, like PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. This is an incredible tool to help enhance communication.

Thoughts?

Do you think you will use these translation tools on your Office documents? I would love to hear from you!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Mumenah Burnshire